Wombat - Neil Dennis
I have known Neil Dennis for several years, he is known on
the Free Flight Mailing List as “wombat”, this is where I first made contact
with Neil. Several years ago I came up
with this idea to hold an online contest to design a beginners free flight rubber
powered model airplane. To enter you had to send me files of the plans and a
short article. For a prize I offered
some model airplane kits I had, I believe only three people entered and two
students working together; I sent each one a kit. The results of this contest
can be seen on this website: http://customers.hbci.com/~bkuhl/contest.htm
I built each one of the designs to make sure they would fly,
which they all did. Some of the entries were a little more advanced; Neil’s
design which he calls the “Denny Dart” was really a true beginner’s plane.
Funny thing was I was building Denny Darts with the wing on backwards but it
flew just fine either way. I have used
this plane with a bunch of kids for model airplane building classes and it
always flew well.
Since then Neil has come out with several variations of the
Denny Dart that he gives a different “Mark” number to. One of these was a plane with elliptical
surfaces that are formed by bending balsa wood wet over a form. The resulting
plane is light and stiff but it is a fair amount of work.
Neil sells kits of the Denny Dart and he is also giving them
away to kids. He is such an ambassador
of the model aviation hobby taking model planes everywhere he goes, even to the
doctor’s office or when he goes to an auction.
Read more about Neil and the entries to the Design Contest from the link
above.
Elliptical Wing Denny Dart
Mass launch of Denny Dart II model planes
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