Norman McKinstry checked in from New Hampshire a week or two ago to let me know what he’s working on: he calls it the BluCor Wonder.

“Your East Coast Correspondent has a new, simple project underway. I had seen one of these things fly at Cape Cod and was impressed at how SLOWLY it performed, especially with power off on landing.

Good for Beginners. “It is extremely light, yet flies nicely in 15-20 mph winds. For beginners, this is quite a bit easier to fly than an Easy Star or similar types.

“The material for construction is Dow BluCor Fan Fold Foam, available at building supply, etc. I bought one SKU for approximately $30 and now have a lifetime supply!

“This bird should be ready to fly shortly, and I shall send you images when possible. The half-inch plywood forms are for baking the foam core in a 250-degree oven for 25 minutes to form the rather severe undercamber.”

More recently, Norm filed a flight report.

“First flight of BluCor Wonder ended in a crash! Not a design fault, just me getting bored after perfect flying for 20 minutes on a perfectly still, gorgeous afternoon a week ago.

More Rudder. “After launch it was obvious that turns were not positive enough, so I landed and increased rudder throw, which solved the problem.

“It is S-L-O-W — very slow — but a pleasure to fly. My boredom suggested some fancier flying, so I looped it, only to have right wing crack & bend upwards, resulting in a slow — painfully slow — spiral straight down from 200 feet.

“Surprisingly, only the pylon came loose on contact with earth, but repairs were needed.

Fire Up the Oven. “I baked two sets of wings at one time, and it worked! One was center section. The other, similar size & shape, were the wing tips! Stab was not injured.

“In order to prevent another crash, I constructed anew wing & strengthened its undersides with nylon reinforced packing tape and 2-inch wide lightweight yellow tape. It is also possible to fly this bird INVERTED, so I taped the upper wing surface with similar green tape.

“I also had some difficulty with proper CG balancing on first version, so I have experimented by reversing the pylon & motor/prop. This made balancing much easier, and also gets the prop away from the motor & battery wiring.

Pylon Mount. “The new pylon is 3/8 sheet balsa, but 1/4 inch would work as well. The pylon fits between balsa wing saddles & is held in place with a nylon bolt. (It actually fits snugly enough so as not to need any bolt. On a nose-in landing it could come loose, & that’s not a bad thing!)

“Next sortie sometime the next day or two.”

Read more about Our East Coast Correspondent.

All photos by Norman McKinstry.

Tags: Airplanes, Flying, People.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 12th, 2007 at 4:40 pm and is filed under Elsewhere. 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.