After months of trial and error, Mike Bowns has developed a replacement for our beloved-but-no-longer-available Wild Wing: he calls it a Battle Wing.

He built a hot-wire foam cutter, then practiced cutting, turning out lots of variants of the Wild Wing airfoil.

As weeks went by he flew each one, obsessing about performance, tweaking his designs until he had a perfect-flying, balanced aircraft that could outmaneuver our acrobatic Wild Wings.

Last week he brought out his final version. He gave one to Dave North for testing.

Today Dave said that he thinks it’s the best wing he’s flown.

Mike has set up a Battle Wing website to sell his wings. He’s offering the Battle Wing in three configurations: Basic Core for $20, Advanced Build for $50 and Almost Ready to Fly, price pending. The ARF version comes with motor, ESC and servos: it just needs a radio receiver and a battery. At that price, it’s a bargain.

The Basic Core is a bargain, too. For about the same price as the original Wild Wing, it requires no additional cutting: just glue the two halves together, attach the wingtips, cut pockets for your electronics and battery, mount the motor and fly.

Our original Wild Wings are quite chewed up. Mike Nadler says his have so much glue that they’re too heavy to fly.

I’m getting in line for a Battle Wing.

Tags: Combat, Flying, Wings.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 16th, 2009 at 5:26 pm and is filed under Baylands. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.