Quote:
|
Originally Posted by blackshire
The term "Formula One race car" brings quite different images to mind (see the historical lineup picture here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Formula_One ) depending on one's age, especially if one doesn't follow the sport closely, but they're all Formula One race cars. The same is true of FAI heli-roc models (and other non-scale types of FAI space models [such as streamer duration rockets], whose typical appearances have changed over the years). I don't follow FAI heli-roc competition closely, and the pictures I've seen of such models (which date back to the 1990s, in Stuart Lodge's books) showed models that looked like the new Estes kit. |
You must be thinking of something else. The FAI S9A event originally required a minimum diameter body of 30mm, which later became 40mm. The only competitive design approach when forced to use a 30mm or larger tube, is to go with internal rotor blades.
Now, I do recall some article by Stu Lodge, about copters, which included an external bladed model, but it was forced to use a 30mm (or 40mm) main body, so it was huge, draggy, heavy,and not competitive for FAI. Now, he may also have shown some non-FAI copters, which naturally would indeed look like Rotaroc designs - with skinny body tubes (main tube diameter = engine mount diameter).
Now, there my have been one "FAI" external blade design he had a photo of years back, where the blade airfoils were something like 120 degree arcs, and when folded, it created a 40mm diameter tube, sort of. However, that design would have been easily protested as the FAI body is supposed to be continuous, no air gaps. If I am recalling it correctly, then most likely nobody else protested it since it didn't perform well enough to be a contender (strategically allow a competitor to keep using a dead-end design rather than protest it and force them to design something better that might win). I sure never saw one like that actually entered in a WSMC, most likely it was flown at the British version of "NARAM”, or local contest.
You've gotten the impression either from the image of a poor design that did not perform very well, or images of non-FAI Copters (NAR contest type copters) and think that's what the standard FAI copters have been like.
I already posted pictures and plans of what Rotarocs (dating back to 1975) look like, which is the basic design of what this new kit looks like.
As for FAI Copters (S9A Gyrocopter), they look more like this (at launch):
Note that the main 40mm body of this particular one is Kapton, a brown-orangish transparent tube, so the folded balsa blades are seen inside. Below that is a fiberglass tailcone/engine mount assembly. Usually the bodies are all-fiberglass, built very lightly.
And they look like this after deployment (model on the right.....)
