Design and Build Your Own R/C Airplane

My dad had earned his private pilot licence in the early 70s, flying a Cherokee 140.  Years later, I asked him why he never built a scale model of one.  His answer was,  "You can't bore holes in the sky with it".

My dad and grandmother posing with PA-28, serial 28-23983, C-FEMD

There was a book, advertised in RC Modeler magazine in the late 1980s called, "Design and Build Your Own R/C Aircraft", by Kenneth L. Smith.  Dad bought the book and proceeded to design his own plane.  It was a 60 size sport model that one could bore holes in the sky with.  I remember sitting on the couch, reading the book with him and deciding on some numbers.

The airplane flew with a K&B 61 engine ( We also tried it with a Picco 45 ) and ended up with a slight warp in the wing.  He called it the Squirrely Bird.  It doesn't exist anymore, having been junked somewhere along the way, after several moves.

Squirrely Bird on the left and Blue Max II on the right

Dad liked the Blue Max II and wanted to incorporate some of the features, like the thick, swept wing.  He chose the NACA 2418 airfoil from the book.  The fuse was more like a WW2 fighter, somewhere between a  Mustang and a Spitfire, I guess.  All these years later, I've decided to design a similar airplane, in honour of the original.  It won't be exactly the same, but it will be fairly close.  I even found a Royal 11 x 7-1/3 propeller for it!