The Pickleweed picnic table closest to the right edge of the Great Meadow at Baylands must be enchanted.

In Monday’s hot late morning sun, Mike, Bruce, Dave and Doug and I are sitting at the Magic Table, talking about canards, planes based on a design which puts the wing in the back and the horizontal stabilizer in front.

We see one when Kevin Chin shows up every month or so with a beautiful canard which he scratch built from Depron. It hovers beautifully, which is a strength of this design. I’ve seen photos of Brian Chan flying a canard. Otherwise, it’s a rare bird.

A half hour passes and we’re on to other topics when the Baylands Lunch Break crowd begins to arrive.

Frank Arrives. First out of his car is Frank Ducker.

“Wait’ll you see this,” he says, and holds out his new… canard.

Frank enjoys designing and building, and he has a large affection for unusual planes.

When he saw a crashed and trashed Multiplex Fun Jet in the garbage can a month or so back, he rescued it.

“There’s no such thing as a plane you can’t fix,” he says.

We look at the body of the Fun Jet. It was missing its nose and Frank couldn’t find it in the trash, so he decided on major plastic surgery. Plastic meaning, in this case, Depron and balsa.

New Fuse. Using triangular balsa stock, he fabricated a new, much longer, fuselage, starting from the original trailing edge of the wing. He added a pair of fins toward the front of the plane and linked them to a servo to function as the plane’s elevator.

He laminated three 6mm pieces of Depron and carved them into a cockpit.

Reconstructive surgery restored the wingtips and their pods.

“How’d you figure out the center of gravity?” I ask.

“I just guessed,” he chuckles. “Fortunately, I was right, but I left myself room to move the battery around if I needed to adjust.”

He painted the topside blue and yellow, leaving the cockpit and the vertical stabilizers white except for detailing.

The blue continues under the plane, with rays of red and white fanning out along the wing.

Patriotic Scheme. “I didn’t realize that it was red, white & blue until I finished painting it,” he laughs.

Frank maidened the plane over the weekend, but he wanted to fly it again.

We follow him to the takeoff line.

He checks his radio, checks his controls and takes off.

The plane flies gracefully. It flies fast. It flies slow. It glides.

He shows it off for five or six minutes, talking enthusiastically and smiling.

After he lands and brings it back to the picnic tables, he can’t stop talking about it.

This is a guy who loves to build and loves to fly.

Tags: Airplanes, Baylands, Flying, People, Radio Control.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 10th, 2007 at 2:55 pm and is filed under Baylands. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.