Fancy Pants and FP.35??

Brodak's add recommends a Fox.35, but I don't want to buy another engine for this airplane while I have a perfecly good motor not doing anything but collecting dust in a box.

Has anyone out there built a Fancy Pants before and used an FP.35 instead of a Fox? If so, what do you think?

Thanks in advance..

I was wondering from someone who has built it, since I have a Fancy Pants on order, does the fuselage require any balsa block carving & hollowing? The Brodak catalog says "very easy to build," and this will be my first full fuselage attempt. Just wondering what to expect.

Also, I was going to use my Fox.35 in it.

I've seen it successfully flown with an OS 40FP, however. Might be an option for a Double Star 40 which is the same weight as a Fox 35.

If I built another one I would make so the tank was removable and adjustable.

Bruce Hunt
Salem, OR

Of course, the definition of "reasonable" is a subjective thing. The original FP's that I owned in the mid-1980's were less than satisfactory. Neither fish nor fowl, it seemed at the time - not powerful enough to use for combat or speed events, and not slow enough for sport or stunt activity (with the props that were then easily available). You couldn't get any 10-3 or 11-3 props when I had those first two FP's, so the 40 was pretty useless. It ran faster than the 35, although it weighed almost a half ounce less.

The 35 went to another modeller rather soon after the first few test runs, at no monetary loss, before I learned much about it; the 40 stayed around long enough to annoy me.

" Some variation of the original query has been the subject of debates on various C/L message forums about once a month for over three years. There are some people who are virulently dismissive of the LA's. But there are also some misguided souls (Peabody, are you listening?) who take every possible opportunity to disparage the old Fox 35.

" An online messager could probably run a search and turn up five or six of those debates in a few minutes. Be that as it may, the Fancy Pants is a medium-size design that dates back to the late 1950's in style, if not in actual fact. It was nicely matched to Fox 19's, 25's, and powered more than adequately with Fox 29's and 35's (if not in fact overpowered by the latter pair). Both the LA 35 and the FP 35 develop more power at a higher rpm than the engines I named before. They are also heavier. The FP weighs over eight ounces. The original Fox 35 weighed just six (it's up to 6 1/2 now).

" I hate to add lead to anywhere on a plane otther than the wingtip. If a builder shortened the Fancy Pants' nose, in order to balance it for the heavy engine, he wouldn't have a lot of room for a tank. Anyone who really likes modern engines instead of the old stuff, should get a Magnum 25, at a lot lower cost than an LA 25, it's lighter in weight, and put that in the Fancy Pants, or put the FP 35 in a (bigger) plane it was designed for (no, I don't know of one yet, unless it's Ted's "Doctor.")

>I base this on a Fancy Pants/Fox 35 combo that I built
>a while back and on which the Fox was more than adequate
>but the Fancy Pants was really fast when in two cycle on a
>10-5 and also siqnificantly nose heavy. The FP 35 is going
>to run in a two cycle more or less continuously and is a
>couple of ounces heavier than the Fox.

>The Fox is a good choice. A modern .25 would be excellent
>as well, in fact I would like to build another Fancy Pants
>one day for a .25 FP. It is an easy to build, pretty, nice
>flying ship.

The last few months, I've had few chances to "fly slow;" but I've needed to tailor the performance of some more powerful OS Max products than the FP/LA series. I found that I can dial in what I want pretty well with fuel, plug, and prop selections, and let them scream, so have to accept the words of the FP-centrics that the 35's can also be tamed quite well to fly at reasonable speeds. With the removal of the FP's from the C-L offerings (other than the smallest sizes), even the reluctance of FP 40's to run comfortably with affordable props is answered by the removal of the LA 40's boost port.

Maybe the debate devolves only to esthetics and we're supposed to be happy as clams with overweight sport planes (after all, some will say, those hundreds of thousands of Ringmasters were all heavy as lead! But on the day after its designer's death, I do remind everyone that TF's wood selection for Streaks was usually several hundred percent better than Sterling's for the Rings).

The K.

You can always go to larger diameter and lower pitch props to slow down the plane, if it is the CL version, and as someone mentioned already, an extra head gasket, or a smaller venturi will tame the engine.

Try the Tornado "Magnum" 10-4 3-blade.

I would suggest using fuselage gear if flying over grass.... the wing gear provided tends to break ribs and le planking with typical grass landings........

There is very little carving necessary, the fuse is almost a "box"

I would suggest, too, that the flaps be stationary... this is an early examply of flap thought, and the tail is a bit too short. If you use the flaps, insure that they move at about 1/2 the rate that the elevator does.

Have fun!

See Ya

> Of course, the definition of "reasonable" is a subjective thing. The original FP's that I owned in the mid-1980's were less than satisfactory. Neither fish nor fowl, it seemed at the time - not powerful enough to use for combat or speed events, and not slow enough for sport or stunt activity (with the props that were then easily available). You couldn't get any 10-3 or 11-3 props when I had those first two FP's, so the 40 was pretty useless. It ran significantly faster than the 35, although it weighed almost a half ounce less.

> The 35 went to another modeller rather soon after making the first few test runs, at no monetary loss, before I learned much about it; the 40 stayed around long enough to annoy me.

I'm not sure this aspect has received much attention. The Fancy Pants is a more or less "traditional" style design, quite obviously intended (leastwise it is to the "50-plus" age group) for gentle sport and stunt enjoyment. In that regard, it is unlike the various Red Reinhard designs that Larry Scarinzi likes, intended for rather higher speed zooming about, and best typified by using 36X's to power Flite Streaks.

But someone several years younger than those of us already in the hobby during the period when the Fancy Pants was first available may be getting some kind of mixed signals from GeeBee racers, Thompson Trophy stuff . . anyway (from 7-5):

> " Some variation of the original query (modern 35 in place of loop-scavenged 35) has been the subject of debates on various C/L message forums about once a month for over three years. There are some people who are virulently dismissive of the LA's. But there are also some misguided souls (Peabody, are you listening?) who take every possible opportunity to disparage the old Fox 35.

> " An online messager could probably run a search and turn up five or six of those debates in a few minutes. Be that as it may, the Fancy Pants is a medium-size design that dates back to the late 1950's in style, if not in actual fact. It was nicely matched to Fox 19's, 25's, and powered more than adequately with Fox 29's and 35's (if not in fact overpowered by the latter pair). Both the LA 35 and the FP 35 develop more power at a higher rpm than the engines I named before. They are also heavier. The FP weighs over eight ounces. The original Fox 35 weighed just six (it's up to 6 1/2 now).

> " I hate to add lead to anywhere on a plane otther than the wingtip. If a builder shortened the Fancy Pants' nose, in order to balance it for the heavy engine, he wouldn't have a lot of room for a tank. Anyone who really likes modern engines instead of the old stuff, should get a Magnum 25, at a lot lower cost than an LA 25, it's lighter in weight, and put that in the Fancy Pants, or put the FP 35 in a (bigger) plane it was actually designed for (no, I don't know of one yet, unless it's Ted's "Doctor.")

>I base this on a Fancy Pants/Fox 35 combo that I built
>a while back and on which the Fox was more than adequate
>but the Fancy Pants was really fast when in two cycle on a
>10-5 and also siqnificantly nose heavy. The FP 35 is going
>to run in a two cycle more or less continuously and is a
>couple of ounces heavier than the Fox.

>The Fox is a good choice. A modern .25 would be excellent
>as well, in fact I would like to build another Fancy Pants
>one day for a .25 FP. It is an easy to build, pretty, nice
>flying ship.

> Maybe the debate devolves only to esthetics and we're supposed to be happy as clams with overweight sport planes (after all, some will say, those hundreds of thousands of Ringmasters were all heavy as lead! But on the day after its designer's death, I do remind everyone that TF's wood selection for Streaks was usually several hundred percent better than Sterling's for the Rings).

The K.