Old Four Monoplane
Kelcey Bell sent me this. If I understand him aright it came from a 1927 Popular Science boys book. The article is signed  Ralph Brown. It says here..
"The old-four monoplane, made famous by its wonderful flights, is one of the most graceful that has been built. Its large size and slow, even glide make it a much more desirable flier than the ordinary dartlike model...This machine when complete should weigh 9oz. and fly 1,200 ft.,  rising  from the ground under it's own power and landing lightly ".

The motorsticks and spars are spruce. The wheels are tin "borrowed from a toy automobile. Most everything else is bamboo.  "After the novelty of overland flights has worn off, try floats over water."
Instructions for pontoons were included.

Gary Bolt has done wonderful  Cad plans from the article. Check them out
Gary Boldts Cad Plans of Old 4

"This A frame pusher canard started life as a twin tractor with two stick fuselages for a  while (very slow and stately) until it lost a battle with a metal light stand (but it was close, I assure you). Then changed it to this configuration. Note that the canard has more dihedral on the left than on the right. This gives it a very nice right circle pattern in flight. "
 
 

Craig has a nice page with this Twin Pusher and his new one. And some other neato stuff. To get to the free flight goodies......................(CLICK HERE)

This Twin Pusher appears in Paul Garber's 1928 book,  Building and Flying Model Aircraft

I get quite a few questions about this, as R/N sells a kit. But there are a number of differences between Paul Garber's Twin Pusher and the kit . While I have never examined a kit plane with the purpose of checking every thing out. Here are some of them.

1) The kit is advertised as a 28" wingspan 3/4 Old Timer twin pusher. Which is most confusing as the original had a 25" span.

2) The original had a bamboo and tissue canard instead of the sheet balsa one that comes with the kit

3) The kit has paddle props, the original 1928 plan shows a pair of silly carved props.

4) The original had bamboo wing tips. I doubt that the kit does.

I'm often asked how well I think it can be made to fly. First of all, the kit can be made in to good and fun flying model.

But the performance is not as good as some others. The kit can be lightened up. But still.....
Well here's what Garber says in the book.

"When released it climbs rapidly to a high attitude then settles down to a long horizontal flight terminated finally by a long glide, It's best record to date is slightly over a minute and a half."

This isn't wonderful, but  it sounds as if it might have been over powered. For these small ones, I think, a single surface sparless wing is better, although they do tend to break at the A frame. The Mott and the Ott Cloud Chaser seem a better choice of small Twin Pushers for competitive flying..

I have posted a copy of the planlette as it appeared in Mr Garber's Book.

Mr Garber, friends and a P.E.G.54. The tall gentleman is John Rogers of Pacific Flight Fame. The one wheeled dingus is to measure the distance of the flight.

Jim Robert's P.E.G. 54

Jim sent me this pic of  a nice twin pusher

He writes  "I built a P.E.G. 54 twin pusher from a kit by Aerodyne in Hisperia, CA.  I have not flown it yet.  I covered the wing with Reynolds Wrap and it seems a little flimsy.  The dihedral in the the canard looks like it may be too much but I built it according to the plan.

He says that when he gets a chance to fly it. He'll send pix. I can't wait.
 
 

This is the most highly developed Twin Pusher that I know of. The motors run inside balsa tubes. I  don't know whether the science overcomes the weight or not. I'm pretty sure Manulkin went on to create Sterling Models.

A small 3vu can be found in the 1937 Zaic Yearbook

                                         Georg's Manulkin

And here are a couple of pix showing his DT arrangement..

The dingus on the spreader bar is a button timer. It slowly unwinds until...
                            !!POP!!

Here's a pic of the bottom of the Twin Pusher after the DT has popped.

---

"I was a close friend of Ed Manulkin. I helped him wind the twin pusher (Zaic' plans) for its first flight. It caught a thermal and was lost. He got it back several days later. It came down about 40 miles away. Two of my planes are in Zaic's 37 Yearbook.I also built several twin pushers. If I remember correctly The first flight of a model plane was by Slithline's twin pusher about 1889.

"I designed & am currently building a two place amphib. Motor Glider. My E-Mail is eleshner@erols.com.

This is Matthew's mean green TP machine.

Info about the model:

The model is based on the 'popular science' model drawing on the web page. Following your
advice in the past, I'm hoping for a reasonably light model and a long motor run. There's no pine in
the model - it's all hard balsa instead.

The (single surface) covering is undoped wrapping-paper tissue. The first time it was covered, I
doped the tissue and the wings turned into pretzels. They're still pretty flimsy, and not perfectly
straight, but it seems to glide nicely with shims in the appropriate places.

The kitchen scales say that the model weighs about 30 grams but they're probably not very
accurate. The model glides a bit faster than I'd expect at that weight.

The A-frame is probably a lot flimsier than one built of pine would have been. It's particularly floppy
in the up-and-down direction. If it turns out not to deal well with the stress of two fully-wound
motors, balsa bracing will probably get added to the bottom of the A-frame to stiffen it up.

The props are crude things molded on a jam-tin, and have brass-tube bearings. I'm hoping the
model will fly with a loop of 3/16 on each prop.

In May '99 I received these 2 pix  from Matthew

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

I really feel bad about my scan. His ship is a beautiful green which my scan fails to reproduce. It takes a brave man to make a green Twin Pusher
 

  Oh No!!!
 
 
 

He reports a cyber confuzinaton so he gathered the pix all togetherHERE
Once more the good guys outsmart the hordes of lawless electrons.

For more on this fun caricature plane Kelsey Bell's Almost Wright
This sure is a cutie!!! The rest of this fun site can be reached HERE.

dannysoar2