EVENT REPORT

Corona RC Club Float Fly

Lake Perris

October 18-19, 2008

By Oscar Weingart

(Please note that these event reports were originally prepared for use in the Riverside RC Club monthly newsletter, Prop Talk, and are not intended to be comprehensive coverage of the event. Rather they are reports, for our club members, of my personal experiences and perceptions.)

Last year, I complained that the Corona Club had not sufficiently publicized their float fly. This year, they did a much better job, and got about 20 registered pilots. The weather was great, the event was well-run, but relaxed, and I had a good time. The wind typically got a bit gusty and off-shore in the afternoons, but remained flyable, and there was no waiting to fly at all. The food was yummy and some fine raffle prizes were given away.

Several other Riverside RC Club members attended, and also seemed to enjoy themselves, although Dave Johnson did not actually fly. He was preserving his seaplane for the big Lake Havasu event in November. Friend Paul Bowman from the Santa Fe Dam Club came out on Saturday, with his Clipped-Wing Cub, and his ugly corrugated plastic plane. Jim Bronowski turned up Saturday afternoon with his Aircoupe ARF on floats, and put on a nice aerobatics demonstration. There were many electric airplanes, including some quite small flying boats that looked like nothing but fun! I especially like that little Great Planes twin-electric PBY. I would paint mine black, (if I had one), to resemble the famous Pacific theater “Black Cats” of WW II fame. Lots of 2.4 GHz radios were in evidence.

I took my J-3 Kitten Ultra-light quarter scale down from the rafters, dusted it off, and installed a Magnum 91 four-stroke. With the previous Saito 56, it flew scale-like, but people tended to fall asleep flying it or watching it fly. Instant yawn! With the new engine, it had plenty of power, and flew nicely about 1/3 throttle. Take-offs were sprightly, but landings required full up elevator to round out the glide. This appeared to be a result of some balance weights on the bows of the floats, installed when the Saito 56 was being used, which now made the plane a bit too nose-heavy with the much bigger Magnum 91. I removed two of the four 1-ounce weight strips, and could now make a greased landing. I did not have time to try removing the other two, but they probably also were no longer needed.

That Kitten is a very nice little plane. It was designed as a single-place Ultra-light, ¾ the size of a Piper Cub. They used to have one on the Ultra-light line at Perris Airport. It has only a 28 ft. wing span, so the quarter-scale model comes out 84 inches, which is IMAA legal. I have plans for a 1/3 scale Kitten, which would have about a 112 inch wing span. This would perhaps fly well with a .120-.150 four-stroke. But a nice thing is that the rather short quarter-scale fits into my Aerostar van without the need to remove the wings or floats. The Stan’s Fiber-tech 36 inch floats are more than adequate for this lightweight model.

However, several faults had to be corrected before the Kitten turned into a true pussy-cat float-plane. The wing struts are functional, with their outer ends hooked to nylon L-brackets on the wings. The wing structure is soft in torsion, so the incidence at the wing tips was adjusted by careful adjustment of the strut lengths. But the nylon brackets would bend under load, allowing unpredictable changes in incidence between wings, and some pretty wild flight behavior. In addition, the short tail moment, with the added side area of the floats and big water rudders, resulted in longitudinal instability. This was solved by adding a big sub-fin below the tail.

Keep them Floating!!

A full-scale Kitten Ultra-light

It was designed as a ¾ size Piper Cub

Oscar’s Quarter Scale Kitten on Stan’s 36 inch Floats

84 inch Wing Span – IMAA Legal – Magnum 91 FS

The Electric PBY

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