A Legal Eagle

[kittyfritters]

This is my latest iteration of my Legal Eagle design that I built last night for the OFFC contest today. I finished it at the meeting this morning and trimmed it during the contest. It flies very well (Designing stable models has never been my problem.) but not competitively. I could probably double the duration with a built for the job prop and the right selection of rubber but it still would not be competitive in this group. There is also the possibility that I've taken the Legal Eagle concept too literally.

[Bis]

Looks good

[kittyfritters]

Realized just why it wasn't competitive in the contest. (You had to be in the over 2 minute range under a 20 foot ceiling and I was doing 40 seconds.) The thing weighs 12 grams! The competitive ones weighed around 7 grams.

The night I threw it together I was short on light 1/16" square stock, all of which was committed to kits. Then I remembered that I had some old 1/16" square stock that I got from another modeler so I used that. It seemed to be a bit hard but I wanted the leading and trailing edges of the wing to be rugged anyway so I built with it. Now you would think that I would have noticed it right away but I didn't (Don't build the night before the contest if you can avoid it,) until I was almost finished...it wasn't balsa, it was pine! When I showed it at the Black Sheep meeting this week Kurt Young suggested that it wasn't a Legal Eagle but a Pine Pigeon.

On the other hand, I have all this pine stock, some nice, light card stock that laser cuts nicely, and I have several plans for Joe Ott kits...there are possibilities here.