First flight in over forty years

[John Olsen 1]

Hi, the attached photo shows my Powerhouse flying for the first time in over forty years. The design was by Sal Taibi in 1939. I built it in the mid sixties and last flew it as a teenager in about 1966 or 67. The last flight damaged the wing and fuselage. Since then it has suffered more damage while in storage, and somewhere along the way the tailplane and rudder got lost. I rebuilt the wing using the original ribs and trailing edge but with new spars. The fuselage is all original apart from the covering and adding some bits to allow radio. I built the new rudder and tailplane from the plans but modified them to provide control surfaces. In retrospect it would not have hurt for these to be bigger, but they provide enough control for what is after all really a guided free flight model. I didn't provide ailerons, so just rudder, elevator, and throttle. The colour scheme is as per Sal Taibi's original, but of course done with modern material. My original scheme was dictated by the limited range of colours that were available for womens nighties in the sixties, so it was in delicate pastel colours.

The engine is a Saito 61 modified to spark ignition and petrol. It is a bit critical on the mixture settings and likes a good warmup after starting but has bags of power and a lovely slow idle. The original engine was an Ohlsson and Rice .29, which I still have.

Ground handling is not a strong point, but it gets off pretty quickly, if not necessarily facing the way it started out pointing. It flies around very nicely in a relaxed manner in keeping with its dignified age. Landings are easier than I expected, except that once it is down and slowing down it tends to ground loop, but slow enough to not overturn . There is no way to taxi it since there is effectively no steering on the ground. I might add a castoring tailwheel.

Wingspan is 7 feet, chord is 14 inches. I haven't weighed it with the radio gear, but it used to be 3 and a half pounds ready to fly. It can't be very much more even with the extra batteries for radio and ignition. Thermal soaring would not be a problem...it caught one when I was a lad, had to run a couple of miles after it.

Incidently the hill in the background is much further away than it looks. The lense is a 200mm, which on the digital give the equivalent of nearly a 300mm.

John

Auckland NZ

 

Edited By John Olsen 1 on 30/03/2014 06:51:06

[John Olsen 1]

Another picture with the proud owner/builder.

[David Davis]

It looks superb John. Well done!

[Dave Miller]

Looks good from here too.

I built one in the 80's and powered it with an open valve OS60 four stroke' it weighed about 4 lbs and flew well but as you say was also demanding at take off, it had to be straight into wind and left to itself to get off the ground free-flight style.

[john melia 1]

Brilliant john , well done

[Ernie]

Hi John, I reckon that is the way to learn to fly. A nice big, bright slow trainer that you have hand crafted

Wonderful.

ernie

[cymaz]

What could be better, and you live in NZ....lucky person you.

[Richie Carey Maddog Designs UK]

Now that’s what I call a model sir, no matter how advanced modelling techniques, materials or how impressive they become with their gas turbines etc, the sight of your model John is what puts the biggest smile on my face, because it takes me back to the days of my childhood, when I would cycle what seemed like 20 miles (in face it was only 3 miles) as a 10 year old so I could sit on Newcastle town moor and watch the grownups fly their models, making myself a promise that one day I would build and fly models myself, 44 years later and the image of your model still invokes that same powerful passion, thanks John, for reminding me why I do this.

Richie

[Josip Vrandecic -Mes]

Hello Mr. Olsen , Thanks....exciting and romantic ... those were the days ...

Cheers

Jo

[John Olsen 1]

Maybe I should clarify...it is the models first flight in over forty years, not mine. Can I claim some sort of record for longest repair job? It sat for a while, then I started rebuilding the wings about 25 years back, then it sat again and went into storage when we had two years on contract in Germany. I started on it again when my son got me back into models by getting himself a foamy glider. I learned to fly with that after him, then have progressed onto a range of things, including a foamy Stinson, an electrified Stick, a ducted fan Mig and a Ember indoor flyer. It is probably too easy to fly to make a good trainer, apart from the ground handling. It flies slowly so there is plenty of time to make up your mind what to do, and it is big enough to not go out of sight in a hurry. You could hand the transmitter over to a complete novice to let them have a try with no worries.

Now speaking of cycling to the flying field...when I first built it, I used to take it to the flying field fully assembled and held under one arm while I rode my bicycle a couple of miles to get there. A box on the carrier held the fuel and starting battery for the Ohlsson and Rice engine. You wouldn' have wanted to hold the model like that and ride the bike in any sort of wind, but then, if there was any sort of wind you weren't going to be flying this anyway.

At the time, the Tomboy was quite a popular design in our club. We noticed that in fact the designs are not dissimilar, with even the same number of ribs in the wing. But being much bigger, the Powerhouse was a lot easier to trim and fly and it outlasted quite a few of the Tomboys.

The Masterton club at that time flew on Hood Aerodrome, a grassed strip that had been used by Mustangs during the war. We were allowed to use it and had a mown circle for control line and a strip for radio control, of which there might have been one or two in the club. None of us boys could afford any. I don't know if the authorities had thought much about the implications of free flight on the strip. It was fairly quiet mostly, one passenger flight per day, and a few top dressing aircraft, but they usually only left in the morning and came back in the evening. Anyway, one day I was there on my own. The Powerhouse did its usual long run off the mown strip, then into its big lazy circles for the climb. A couple of minutes of engine run, maybe 200 feet up, and the engine cuts and she goes into the glide. Hmm, it is still climbing. We've caught a thermal. Naturally I followed it as it drifted downwind...across the main runway. When I'm in the middle of the main runway, trotting briskly, I look both ways. Oops, there is a DC3 down there to the south! Probably still quite a few miles out, but lined up for the runway. So I kept on running. I don't know if he saw me, but anyway I was well clear and actually over the fence by the time he did land. We never got a complaint about it. The Powerhouse drifted on and made a water landing on the Waingawa river just beyond the aerodrome boundary. I didn't actually see the landing, it flew behind some willow trees while only a few feet up and when I got past the trees it had drifted into the willows on the far side, floating nicely. No harm done, but I did fit a dethermaliser after that.

On Sunday when I flew the Powerhouse, I did three flights with it...with the first two I got the club instructor to take off while he sorted out the trims. I did the second landing and the entire third flight. In between I flew my electric Stick, which could hardly be a greater contrast in style. The Stick is the 40 size Great Planes one, somewhat overpowered with a 60 size plant in it. It will go vertical no problem, and of course can perform a good range of aerobatic manouevres. So...from the sublime to the rediculous!

i had actually thought that the Powerhouse might be harder to land than it is. It is naturally enough a pretty floaty sort of design, but it turns out that you can bring it in to land with a bit of power on still and there is no problem. When I say a bit...normal crusing round on a circuit only needs about one third throttle. I guess it helps that the spark ignition allows a pretty good slow idle. It is very quiet. When I went to idle in the air at one stage, some of the guys thought the engine had stopped. Actually I was just checking out the stall behaviour, but if I had to do a dead stick this would be the plane to do it with.

John

[Ross Clarkson]

Does it get any better than this....no i don't think so.

Perfection, beautiful. Well done.