Building help

I've had both coupled-flap and fixed-flap Magicians. It's my opinion that the fixed-flap version was a better flier. The tail is so comparatively short that there's interference between the flaps and the elevators.

Silhavy never hinged the flaps on his prototypes. But it you feel that you must do so, the tail needs at least two inches of extension. It should be possible, and workable, to move the stab to the extreme rear of the fuselage from its intended position & that might separate the air turbulence off the flaps enough that they don't blanket the elevators.

Having said that, and in spite of still upholding all of that as a validly supportable position, it was the old, overweight, ugly Magician 35 with coupled flaps that would stay out on the lines at the kind of Goodyear Blimp slow speeds that Giesecke used to fly, and GMA always preferred. It was the only plane I ever had that seemed to stay in the air in all attitudes while poking along at what seemed to be little more than a fast walk! (Without giving me the heebie-jeebies from slack lines.)

(It also had the dirtiest, most varnish-encrusted old Fox 35 on it that I ever had, and when flying along as slowly as it would go sometimes, that one seldom broke to a two-stroke -- not saying that I performed complete AMA patterns with it at any point -- it wallowed through "square" turns in such a terrible-looking way that I just flew round stuff with it!)

Kiwi

Now, the question you asked: You can slide the horn on, then slide the wing into place. That is one method. You can, also, make a slot in the fuselage just big enough for the bent end of the horn to slide through, and attach the horn bearing to the wing and then slide the horn end through that slot while you slide the wing into place. The slot can then be filled with scrap wood afterwards. That way you can attach the flap horn (or joiner) bearing to the center of the wing and hide it in the fuselage so it can't be seen. We have done the same thing with full bodied planes by building the fuselage around the wing and sliding each side over the horn by using the slotted method.

Truth be told, they fly about the same.

One thing you can do is reglue the wing cutout blank to the fuse, and move the wing nearer the nose, say 2". Same deal as with a Sig Banshee. You have to watch the weird harmonics you get with the long noses on these planes; leads to runaway lean runs, sometimes. But the original design works OK. If yu leave it stock, you might consider a "tripler" on the IB side of the fuse for stiffening purposes. Currell

As a teenager, my best friend built the large Magician, also stock, with a beautiful white dope finish on it and powered it with a, you guessed it, McCoy 40 redhead. That plane flew so well, I am considering building one now. It flew slowly,with plenty of line tension and with a 4-2 break, the airframe resonated to make that wonderful "drumlike" sound that I can't forget. My advice is to build it and enjoy the hell out of it. Stock and built light (crucial) the Magician is my favorite profile.

Angel

> Right now I'm in the prosses of building a flapped Majician. (Magician) The thing thats got me scracthing my head is how to attach the wing to the fuse? Do you attach one flap perment and then bend the other flap horn or what? Or does it handle good enough to skip the flaps? Is the flight handling improve(d) with the added flaps?

If coupled flaps are used, there are two ways to do the assembly. The most common is to leave the flap coupler wire off until after the wing to fuselage joint has been completed, leaving a hole at the TE for the joiner to be slipped through later. For this way to do things, particularly with profiles, I have not only cut in and aligned all of the hinge slots in both the flaps and the TE, I have also built in reinforcement where the joiner enters the flaps, and typically have already attached the covering to the wing and gotten the clear coats and undercoats prepared for the colored finish coats.

The other way is to cut away a "plug" big enough to pass the outboard flap through, insert the wing, with the flaps attached (most definitely with the covering applied in this case), create the joint, and glue the plug back in afterward. But I didn't answer that much of the question. I chose only the second part, the question within the question, to give my answer to:

> > ... does it handle good enough to skip the flaps?
> >Is the flight handling improve with the added flaps?

> I've had both coupled-flap and fixed-flap Magicians. It's my opinion that the fixed-flap version was a better flier. The tail is so comparatively short that there's interference between the flaps and the elevators.

> Silhavy (Jim Silhavy was the Magician's designer) never hinged the flaps on his prototypes. But it you feel that you must do so, the tail needs at least two inches of extension. It should be possible, and workable, to move the stab to the extreme rear of the fuselage from its intended position & that might separate the air turbulence off the flaps enough that they don't blanket the elevators.

("snip")

New comment: Midwest's kits shared with Sterling's the worst balsa stock in the world when it came to weight. A scratch- built Magician 35 could fairly easily weigh no more than 35-36 Ounces. A kit-based one very commonly tipped the scales at 48 Ounces or more (three pounds). It only had about 475 square inches, perhaps even less, so if it weighed much more than 44 ounces, even with an unmuffled engine, it was already in bloat territory!

Kiwi

Wow, is this wierd timiming or what?
Just to let you all know the unflapped Magician took it's last coat of base color the other day. (red) Now if I can figure out a good trim work hoefully in yellow it should look ok.
The plane was built from plans gotten from Len.
Now all I'm waiting for is next payday to get the Profile .40 and a uniflow tank. Goodday to all, Steve D.