Bud is a national treasure!

I'd buy a kit

Thank you!

Thank you!

Why would they be worried about wire bracing?

Glad you enjoyed it! Endurance models like this one are actually quite easy to fly. Most folks try to get started with scale planes and rightly get discouraged because they are very difficult to get flying.

Ohh.. man, you're absolutely right

Thanks!

The water's fine, jump right in!

I correspond quite regularly with Robert Dunham II. He's been a regular customer and a great advisor on our AMA Gas projects. I'm most of the way done trimming a Satellite 788, really nice flying airplane with a K&B 7.5. I understand your problems finding suitable fields...my solution has been to invest in RDT technology so I can trim on very small fields. Also Cat III maxes are short enough to be workable in decent weather, though I'd much prefer to have Lowry Range at my regular disposal instead of the 24 hr drive it is each way.

Corn is as bad or worse...it cut the crap out of me retrieving this thing at the Nats.

Bud was at the Nats this year and flew up a storm. Unfortunately his Dawn Patrol crashed on launch so I didn't get the two of them in the air together.

@@joshuawfinn Oops, said Taft and meant Lost Hills....Never get old , I will have to look at your Old time stuff. Jusr saw the Gypsy one, interesting. Glad to hear Bus is still getting out there. StaySafe/GPK pK

I'm unfortunately not terribly familiar with Open Rubber per AUS rules. Would love to know more about contest format and dominant designs!

Big rubber models are just plain fun. I can never get enough of flying them.

Spent my retirement on RC foamy's. Hung em up years ago. Shouldn't have watched this. I'd like to get into it. My wife's going to kill me tho! 😅

Fire that cat!

Yes they do!

That really is the heart of it. I can't understand what it is I love so much about freeflight, but the sight of a rubber model in a thermal has never gotten old to me. It's just astounding to see it work the air.

@@joshuawfinn, 👍👍👍👏👏👏🤝🙂

Would love to have plans for that. John Gard was a legend.

Yeah I was really fortunate to get ideal conditions.

Bob was amazing. Sad I never met him. I've got a couple of mulvihills based of his design...they fly wonderfully.

I dont remember where I put the CG. I believe I have it marked on the plans. This one is very forgiving of incorrect CG though.

It's quite low, but also has a phenomenally well tuned airfoil. Now a two time Nats winner to boot.

Somewhere I've got a still shot of it passing the sundogs. An amazing view!

I've gotta build an even bigger one now!

The specs for Bud's setup are on the plan, and I'm more than happy to provide details on my own setup which is slightly different.

@@joshuawfinn You're awesome

Hey they keep the ants at bay so I give them a lot of leeway. ;)

They're Guineas. Unfortunately since I recorded the intro, a fox killed them. Farm life can be unpleasant.

@@joshuawfinn I thought that was what they were, sorry for your loss .I would have said as much but I wasn't aware of the spelling thanks for the answere. The buddha teaches any life lived will suffer. Farm life puts right in your face though. Cool content thanks again.

Definitely. Both times we've would it up for contest flights, there have been vehicles involved in retrieving it. Drift at Nationals was severe this year and it was almost a mile and a half downrange when it landed in that corn. Thankfully we rented a golf cart for the week!

Welcome! Let me know what else you'd like to see!

It's 1/2 mil mylar used for photo printing, hence the 3 color pigment.

Probably something more along the lines of "it's been 5 minutes since last feeding, you dolt!"

1/4 mil mylar on the wings, even lighter on the tail. Polyspan on the fuselage isn't exactly light but it's needed. But yes, airframe well under 100g complete with DT and tracking beacon. I'm still flying this bird, it's got quite a career now.

Yeah we fly them at dawn to minimize thermals.

Absolutely. :)

There was a Stanzel kit for one long ago. Also so-called Round the Pole flying used to be popular indoors, mainly in England. They used to race them that way at the US Indoor Nats.

If you have any details on the Rubber Guppy, please send to joshuawfinn@gmail.com because I cannot find ANYTHING about it online, including the various rcm databases.

@@joshuawfinn Will do. I just checked and couldn't find it either. It was from a long time ago, circa 1990. Old timey rubber-powered free flight looking plane, but with rudder/elevator R/C control.

@@joshuawfinn Now you got me really curious. Just checked out a bunch of RCM and MAN archive sites and RCG. Maybe it was Model Builder magazine? Will keep looking.

Yeah you could definitely do that. It would be a real floater. A lightweight F5K power system would be plenty of power for it.

Guineas. We keep them to control the ants.

Hahahaha!

That's why we use the DT on test flights. For dawn flyoffs, you just let it go and chase it across the countryside.

Turbulator spars are great on slow planes and provide some extra rigidity, but they definitely detract at higher speeds. For planes like this that live in a narrow speed range, they're perfect.

@@joshuawfinn I've never seen any L/D data on a wing done that way, but if you find that in actual use it probably is so, and as I said likely more applicable to your requirements. You guys really are in about as narrow a speed range as it gets. Congrats on the win. I had turbulators just like that on my SD100 RC sailplane and I modified it to a thin balsa surface, undercutting the ribs to maintain the airfoil shape. I liked the result. Yes, it flew a MUCH wider speed range, though, probably 13:1 on severe dives carrying some ballast vs floating it in min weight config, and the mod cost me very little weight penalty, as the weight unit involved pounds, not grams. :-) Thx for taking the time to answer. I spent many many hours as a kid flying small HLGs and found this rubber free flight a joy to watch. We got about 20 seconds on good non thermal assisted flights, and lost many of them into thermals that took them up right out of sight. I even got one back after a 20 min flight once that never got to high to see (we followed it) and probably involved at least two different thermals. It didn't happen frequently enough to make a DT worthwhile, though. Have you ever tried paraballoons? Those were a lot of fun, too in a place with heavy thermal activity (Central Fl for us).

We don't have any internships at the moment but I'd like to someday.