Jan’s latest project (with 5 engines!?)

I was wondering what goodies were on the building board for the 2014 season when suddenly I received an enigmatic email from Jan Odeyn, just a few words and a picture of a wing under construction – but what’s this – four engine stations on the wing – surely not a Hercules?

Word spread quickly in carrier-land, with both Max Uttien and I guessing that Jan might be building a GAL or Airspeed Fleet Shadower (wassat? – answer = two of the ugliest and most pointless full-sized carrier aircraft ever built, meant to track an enemy battle fleet at 35mph while staying just out of gunshot).

However, the next pictures became more surreal, with one of the original four electric motors becoming a Cox 049…

then the Cox migrating to the outboard wingtip “as a dynamic tip weight by using downthrust”…

now I was not sure what to think about this as in fact it IS a technique used on some full-size aircraft, especially helicopter tail rotors (Blackhawk, AW101) but in the opposite sense giving extra lift to counteract a tail-heavy CG…

 Whatever, I’m really looking forward to the next installment – and we still don’t know what it’s going to look like!

Jan has sent me just recently pictures of the completed model – great to see it still has FIVE engines (one is a ‘dynamic tip weight’)!

Here’s another view, showing off that ‘tip weight’…

These very nice pictures were taken by Just Vecht for Jan – excellent !

Now, over to Jan for some details of his new model…

“The 4 engined plane is the DGA Sea Buster. DGA standing for  Dammed Good Airplane . Very little information is known as somehow it still falls under a secrecy act in the UK.I found that it was an initiative of Benny Haward of the famous DGA racing planes to enter in British specification S23/37 for of a fleetshadower. He found some industrials prepared to invest money in a prototype hoping to win the competion and making profit with the production of it. It also used the same Popjoy engines but with improved performance by adding a supercharger. The Sea-Buster was also smaller than the GAL 38 and AS 39 and had a more vivid performance and speedrange.Here some info on my model. Four or 5  E-Max outrunner 28/12. That’s a 39grmotor with a KV of 1534( priceless then £ 5.00) running on a 3S 2200mAh lipo.”

At the end of his email he added: “PS; Info of DGA Sea-Buster was constructed with true facts”. Hmmm….it must have been a VERY secret plane indeed! That said, the DGA company did indeed exist – their most famous aircraft was the high-wing cabin monoplane racer known as “Mr Mulligan”, winner of many pre-war trophy races in the USA and still available as a Berkeley kit on eBay from the States as new old stock.

I am now REALLY Looking forward to the first flying report for the unique Sea Buster!