Plans for the Future

Hello!
Joe here! My brothers and I have big plans for SPADflyer. We would like to have a new website up with in the next 3 months and possible new planes after that. We have mutually decided that it would be good for SPADflyer to offer more than two types of aircraft. We were thinking of trying to do an all chloroplast park-flyer and a combat design. If you have any suggestions please tell us about them by sending us an email or other alternatives.

That's all folks!

Hello anyone!  I'm introducing to you today SPADflyer - The Next Generation! I have managed to neglect my blogging duties due to some physical challenges over the past, what, 3 years? I have been actively supporting the medical profession with various heart related problems. Predictably, this has slowed me down.  And a universe of Friends and Family is counseling me to step back a little.

With all the above in mind, I wish to introduce my three grandsons, Joe, Mike and Alex, the SPADboys.  They are the new owners, designers, and production team for SPADflyer and SPADflyer.com.  I thought to refer to them as SPADflyer, the next generation, but they requested SPADboys. These energetic grandsons have the spunk and enthusiasm to give new wings to SPADflyer!

SPADboys will be handling the production of future SPADflyer kits.  There are a couple of experimental designs they have in the works that will remain secret for now.  In the future, Joe, the eldest grandson will handle the majority of blogging for SPADflyer.  This allows me to step back and leave the activity to those with the energy to follow through. I will be in the background to help out with the inevitable details, but the business is theirs.

Thanks for your support and interest in SPADflyer.  We look forward to helping you build in anyway we can.

Hallelujah! My shop is all moved to the new basement shop.  Great news, since it has been very difficult to get to the pieces and use them with my shop spread out between home and my son-in-law's basement five miles away. 

In the time spent waiting, my vision has got "iffy" due to macular degeneration.  This last month it took a turn for the worse all of a sudden and I have a new glasses prescription on order that should help.  Regardless things will not get better.  Just adapted to.

The cure is to show the business to my grandson.  Joe is a smart fellow and we enjoy time together in the shop.  He is excited to get going as one of the partners in SPADflyer.  His flying skills are coming along and his building skills will too. 

All of this will allow for some experiments with new versions of the SPADflyer. I have decided that the tail wheel wire is to be included in all the 40" fuse kits.  The SPADboy  with a 30" fuse will be left alone since most builders are doing their own thing with it.  In this economy it is all about "value added". 

Joe seems to think I should get off my rear and do something about the Delta SPAD so I had better listen to my partner.

That's all for now.  Happy building!

After spending some time reviewing the costs of SPADflyer I have to change the prices.  It has been more than a year since the last price increase for SPADflyer prices.  Material COSTS have been  like a flea on a griddle.  I hope everyone enjoys the planes as much as I enjoy providing them, even with the price increase. Regardless, reality has reared it's ugly head.

The shop development project goes slowly due to extreme cold here in beautiful downtown Elk Horn, IA.  The good news is that the weather has changed over the last week and now it is almost balmy. Would you believe it warmed from daily highs of 20 degrees to a high last wednesday of 65 degrees. It was so good that I had to hurry up and get someone to install rain gutters and downspouts in anticipation of the monsoon season that will certainly arrive soon.  Rain last night convinced me of the wisdom of my decision.  Now to get the electrical installed so I can move all of my shop over from my daughter's house.  My son-in-law has been very understanding for the past two years, but I fear if I don't get moved soon he'll have to claim me as a dependent on his taxes.

The delta wing project is going slowly.  weight and balance and final configuration have the best of me at this time.  Never fear though, I will get it worked out and ready for production.

Happy Flying!

Ed Sorrels

Hello all!

Time has marched on and I am overdue for a post.  The House project is finished (at least outside) and I am moving on to things like wiring, plumbing and insulation of the addition.  The new contractor is excellent and managed to get through a very wet summer without bankrupting me.  I will need to eat a lot more beans now than I had planned, although it will make my cardiologist happy.

The Gnat as a project has died a death of neglect.  I doubt I will finish it due to an absence of interest on my part and on customer's part as well. 

Ernie Padgette (see Padgette Mods in previous post) has finished his effort at making a low wing SPADflyer.  It shows promise for production.  Thanks for the photos of your build, Ernie.

I also want to revisit the concept of a delta wing.  It will have to fit in the current shipping boxes as a matter of cost control and will therefore involve some manner of precut parts and a fold or two to get it all in.  This has worked on some kits I sent to Australia very well.

Back to the building process.  I will soon have a shop at home instead of 5 miles away.  Hooray!

Long time since the last post. The SPADgnat is nearly complete, but still waiting for the final touches. It may take longer even yet.

There are good reasons for the delay in postings. Bought a small home in Elk Horn and then tried to get some improvements done. Suffice it to say that a wet fall and an early winter with record snowfalls did in my best intentions. Having to fire a building contractor didn't make things any too smooth. When a contractor seems to have no memory of discussions of your needs and desires and then fails to pay his materials creditors there is no choice. I have a shotgun I inherited from my grandfather that has not even been loaded for fifty years, and I am considering breaking that record. Yeah I know it is only tough talk, but a fellow can only get so angry.

Anyway this has slowed things up in the R&D department. A customer has made some very valid requests for changes in the basic SPADflyer and they turned out to be excellent modifications that I have incorporated in the design. Thanks you Ernie Padgett for you observations. I no refer to these changes a the "Padgett mods".

Ernie also has an interest in a low wing SPADflyer. I will have to get this done soon, or Ernie will be less friendly. Yeah, I am only kidding.

The lack of inquiries about the SPADgnat suggests that interest is very slight if at all, so I will not be in too big a hurry to finish it, although I will be fun to at least get a test done.

Updating the instruction set is a higher priority since I have a fair collection of changes I want to make that will help all the builders.

Until the next time.

Ed Sorrels

A funny thing happened on the way to Iowa. One of my e-mail addresses got zapped. The registry was in the midst of changing registrars and hosts and an address I use for followup with kit builders ceased to function. Imagine my disappointment when I noticed no activity after a couple of months. Too much happening, or I would have caught on sooner.

My lovely and patient wife got on the task and worked tirelessly to solve the dilemma. It turned out that it was harder than I had thought to fix and after patiently dealing with my insisting that it could not have been my fault she found out that I was right. It still took her patient persistence to get the service provider to discover the problem. All is fixed and I am relieved, although I wonder how many out there have given up, thinking that my usual customer service has disappeared. I just hope my customers are more patient than I.

Regardless, the address ed@spadflyer.com is alive and now functioning as designed. Sorry about that!

On a happier note, the SPADgnat is on the building board and will have it's maiden flight in a week. It should prove to be a very cheap alternative for those that like to crash into other planes in pursuit of the ultimate RC combat experience.

Next stop is a larger "rail" type kit. More to come.

In response to a few requests for a "rail" type spad, I am building a Gnat. Many out there are familiar with the Gnat from Spadtothebone.com's free plans. My goal is to make a few of these designs available to the time and space challenged out there. The gnat will not be for the faint of heart, but the more aggressive minded will be delighted at a .15 size combat plane. It should be able to take most anything you can dish out, since it is intended for combat with intentional midair collisions.

The announcement of the SPADgnat will come out in about three weeks. Check the website for availability.

Well, moving is just way hard to get done. When you get your stuff to a new place, no matter how organized and systematic you thought you were, it turns out that you can't find anything. Add to that the fact that all your sources of material have to change as well, and you have a prescription for confusion.

Since SPADflyer is now moved to a beautiful location just outside of Elk Horn, Iowa, you would think everything would get easier. Well who would have thought that cardboard for shipping boxes is going to be a problem. It seems that, unlike Yakima, no one has a need for slip sheets in this neck of the woods. In tree fuit country it is as common as flies because evey fruit packing warehouse has to use it. In corn and soybean country there is no convenient source for the material because----you guessed it---no one has a need for it. Therefore I must drive an hour to either Omaha or Des Moines in order to get the needed cardboard fix. While I have the solution to the problem, the prices for the much needed cardboard is in proportion to the rarity of it. I am experiencing sticker shock.

The latest wrinkle in the adventure is the needed change in the registrar for our website. We may be down for a few days while we get this last detail changed. After that things should be smooth sailing. At least until I discover the next wrinkle in the system.

The good news is that I have a good source for 2mm coroplast, and am thinking about a new wing design for the much rumored but as yet never seen symmetrical wing. Stay tuned. The adventures have only just begun

Did you ever have to move a buisness 1700 miles? If you are considering it, I can strangly advise you to find a reason to like where you are a lot. You will save a lot of frustration.

Got all of the personal gear moved into the two storage units it took to contain our wordly goods. Then began the process of finding the pieces of my shop. Help in moving is always appreciated, and my Son-In-Law ( in who's spare bedroom I am staying for a while) did yeoman service. However help implies that you lose the personal touch that insures you will know where to look for some of your bits and pieces. I have decided to remake the elctrical wiring for my hot wire setup, because I have not found the pieces needed to cut the internal parts for wings.

I have located all the sources for materials at prices that are good. I am still waiting for the downspout material used for fuselages. It should get here Wednesday and allow me to ship orders by Friday.

I hope my bride will find time to update the website with address and contact information by tomorrow morning. This will allow the order page shipping calcultor to get it right once again. To all who have tried it and been frustrated, my deepest apologies. We will be our old smooth and organized selves soon.

Well, we have arrived and unloaded as of last night. It took two Penske trucks and a U-haul trailer to get all the stuff here. The two storage units will keep my wife busy for the foreseeable future just sorting out the bits and pieces while we sork out final living arrangements. All the SPADflyer shop materials are in our daughter and son-in-law's garage, so the set up of the shop materials begins------at least as soon as we get the trucks returned today. Should be an interesting weekend.

For those interested, we are in Elk Horn Iowa. That is about halfway between Omaha and Des Moines. The good news is that most SPADflyer customers will see a reduction is shipping cost. There is always a benefit with the pain (moving is a great pain).



Stay tuned. The adventure continues.

Sooooo, the wife decided to pull the trigger on retirement. Hooray! I am almost as happy as she is. Her former Employer is at the Hanford Nuclear site where we began the Manhattan project to refine the plutonium for the first atomic bombs during WWII. No more 12 hour days!

Now we must move, so we will not be filling any orders for SPADflyer for a month. The notice is on the website. My webmaster (wife) is very proud of the tricky little moving truck animation.

The symmetrical wing will have to wait for set up of a new shop. I have a host of ideas, and a little more help in the form of three Grandsons, so just bear with me for the next month or so.

It always seems like just a day or two since the last post and then I go and look at the date and get disapointed in myself. Over a month since the last post and it seems like nothing is done.

Well the website host has been transferred. That is an accomplishment. Not really my accomplishment, since I only started it off and then handed the whole thing to my long suffering bride of 36 years. She spent a few hours figuring out the new host's methods and finally the webpage is up. The only trouble is that after all the time and attention to getting it moved over and fixing all the links, I realized that the whole thing needs a lot of freshening up. After three years of adding ideas to the pages, it looks a little disorderly. Well, you fix one thing and find four more to mess with. Being my own boss makes me wonder what a pain I must have been to my employees in another life.

One of my customers saw a symmetrical wing and liked it so much, he bought it and sent it as an example of what he would like to see. While the wing design has some limitations, it also gave me some solutions to one or two roadblocks. Thanks to Layne Anderson for the inspiration.

The philosophy of SPADflyer is to make a series of planes whose separate parts are somewhat interchangeable. The "parts bin" approach worked pretty well for GM, so I think it might have some value. Now I only have to find the discipline to get out in the shop and make the many ideas running around in my head into reality.

Any one else get the flu this year? I did and it seems to last for eternity. Being a hermit has not helped me avoid anything. My wife goes to work regularly ( it really helps a semi-retiree cover his costs ) and as a result managed to bring the germs from the nasty old world right into our home. After eight weeks, I have had quite enough of coughing up my lungs. I managed to cough so hard that I broke a rib. So now that I am done with coughing, I still deal with the reminder of my excesses in the broken rib.

Experiments in the shop have stopped during all this time, since my bride insists that I should not operate power tools while high on hydrocodone. Well not so much high as very sleepy. It does help when I need to sleep at night, though. The joke is that it only hurts when I lie down on the bed to go to sleep. The rest of the time I am just fine, although a little sleepy.

Still looking for preferences as to what to add to the SPADflyer offerings. I have one request for a semi-symmetrical wing and one for a delta style bird. The delta seems interesting and could be done is different sizes all on the same basic outline. Maybe I can get something cobbled up in the next month. Any preferences?

Ed Sorrels

Wow! The price of aluminum has gone up and so must the price of the landing gear. The good news is I took the opportunity to increase the track and ground clearance of the gear. This should help protect the prop in the event of a hard landing. With the original design, sometimes the landing can be just hard enough to flex the gear outward and break the prop. You know how I know about this. So the fix is in. The new supplier does nice work and I am pleased with the quality of the new gear.

This means that the price of the kits went up, although not a whole lot. Nowadays the value of the US dollar is getting smaller by the minute, so my non-US customers will feel as though they are getting a bargain. Come to think of it it is a bargain even if you are Stateside.

The tail wheel wire is changed too, but there is no price change for that. Many were having trouble mounting the control horn on the wire with the old design, so I got busy and added a retention loop to the wire. This gives the control horn a nice big place to get a grip on the wire. I even get a lot less questions from customers about how to assemble it.

Here is a big "Thank You" to the customers that had to wait while I worked out the supplier problem for the landing gear. What you got for waiting a week and a half is a better product.

Stay tuned for the Website changes my lovely and industrious wife is implementing. It is good to have married a talented woman.

Ed Sorrels

Well life just gets more interesting by the day! I have been talking at length with the supplier of the SPADflyer landing gear since it is time to re-order. When I was down to the last five in the inventory, I suddenly couldn't get through to my supplier on the phone. A visit to the shop showed me that the shop was getting a new owner "at some time in the future". This meant that I was going to have to find a new supplier since they had laid off all the crew, including the shop foreman that was my contact. Woe is me!

The good news is that after a bit of a scramble I found another supplier in town willing to help me out on short notice. He had bid on the same job a few years back and discoverd that he could even find the bid in his office. Let's hear it for the packrats with good organizational skills. With just a brief discussion we came up with the changes I wanted that will result in a stronger landing gear with only 1oz more weight.

Only problem is I now have delivered all the landing gear in the inventory. Who knew that I would set January sales records! I am holding on to the hope that the new supplier will deliver by Friday. At least that is what he said he would try to do when we spoke on last Friday.

More on this when I know more.

Ed Sorrels

It is good to be back in the race! I really like talking with customers by e-mail and phone. This is a great hobby and the people with few exceptions are really great to do business with.

Since the order volume slows down at this time of year, I am taking the opportunity to try a couple of new things with wing profiles.

Recently one of my customers asked if I had a semi symmetrical wing to offer. At the time I only had one other profile that I had built for a custom order. I don't think this wing will be what most are looking for, and so I am working out a more aggressive wing for SPAD lovers that want that little bit extra. I think I have most of the options worked out, but am interested in what people want to see. The question is how deep a chord do you want? How thick should the wing be?

So the floor is open for your votes. This is the time to experiment, while most are going dormant on the flying in many areas of the Northern US. Even the Sun birds fly less at this time of year for some reason. What would you like to see?

Ed

Wow! The wonders of modern medicine! I was on the verge of checking out just four weeks ago from a heart attack. After the experts placed three Stents and vacuumed out a clog in my coronary arteries things are getting back to normal. Now, while I am not ready to enter a marathon, I am feeling just great and ready to get back to the business of Spadflyer.

Many thanks to my former partner Chip Carr for helping with order completion when I got the big surprise on September 10. Thanks also to understanding customers that were patient and trusting.

So let's get back to the business of the best hobby in the world. RC flying is the best!

I had a new experience two weeks ago. I had a heart attack. I only thought I was having some indigestion, but my wife told me she didn't like me with a white pasty look, blue lips and a heavy cold sweat so I let her drive me to the hospital. She really wanted to call an ambulance, but I just couldn't stand the personal embarrassment of going to the ER and then finding out that I only had indigestion. Not a manly thing to do.

I could have ridden in an ambulance and suffered no embarrassment at all. When I got to the ER they hooked me up to many exotic devices. On reading the EKG the staff said "classic" and I was pretty sure they weren't taking about a '29 Dusenberg. I arrived there at 1 am and went directly to a procedure called heart catheterization. I got some very up to date procedures and, to make a long story shorter, I ultimately ended with three stents and some other exciting procedures. By 4 am (at least I think it was) I was lying in a hospital room in a morphine fog wishing the Doctor would shut up and let me sleep. A very poor time to be telling me about what happened and what to expect.

What does this mean to SPADflyer lovers? Well for the moment I will not be producing a lot. My wife seems to get panicky when I go in the shop and starts waving the Doctor's discharge orders aroung that say not to operate machinery. I tried to tell her that was only until the drugs all wore off, but since I gave her such a scare she is inclined to be very protective of me.

I am forced to stand down for two weeks, so check back on October 5 and I should be up and running again. In the meantime SPADflyer has to be "on vacation".

Had a message from one of my more active customers recently. "Active" means this fellow had bought a large number of the SPADflyer and been building and crashing with regularity. One of the things that came out of this correspondence is the thought that the tailwheel wire (an option that some choose) could use some re-thinking. The design worked well for me, but as I kept producing it I began to make one of the bends less acute and this resulted in the design not working as well, particularly for new builders.

What to do? Well I just sent the new design off to the new builder that drew my attention to the problem to see if it does as well as I think it will. The SPADflyer should go together with a minimum of fussiness if it is to do the job I intended it to do. I think the new design will do this just fine, but I want to know if my customer will find assembling the design as "instictive" as I expect he will. The test is if he can install it without needing to ask any questions. If that is what we get, then we are in business!

When Chip and I started this thing it was intended to get Chip in the air with something at least as durable as the AirCore Colt that we destroyed. While we were at it we thought it should be even more durable. As we looked around we found many SPAD designs and we decided to invent our own. Thus was born the SPADflyer.. On the website we still have some pictures of the maiden flight of the original. We had my son-in-law do that first flight, and he was doing inverted passes at six feet by the time he made the second flight. A few modest changes to the fuse design and we started delivering to customers.

The whole point of starting this up was to deliver a low dollar option to people wanting to fly with an internal combustion (IC) engine without risking their retirement fund or sanity. Why internal comustion? At the time there was just no better way to make horsepower. It is still true today, even though you can build an electric that will fly just as well with the developments that have come along. The problem is, as you may know that you buy all your fuel up front when you buy the battery and chargers and other paraphernalia that have to be had. The cost (and learning curve) of IC is a little less intense and a bit eaier to understand than electric in many cases.

Well, as we have gone along there has proven to be a base of customers out there that just like the concept of the SPAD and its toughness. The SPADflyer has had a few changes in design as we have gone along and it is better for them today. Improvements can always be made.

One of the things I have resisted has been tricycle landing gear. I am usually a bit rabid on the subject of weight. Yeah, I know that seems a little short sighted when talking about a SPAD made with 4mm coro, but I expect to build something tough and still try to keep it light. Now after that sermon, I decided that maybe I should take another look. Did you know that the Nose gear for Tricycle gear weighs 3oz? That include a 2 1/2 inch wheel in the bargain. Stay tuned, I feel a change of attitude coming on.

Ed

Well now! How do you like the new look? I got all inspired about using the customization features on blogger and my new web gal (or wife, if you prefer)thought she could do something with the SPADflyer logo and make a new header. And so here is the new look.

With a little time and luck, we'll make a few changes to the website too. I think some reorganization will help people learn what they need to know and spend less time doing it. This ambitious project will take some time. It wouldn't hurt to build and sell some airplanes at the same time, since that makes the "artsy" fooling around possible.

Any combat lovers out there? Tell me what you have been flying. What would you like to see in a standardized, one size fits all kind of airframe. Is the Gnat a good basic combat plane (maybe not) or do you want somthing that slows things down enough that you have to think instead of just react?

Any interest? Any at all?

Happy Flying.

Ed (Papa) Sorrels

Life has been eventful lately. My wife has had a health problem, so we spent the last two weeks figuring out how to deal with new events and priorities in our lives. The decision is that SPADflyer will still be a part of my life. Chip has gone on to focus on his building business and I will continue taking care of business with spadflyer alone. As it happens, my wife has a lot of experience with webpages in her work in another world, so I will not have to develop too many new skills with out a net. Even if she had no web skills, Chip will be available to help out in his spare time. Unfortunately, the reason he sold out to me is that his spare time is in the evenings after a long day on his construction projects. So I will soldier on with the building, etc.

If you are one of those still interested in the COROcub, please be patient. With all that has been going on, I fear that I have left one or two of you waiting for an answer. For this I apologize. I will be contacting each of you personally in a very short time.

Interest in the SPADboy has been good. Most are interested in the 44 inch wing, which should keep most flyers on their toes, at least in the takeoff and landing mode, since this should land fairly hot. Still it should fly with a little more quickness that will add interest.

Stay tuned. Life keeps making challenges. If it slows down, I'll have to invent something.

Oh! and by the way-----my wife is going to be just fine, in case you wondered.

Happy Flying!

Well we tried the 44 inch wing yesterday. It flew well even though it was on one of our heavier and older 40 inch fuses. Next experiment is to try a little lightening effort on the shorter wing. This will be fun with a 30" fuse and tricycle gear. I even have an old K&B 28 that has been languishing in the shop for a few years that should prove the new concept.

On the website we have made this the standard wing for the SPADboy. We are actually that confident that it will be best for our customers. There is still the option of creating your own kit with a "pick and choose" approach to the various parts and pieces. If you have a notion you wish to try and the numbers seem strange, please send me an email at: ed@spadflyer.com

On a different note, we have had to eliminate the shiping included option and go back to charging the actual shipping rates for each shipment. The new postal service rates have made it impossible to average out the costs and still be fair to our customers. We still list the SPADflyer on e-Bay at a price that reflects the listing and final sale fees that e-Bay charges. Buying from our website is the better deal for our customers and we can offer more options there.

Stay Tuned!

OOPS! I have been away for too long. Chip and I have been diverted with the business of life and income production. Yes, it is true----SPADflyer does not pay as well as a 'real job' even though it is a great deal more fun.

The COROcub seems to be too expensive for most of the market. It is very difficult to produce it and have it pay it's own way even though it turns out to be an easier bird to fly than the SPADflyer.

Something in the works now is a couple of options for the SPADboy. With the 48 inch wing it is a great flyer, but some have mentioned they would like an option for a 44 inch wing. OK so those who wish to test the beast should let me know they are interested. I do have two blanks in the shop ready to go to those interested, and this can be added to the order page mix if there is some interest.

The next notion in the wind is an aluminum channel fuse. The SPADboy wing and this fuse should be lighter (I think?) so they might prove to be a good option for those interested in something that flys well and could even make an affordable and durable combat plane that will be a little more comfortable to fly on a casual basis than the Gnat's flat wing and quircky handling.

What do you all think?

The Corocub has flown! It turns out to be a great, sweet flyer too. Take offs are about as straight forward as they can be and landings are close to automatic. The chord on the wing is deep and the span is wide, so it wants to fly with very little power. Loops and rolls are very responsive.

We spent the day flying and never did really empty the 12 oz tank. 20 minutes of flying at nearly full throttle might empty the tank, bu full throttle is not this birds favorite thing. It is too much fun just to slow it down and make repeated low passes down the runway, admiring the look of this mid-size bird.

On the first day, we had an episode of ground loop that pointed out one of the weaknesses of the original design. The wing mount structure is a little weak, so we have gone back to the drawing boards on that item and believe we have it setup so that it will take total destruction to kill the wing mount. Likely as not, the next ground loop will result in a broken prop and little other damage, beyond the inevitable injured pride. The plane will be OK unless we stuff it in so badly that we destroy the fuse itself. Long story shortened (a little), the plane is ready for sale to interested spad lovers.