The AMA Cub is a legacy model airplane. Designed by Frank Ehling in 1967 it has been the most popular stick and tissue beginner model. I sent one to my friend Dinkar in India. After making a few Squirrels he found the AMA Cub much more complicated so he decided to make a Squirrel from the kit. 🙂
Dinkar (School Teacher) and Sunil (School Head Master) spent some time flying their Squirrel and produced a great flight.
I believe their fun day with the Squirrel got rained out since one of the pictures has rain drops on it.
Either way, I’m really impressed with the awesome sky shots and their video which seems to be 29 or 30 seconds. I find it pretty hard to get decent sky shots.
I noticed on the flight video one of the winglets was missing the paper. I guess Dinkar noticed you only need one winglet. I discovered this during testing of prototypes as I was trying to get Squirrels to stack into a small box better. Wings with one winglet can stack together. I was able to carry a large number of Squirrels on my motorbike using this technique. But I have since invented folding winglets for my own Squirrels where the entire Squirrel can fit into a thin box. In the end on the final design I went with both winglets for symmetry and redundancy. If one winglet breaks or you have a problem with it, your flying session is still on.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37wzkT76xXE
Dinkar is going to make some duration attempts with his Squirrels.
Pictured below are parts from the Minnow kit I sent him. Some how it got broken in the mail. I think he’s planning on using the parts to make a Squirrel for the duration attempts.
I think that should work well.
Dinkar received two of the three boxes that were sent out. The one missing is the camera I sent him so we’re still using his phone camera. Pictured below is his postman whom he says is a very nice person. You can see that the boxes made from reused cardboard survive quite well.
The lubricant which I bottled and double bagged leaked. I’m surprised. There must be a lot of temperature and pressure variation during shipping. I will send some lubricant to some more addresses to see if I can get it to survive shipping. Also I was surprised to find that some of the sticks on the AMA Cub arrived broken.
I sent the Minnow and the AMA Cub. The minnow was designed by my friend Lloyd Shales. It’s a great indoor model.
The AMA Cub is the Squirrel’s predecessor. Designed by Frank Ehling around 1957 it was revolutionary. It still requires tools and many steps and parts and when I used it to introduce people to model aviation, I found that it was still too much work.
So that’s why I designed the Squirrel. To make it easier.
Shubham Narwade of India is bringing his Squirrel (from Uncle Dinkar) to school to share with his classmates and teachers. He is going into grade 7.
