Watching Mike Kelly build out his larger WACO SRE last year, I became inspired to work on a Peanut SRE. I also did it to honor a friend and mentor from the Cleveland Free Flight Society, Del Balunek. Del gave me my first rubber (black Champion, I think) and he also always seems to have a Peanut WACO with him, as he was a huge WACO fanatic.
Anyway, Walt Mooney did a Peanut SRE (Model Builder, Nov 1973) and that would be a good place to start. My plan is not a direct copy of the Mooney plan, but used it as “inspiration”. I built my version for Indoor competition, cutting the parts and sticks from 6# wood. I am very pleased with the way this turned out; it is 10.5 grams, including about 1.4 grams in Gizmo Geezer nose button and my VPS/Boehm 3d-printed clutch. The N struts are also 3D printed (the N struts will be included in the short kit).
I had this in the back yard the other evening, it was calm and dry. With 400-500 turns, it was very stable, flying right, and seemed to need either a touch of tail weight or a touch of elevator. I didn’t push it,, since I didn’t want to crash it or get it wet before flying indoor.
There are my build photos. With any luck, I’ll have flight video sometime soon.
Del Balunek with a Peanut WACO N from my plans. This was in the ’90s