Stab and elevator sizes

I have one of the original Magicians from a kit produced by Technical Model Products Co. in Pittsburg, PA. The plane has to be over 25 years old, is is still flying today, however I'm a little concerned about what the cable connections to the bellcrank look like. Everything was soldered back in those days.

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For space reasons, the full stab is NOT shown on the plans, but measuring directly off the plane, the stab span is 20". The stab-elevator chord is 4 1/2".

You'll notice in the photo, that I changed the nose to an upright engine installation. This is a change that I highly recommend. It has so many pluses going for it, including better engine runs, a much better tank installation, and lower vibration. The idea came from an old AAM article by Lou McFarland. It's very simple to do. Basically just a 1/4" ply motor mount, a couple of 1/8" ply bulkheads, and some balsa filler blocks. If you would like the details, email me. Of course, if you want to keep the plane authentic to the original design, than this modification is out.

Cheers,

Ty,

Your email ICON doesn't appear to be working properly. Check your profile info and contact Leonard if necessary.

I would be a good idea to email me for the files, that way I won't forget.

Cheers,

LAST EDITED ON Oct-11-01 AT 09:53 PM (CDT)

Sorry for the delay, but it took me a while to find the materials and scan them.

But, you're in luck....not only did I find the original McFarland article, but I found the template that I used to make the new motor mount. I drew around the template with a felt tip pen to make it legible in the scan, so it is slighly oversized.

In order to preserve detail in the scanned magazine article, the file ended up too large to get under Len's 50kb maximum, so please email me if you are interested, and I will email you the two files.

Leonard fixed the email icon in the heading for me, so now it's working. ([email protected])

A couple of points:

- The original article DID use 1/4" x 3/8" maple mounts. I used 5/16" plywood, which allows you to bring the motot mount all the way back kto the leading edge of the wing. There is probably a weight penalty using the plywood, but I still ended up adding a 1/2 ounce of lead to the nose for proper CG.

- The inspiration for the 1/4" plywood mount came from Al Rabe's MUSTUNT article in the Feb 1973 issues of American Aircraft Modeler. This is an excellant article for the upright nose configuration as well as a wealth of other building information.

Also, with this nose modification, it's very practical to blend it into a spinner if that fits your tastes.

Incidently, the blue on the wing is transparent Monocote, and the blue on the fuselage is good old Aero Gloss, Curtiss Blue, I believe.

Contact me if you need additional information.

Have fun.

LAST EDITED ON Oct-12-01 AT 01:05 PM (CDT)

As I have thought more about it, I finally remembered what I did (it was many, many years ago). The motivation for doing the surgery and modifying the nose of my Magician did come from the Lew McFarland column, but the actual construction details I got from the MUSTUNT artile by Al Rabe, which did use the 1/4" plywood for the motor mount.

Here are a couple of pics out of the Mustunt article publish in the Feb '73 American Aircraft Modeler.

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This shot of the nose on the plans may not show good detail because of the file size limitation. If you want a larger, more detailed pic let me know, and I will email it to you.

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Again, I highly recommend this type of an engine and tank installation on a profile fuselage....either modifying a existing side mounted engine, or on new construction. The benefits far outway the small amount of extra work. It was the best thing I ever did to my Magician.

Good luck,