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As seen in the FAC News #343, the FAC One Design for 2026 is the Wright WP-1 in Dime Scale!  This is a neo-Dimer, designed and tested over this winter and spring.  If you are attending the September FAC Outdoor Champs in Muncie this year, you WILL receive this short kit as part of your registration package.

But maybe you want to get a jump on it and build this parasol dimer before then.  Here’s your opportunity – usually, the One Design is not released before the Outdoor Champs, but we had to get the neo-Dimer published per FAC Rules and decided that the short kit should be made available now.

The WP-1 was a Dornier Falke purchased and evaluated by the US Navy in 1922 or -23. The Navy deemed it to be “too advanced” and declined a contract to build.

This short kit contains 1 plan sheet and two sheets of laser-cut balsa.  Get it HERE.

prototype by Winn Moore

original US Navy test plane

this single photo shows “WRIGHT WP-1” on the tail

prototype by Winn Moore

prototype by Archie Adamisin

Archie’s model flying indoors at Pontiac, MI. His best time that day was 65 seconds on a loop of 3/32″ rubber.

Over the winter, The Flying Aces Club reviewed their Rulebook and (among other things) extended the eligibility for the “Old Timer” events (Old Time Stick, Old Time Fuselage, and 2-Bit-plus-One) from the end of 1946 to the end of 1950.  This opened the doors for many new designs and I am going to present two here – the Baby Toots and the Ace of Diamonds.

First up is the “Baby Toots“.  I’ve had my eye on this for ages.  It was published in the April 1950 Model Airplane News.  It is a cute little Peanut-sized Stick model with a 12.5″ span.  I had thought about modifying it to an Embryo-size, but things would just be too distorted, so I let it sit.

When the news came out of the date extension, I just had to build it.  It has a Ritz-style under-cambered wing and came out at just over 11 grams without rubber.  I tried to fly it indoors, but just couldn’t get it right (under-powered).  I had basically trimmed it in my back yard, but couldn’t pour the power to it until our (Cloudbusters) first outdoor contest this past Sunday (27 April 2025).

I put in a couple test flights, hitting about a minute, and then set it aside for other models.  Later in the afternoon, I got it back out and really poured the coal to it – high torque and high winds on the loop of 1/8”.  The little model went up and just kept climbing.  It had a small touch of power stall, but it overcame that with ease.

I picked the wrong moment to fly.  It was a perfect day with low breeze, but when I launched the variable conditions had the thermal I hooked going across the road, across the houses and yards, and over the woods.  I lost site of it above the woods at 1:50.  That was the end of my fun with that one!

You can find the short kit HERE.

the 11-gram, 12.5″-span Baby Toots Old Time Stick model.

The Baby Toots on its way out. A photo from its last flight on a perfect day in April.

I could write a book about the second model – the Ace of Diamonds.  Again, after the 1950 news broke, modeling friend Archie Adamisin scoured Outerzone for eligible models and he found many.  But this one attracted both of us and he started tracing the plan.  It is from the July 1950 Model Aircraft magazine, a British publication and it is labeled as a “lightweight”.  I am not sure what it originally meant, but it seems that “lightweights” are a smaller endurance/sport class in England at the time.

Archie shared the tracing with me and I got busy finishing the drawing and setting up parts for the laser cutter.  This model has some distinctive characteristics:  It has a diamond fuselage (really just a square set on edge), a pylon that sets the under-cambered wing up high, a single wire landing gear (the twin tails create a 3-point stance for ROG), about 145 square inches of wing area (!) and a mere 26″ wing span (!!!).

With the 26″ span, not only does this qualify for Old Time Fuselage, but also the 2-Bit event (2-Bit-plus One comes from the old term “2 bits” meaning a quarter of a dollar or 25 and 25 plus 1 extends the eligible wingspan to 26″).  145 square inches is more than most full sized Old Timers and squeezing that into a 26″ span (thanks to a 6″ chord) means this “should” be dominant in 2-Bit – or in Fuselage!

Again, I built mine up and did what I could to test in the back yard.  Glide tests were literally going across the yard.  100 hand turns on the motor went ever farther – with a climb-out!  Oh my!  This was going to need some serious space to fly.  I took it up to our field last Sunday.

The first test on about 300 turns had a big right circle and landed on the roof of a hangar (we fly at a small airport).  The second test with 500 turns climbed nicely but the glide was straight – straight for a jungle of brush at the edge of the airport.  This also was my first test of a Remote DT – button pushed and model saved!

A gurney on the right fin to impart right turn and a little counter-acting thrust adjustment and this thing came alive with successive 2-minute time-DT’d flights, the last getting sucked up into one of the mild thermals that were out all day.  The DT went off at 2:10 and the model landed – on the field – at 3:17.  It was WAY up and took its time coming down.

This model seems to be ready to do some flying for me this season!  And you can get your short kit HERE.

the Ace of Diamonds specking out!

I’ve been printing Peanut Props for about two years now, I guess.  I offer them for specific models that I have built, and most come with a Spinner of appropriate size and shape for the specific model.  These spinners are separate from the prop and must be cut, ground or carved to fit on the prop.

Peanut Corsair 3- and 4-bladed props, printed in black (no spinner for the Corsair)

There are advantages to this:  I can print the spinner in a specific color, saving the modeler from having to color the spinner to match his model colors.

Peanut BF-109 with a printed 3-blade, wide-blade prop with a red printed spinner that had to be notched to clear the blades and the clutch.

The disadvantage is that you have to fit the spinner to the prop and figure out a way to center it and hold it on.  To be clear, these are problems that modelers face with nearly any prop and spinner combo, but what if there was a better way?

I’ve been kicking this around in my head for awhile, and discussions with modeling and printing pal, Archie Adamisin helped clarify one path forward.  I had been trying to “delete” the prop arms from the spinner.  This would work, but would still require a small amount of carving to get the spinner to snap on.  Archie suggested that I print the spinner and prop together (he had sent me some props that did exactly this a year or so ago, so I knew what he meant).

I have now done two of these.  One for the Bellanca Aries (which has a tiny spinner), and one for a soon-to-be-prototyped WWII fighter.  Here are the results:

Bellanca 5″ prop (top) and WWII fighter 4.5″ prop (bottom) with printed spinners; caps are off.

Bellanca (top) and WWII fighter (bottom) with spinner caps in place

Bellanca prop showing clutch installed. This is VERY small: the diameter at the spinner split is 3/8″ and the prop shaft is 1/32″ music wire. The prop shaft will still need to be trimmed to clear the spinner cap.

These have the spinner split in two and the top part has a little ridge on the base that snaps into the lower part of the spinner (that is actually part of the prop).  I am also putting in a hole through the base of the spinner to allow the insertion of a Garami-style clutch.  Carving around this on a separate spinner is always difficult and can lead to wobbly spinners, if you are not very careful.

I haven’t fully decided yet, but I could supply these for all of the Peanut Props I now offer, but the caution is that the spinners will be printed in the same color as the prop (black or silver, depending on the application), leaving the coloring of the spinner to the modeler.

Technically it IS possible for me to print the spinner in a different color, but this makes the print time about 10 times as long (3.5 hours vs 20 minutes) and the amount of plastic used is also about an order of magnitude greater.  This is because color-swapping during printing takes a LONG time and uses a LARGE amount of plastic.

As always, any thoughts or comments are welcome!

Winders – as a vendor (and a some-time manufacturer), I am well aware of the availability – and gaps – in winders for rubber motors.  Most of the popular winders are no longer available as new items of production.  Wilder Winders (large and small), Morrill Sidewinders, Gizmo Geezer winders, even the Rees Scalewinder* – all out of production and can only be found as used or estate items.

* – We stopped production of the Rees winder because of two factors:  1) the expense of buying the gears in bulk and 2) frankly, the quality of the winders we built was never the same as the originals built by Dave Rees.

Currently, K&P manufactures winders both large (a 10/4:1 combination winder) and small (hand-sized winders available in 5:1, 10:1, and 15:1).   AMA provides a 20:1 winder in some of their beginner rubber kits and IFFS sells two winders intended for the Indoor flyers:  the top-of-the-line Geauga winder and the very fine ORWI winder.  If you are looking for large-model winders, you can probably find the Andruikov or Blazhevich winder, if you have the proper connections (and plenty of dollars).  There may be others in Europe or Asia, but to my knowledge, these are the only winders available new in any volume.

So, I am always aware of the gaps in winders:  what is available for the mid-range motors:   2-loops of 1/8″ rubber up to 2- or 3- loops of 3/16″?  There is virtually nothing in this range.  Even the small K&P winders are size-limited and can be stressed and worn out by winding motors much larger than a loop of 3/16″  The good thing about these small K&Ps is the price:  $20 each.

What is the solution?  Well, how about designing some NEW winders?  Winders all have  multipliers – gears (except for the very smooth – and out of production – indoor winder, the Holtzman Chain-Gang winder).  And for me, the production of gears has been a limiting factor.  You can buy gears, but finding exactly what you need can be tricky.  The main gear for the Rees winder cost over $50 each, unless you bought bulk, over 25 at a time.  But recently, I discovered that I could generate gears in my 3D CAD program, so I laid out a set and designed a system to encase them and turn them.

The result is a 10:1 winder that is a bit larger than the K&P winder, that feels much like the K&P, but I think has a larger capacity than the K&P.  It is pretty smooth and only has two metal parts:  the 1/16″ music wire output shaft/hook and a 4-40 cap screw to hold the knob on the crank.

The orange one is the third one I printed.  I’ll use this at home for all my test flying.  I do not really intend for this to be a replacement for the K&P, but more of a test-bed, as in “can I design and make a winder?”  It is also really a stepping stone to a larger design to fill that mid-range gap.  I don’t think this winder is viable as a sales item; it takes over 5 hours to print the parts, and about 1 hour to clean up and assemble.  These times put the price well above the K&P winder.  But maybe I could provide the winder in kit form – you finish the pieces.  Or I can just give out the STL file.  To be determined…

Now, on to think about how a large winder might be designed and put together.

So, I have been designing and using 3D-Printed props for my aircraft for two or three years now.  To be clear, this work is all based on Archie Adamisin’s prop work that he has shared with me.  While I can do some designing stuff, laying out airfoils at specific radius stations is still beyond my personal capability and I am thankful for Archie’s help and generosity.

But I have taken his designs into a different direction.  For at least two years, I’ve been making “breakaway” props for my scale models.  These fold on contact with the ground and are perfectly legal for FAC flying as they do NOT fold before landing, a critical point for FAC acceptance.  The entire purpose of this was to avoid prop and model breakage on landing.

These utilize a rectangular hub, usually enclosed in a 3D-Printed spinner, and the plastic filament for printing used an hinge pins.  In addition, I use Larrabee profiles for the blade shapes.  These shapes are generated within a spreadsheet that has been online for years that calculates blade shapes based on Diameter, Pitch, and Blade Width for a quite efficient propeller design.

the breakaway prop, spinner and noseblock for my Aubert PA-20

the breakaway prop on my Comper Swift

one of my first successful breakaway props for a scale model on my Caudron C.460

I have been quite happy with these props on my scale ships and started to put some on my Old Timers.  Again, the FAC does not allow the props that fold before landing, so I never worried about “how” the props folded back.  I’ve used printed props on my HepCat, Holy Ike, and Miss Production and – again – I’ve been very pleased with their performance.

the breakaway prop on my Miss Production Old Time Stick – not meant to fold against the fuselage

This brings us up to date with development.  During the slow winter months (when I should be building) I tend to think back over the possible projects that I have thought about over the season or whenever.  With the delay (not cessation!) of the Superior Prop Factory, I know that people are not being served with folders for their Old Timers and I have thought about “could I print folders for non-FAC users, where they want and need folding action?”

The quick answer is “of course you can – you already do that!”  But in reality, there is a feature that is not part of my “breakaway” props and that is the blades do not fold back flat against the fuselage.  This has two reasons: 1) I have left the hinge action stiff since FAC models do not need to fold and 2) my hinges do not utilize the compound angle that is built-in to most Old Timer props to get them to fold flat against the fuselage.

the Miss Production breakaway – not meant for folding against the fuselage

showing how the Miss Production breakaway does NOT fold flat to the sides of the fuselage

Old Timer folders generally use a 15 degree and 15 degree compound offset for the hinge pin.  This sounds strange, but it has nothing to do with the power portion of the flight – the blades are held in their original pitch settings during power but when the power comes off, and the prop locks, the blades fold back against the fuselage for a more aerodynamic model (the spinning prop is no longer acting as a brake and forward rudder).  It is the integration of this 15-15 compound angle into the Hub design AND into the Prop design that is the tricky part.  A friend told me “you are thinking too much”.  As any designer or dreamer will tell you, the thinking is the easy part.  I can “see” the finished product, but converting those thoughts, ideas, and scenes into the drafting program and then into a physical product is the hard part.

Again, there are two parts – the prop blade and the prop hub.  I worked on the hub first.  It took some time, but I translated the vision into a functional prop hub.  The compound angle was integrated and it appeared to be functional. but I had no prop blade to test it with.  It took some time, but I got it integrated into the blade template that Archie had supplied a couple years ago (the same template I have used to make all my “breakaway” props).

I refined both the hub and the blades and – with a little post-printing clean-up and tweaking, I printed a fully functional Gollywock folder:  13″ diameter, 17″ pitch, 1.875″ blade width, with a proper Larrabee profile and a 1.5″ hub.  The blades flop easily and will lay flat against the fuselage side.  The assembly weighs in about 17 grams.  It could probably lose a little bit through scraping of the blades, but it will always be a little heavier than balsa.

the Gollywock Folder with a good, flat fold

the finished Gollywock Folder

This process took a full week of designing (well, in the downtime between all the holiday obligations!)  That week included plenty of moments of frustration as I wrestled with the 3D design program, trying to get it to do what I wanted.  The result is very satisfying, personally.

I will probably never use this prop and I don’t know if it is at all viable for production/sales.  It takes a bit of time to get it printed and assembled, but this amount of time is certainly less than a cut, assembled, and finished balsa prop.  And it is arguably more accurate, since the plastic holds the specifications as designed while the balsa prop needs to be hand carved and the hinges can go out of adjustment.  But, for me, it is mission accomplished.