Tiger Tim
Well-Known Member
After far too many years of wondering what they were like, I finally bit the bullet and ordered some plans from Roger Mann’s Ragwing site. They’re only $25 now and most plans packs are multiple designs bundled together so it’s not like there was any risk there even if the website just ate my money, which it did not. Basically I paid and immediately received a download link, which I used right away as the link does seem to expire after some time (it’s weeks but no time like the present, right?). I ordered the UL Pitts plans as well as what I’m going to call the Heath package, in both cases mostly for study because I like these things. I have no commercial interest in this but in case anyone else was curious I’ll give my initial impressions of what I’d seen described in the past as “Basically just sketches.”
First up, the RW-2 Special. The drawings look quite complete and are certainly more comprehensive than the sketches they had been said to be. It’s clear though that they have been updated through the years with some looking like scans of hand drawn pencil drawings, some being modern CAD, and some being in between. There are some corrections to dimensions pencilled in so I would be wary of un-corrected mistakes waiting to find me. Not the end of the world, plenty of plans require you to figure things out. There are a number of places where notes are provided on how to save weight for a true UL, including some optional lightening holes and the suggestion to nip the corners off the rib gussets. I guess it all adds up and it would be interesting to toss all the off cuts in a bucket to weigh at the end. There’s also some suggestion to go with a significantly cut down Pietenpol-like turtle deck to make UL weight. I was surprised to see that the included two seat RW-26 drawings were just modifications of the single seat ultralight. I had expected it to be its own design. Anyways, without picking through every dimension these look like perfectly usable drawings to make a neat little airplane.
For the Heath bundle: the RW-4, 5, 6, and 7 look like they take a little more thought. As near as I can tell they all use mostly the same fuselage and mostly the same wings and interchangeable tail feathers to build effectively two parasols, a mid wing, or a low wing. Those being replica Heath Parasol, a more generic Parasol, a Heath Midwing replica, and what looks to have been conceived as a sort of ‘Half-Volksplane.’ The trick looks to be building the right fuselage for the one you want, given the subtle differences in reinforcements and bracketry for where the wing goes, for example. There’s also a page on how to make tricycle gear for it but your guess is as good as mine as to which version of the airframe you’d want to put it on (though now that I think of it a smaller wooden Flut-r-bug could be cute). It seems to me the way to build from these plans would be to decide what you wanted right from the start, print the whole works, file any non-applicable drawings elsewhere, then in what’s left highlight the notes that apply to your build and strike through those that don’t. I certainly think it would take some thought and perhaps that’s why there seem to be fewer of these builds out in the world.
In all I think it was fifty bucks well spent even if nothing ever gets built from them. Now I’m curious what Fisher plans look like.
First up, the RW-2 Special. The drawings look quite complete and are certainly more comprehensive than the sketches they had been said to be. It’s clear though that they have been updated through the years with some looking like scans of hand drawn pencil drawings, some being modern CAD, and some being in between. There are some corrections to dimensions pencilled in so I would be wary of un-corrected mistakes waiting to find me. Not the end of the world, plenty of plans require you to figure things out. There are a number of places where notes are provided on how to save weight for a true UL, including some optional lightening holes and the suggestion to nip the corners off the rib gussets. I guess it all adds up and it would be interesting to toss all the off cuts in a bucket to weigh at the end. There’s also some suggestion to go with a significantly cut down Pietenpol-like turtle deck to make UL weight. I was surprised to see that the included two seat RW-26 drawings were just modifications of the single seat ultralight. I had expected it to be its own design. Anyways, without picking through every dimension these look like perfectly usable drawings to make a neat little airplane.
For the Heath bundle: the RW-4, 5, 6, and 7 look like they take a little more thought. As near as I can tell they all use mostly the same fuselage and mostly the same wings and interchangeable tail feathers to build effectively two parasols, a mid wing, or a low wing. Those being replica Heath Parasol, a more generic Parasol, a Heath Midwing replica, and what looks to have been conceived as a sort of ‘Half-Volksplane.’ The trick looks to be building the right fuselage for the one you want, given the subtle differences in reinforcements and bracketry for where the wing goes, for example. There’s also a page on how to make tricycle gear for it but your guess is as good as mine as to which version of the airframe you’d want to put it on (though now that I think of it a smaller wooden Flut-r-bug could be cute). It seems to me the way to build from these plans would be to decide what you wanted right from the start, print the whole works, file any non-applicable drawings elsewhere, then in what’s left highlight the notes that apply to your build and strike through those that don’t. I certainly think it would take some thought and perhaps that’s why there seem to be fewer of these builds out in the world.
In all I think it was fifty bucks well spent even if nothing ever gets built from them. Now I’m curious what Fisher plans look like.
