I’ve come up with a hub-less wheel.

It’s made out of card stock and doesn’t even require glue.

The square “hub” mates with groves in the wheel.

Because the square piece is longer it will bow out and form two points of contact with the axle.

Here’s what it look like in action:

I just did a Dayton kit build. It went together very fast.

What worked well:

• The motor stick came out very rigid!
• The paper is really easy to deal with. Printing or decorating will probably come forward for kids.
• Wheels are pretty cool!
• The wing has a quarter of an inch more chord! I may reduce the wingspan to 11.5 or 11″.
• I realized that the upright wing tips overlap with the leading and trailing edge. This makes sure the four corners of the wing are glued. With Squirrels children often leave gaps. You can cap them with shards of balsa but it’s better to not have a gap.
• The angle of incidence of the tailplane seems to be okay. More testing to come but the rise is 3/16′ over 3″.

Problems:

• I forgot the toothpick grove. I just used blocks to mount the toothpick for now. In retrospect, I realize the grove can be made by having a gap in one of the fuselage sides. After inserting the toothpick and capping it, it should be strong and will not require as much glue dry time for the toothpick.
• It’s still a little tricky to assemble the wing. I used the wing tips as spacers to glue the leading and trailing edge. Then glued the wingtips later. I need to see a few people do this to convinced myself it’s easy enough.
• The stabilizer notch in the motor stick could be tighter and deeper.
• The laser cut shows where to mount the wing but the fuselage isn’t even for the tape.

I worked on the Dayton project a bit today. I have cut out the first laser version of it. This includes a motorstick with negative tailplane incidence, interlocking pieces and cut out ailerons, winglets, fin and tailplane.

I also have a batch of wheels ready to go so I will include those with the experiments.

Anybody want to make one?