Been working on this for awhile. I needed to make a true to scale original tailpost and dorsal assembly for the Superhawk but needed it to have the capability of accepting larger joiner rods for a beefed up stabilizer assembly so over the last year I have been working on molds that can accurately replicate the injected molded parts of the original plane. Anyone that has a Hobie Hawk knows how rare and scarce original dorsals are because they are no longer made. Building the molds was a new process for me and involved alot of experimentation and trials but the work paid off and I can now replicate the tail assembly out of composite materials.

The dorsal is a double sided molding laminated from fiberglass cloth, S glass tow and carbon tow. Much stronger than the plastic dorsals on the Hobie hawk but then again I can't injection mold them several hundred per hour either!

It took one day to make the tailpost and two dorsal halves and another day to fabricate the bellcrank and mill the slots and holes. Very time consuming but the parts work. Yipee! A total of eight seperate molds and five pins are required to make one dorsal.

It's been awhile since I built anything like this and There are enough advancements with radio gear, materials, and control technology to make this project work. The goal will be to make a full scale Bald Eagle from composites utilizing the build experiences of myself and others to make this thing look as real as it can get, including no cheater fins or vertical tail surfaces. Yes, it has been done. My only fear is that where I fly there are LOTS of real Bald Eagles (Skagit River, Washington) and what will they do when encountering this thing? The talons of a Bald Eagle are 6 inches from front to back. When they close, they are like a pitbull's jaws. Good luck dislodging them...Only one way to find out I guess...


Started on the drawings for the prototype. Gave Compufoil a good workout yesterday. Sure beats hand drawing all those airfoils!

Ordered some true scale Bald Eagle eyes from a taxidermy shop that are correct for the bird. Woodcarvers use them and its a good thing they did the research on the eyes. They are not yellow. They are off white and have a dark band around the outside. I figure the face has to be accurate. I don't want this thing coming out looking like a chinese parrot-like knockoff.

The last Bald Eagle I built was years ago when I was still in high school. It was about the same size as this one but had a rudder. Bob Hoey has since then blazed a trail for RC birds since then and also a Japanese gentleman has done a great deal of research on how...Continue Reading

This project is now completed and all planes have been sent FEDEX 2 day air. Check your mail for tracking numbers.






PLANES AVAILAIBLE : SOLD OUT. UPDATE AS OF 5-08-2011...Continue Reading

Or you might get this at your flying site

I fly mainly at 2 sites here in Skagit County, Washington.

The first is Fort Ebey State Park located on Whidby Island. Whidby Island where they filmed "An Officer and a Gentleman" years ago. It is the current location of Navy Base Whidby Island and the flying sites are located on the West side of the island. One faces Southwest and the othe faces West. Both look out Westward on the Olympic Mountain Range across Puget Sound and Northwest across the Sound is Victoria BC (Vancouver island, Canada) and directly North is Vancouver BC.

The SW facing site rarely has a straight to the face headwind. 99% of the time it is crosswind from the left (South). Usually the only time it is good to fly this site is as a storm front is approaching with a Low pressure system off the Washington coast. The winds here can be hurricane force. I've seen guys in body suits and goggles leaning into the wind flying their ballasted slopers. Most of the time it blows 15-25 Kts during the Fall, Winter, and early Spring. Summer flying has winds that are calm or northerly. Not good unless you have a power assisted glider. Thermals would be abundant then I would guess. This site has literally several square miles of flat farmland behind the slope to land on. Couldn't be better.

The other site is the West facing Gunnery Site on Fort Ebey. It is the old location of a heavy gun emplacement overlooking a sweeping 180 degree view of both the Straight of Juan De Fuca and South towards...Continue Reading

Man... Where do I start with this?

After meeting Mark Triebes and sponging up all I could from him on build methods, I thought I had enough info to get by on - until I saw this post:

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=844349

Oh boy! This was a opportunity I could not pass up.

The Schizo (other designs are the Psyko and his latest, the Stalker - hmmmmm...) is DP's rendition of an F3F plane. It is built using LOTS of carbon fiber and CNC milled molds. He literally dumped THOUSANDS of dollars into this tooling. The plane has an airfoil cross section designed by his good pal Joe Wurts. It was made for speed and low drag. It lives up to that reputation. It had some VERY, VERY good runs with F3F contests.

I went to Daryl's shop at Lake Havasu, AZ and spent a week there learning how he builds planes. The materials used are expensive. Carbon fiber 1K plain weave wing skins, Rhoacell cores, LOTS of CF tow in the fuselage. He builds for light weight and what he called "Daryl Proof". For those of you who know Daryl, he likes to destroy planes on launches. He's a very optimal flier and builder albeit he gets his planes from sponsors on trial basis. Man, I wish I was that good!

Daryl is a FUN guy. Had a blast in between marathon building sessions on the Schizo. Here's some pictures from that visit:...Continue Reading

This just had to happen. I have always wondered how the newest and latest models were being built. Hollow molding has been around awhile but the rest of the world seems to have "stepped on the gas" and taken the hobby into a whole new dimension. Here in the USA, very few if any high end molded planes are made here. The vast majority are made in Europe and Eastern block countries and the quality is outstanding.


I remember when flying "gliders" was chucking a plane off a hill and having fun. Now its all about competition and who has the latest Euro-moldie wonder plane. Planes get outdated as fast as new computer or cell phone technology. Designs have gone from the drafting table to CAD 3D renderings converted to machine readable DXF files for cutting molds from solid billet aluminum blanks in $100,000+ machines. This is after an aerospace engineer (or wanna be) analyzes multitudes of low speed airfoil polars and data to get that extra 0.0001% efficiency from the design. In the hands of a proficient pilot these designs can kick some butt on the contest venue. In mediocre hands, its just another plane obeying the laws of gravity.

These planes can cost several thousand dollars just for the airframe alone. The radio systems have gotten so sophisticated you practically need an engineering background to comprehend all the programming functions. I have a manual on CD (yup, no more books!) that is written like a college level chemistry textbook. Sometimes...Continue Reading

I have always been captivated by the Hobie Hawk. I was just a kid when it came on the market. Its debut only lasted a couple of years and the tooling changed hands many times over the years, finally coming to rest in Sparks Nevada in the care of Dennis Ross, where it still resides today.

My interest in the design not only stems from the unique elliptical dihedral built into the wings but the engineering that went into the plane was overkill at the time. Competing for sales with models like the Wanderer, Windfree, and Bird of Time was dicey at best because these models were made cheaply from Balsa and were very light. Not only that, they were winning competitions all across the USA at the time. The Hawk was not built to win contests. It was meant to be a rugged, take-it-anywhere and go have fun model. It was also one of the first ARF (almost ready to fly) models at the time and was scorned accordingly by the old-guard modelers at the time. Today, ARF is the norm. Go figure...

I was interested in scratch building a replica of the Hawk when I lived in California years ago and Dennis Ross had by then ceased production and stored the tooling away indefinitely. I called him and saw the tooling first hand. He is a very personable man that has a passion for the design. He had put alot of work into the tooling to get high quality parts from it. In fact, he made the best built Hawks EVER. That includes Hobies factory original work. He gave me the insight that launced me on a...Continue Reading

This was more of a technical challenge. The metal work involved Milling, Welding, and engine lathe work. The USA F3B team and others "in the know" helped tremendously with this huge project. The compliance testing was done with an older "Der Windentester" to bring the Kanthal resistor into spec. Check this one out if you want to build your own winch or just educate yourself on just what is exactly involved with the F3B launch system requirements.

Heres some videos of it in use:

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showt...ight=f3b+winch

and:

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showt...ight=f3b+winch


By far my most rewarding and difficult project to date. Here's the link to the build thread:
.
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showt...=usa+f3b+winch

My winch projects. First built a winch called the Discus winch patterned after an F3B type winch. It had a removable drum assembly and a one way bearing as a line brake. First major metal working project.

Posted build here at RC Universe:

http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/Snea...2765140/tm.htm