John Kallend's R/C page

John Kallend's R/C Airplane Page

I build and fly radio controlled (R/C) model airplanes and helicopters; here are some of them:

This is a Piper Cub R/C floatplane powered with an OS91 FS engine.

This is the "Whistler" autogyro, an original design; see R/C Modeler magazine, May 1992 issue. Here's one on floats. For more information on R/C autogyros, check out GyroNUTS.

[Full-size Avro Rota (license built Cierva) from the Duxford collection]

This is an all-wood pattern (precision aerobatic) plane called Boxer

R/C Helicopters take a lot of time to set up.

This one is a Sceadu Evolution.

And this is a whisper, electric powered heli
(Yes, the floats ARE water bottles)

For some time I have experimented with

Rocket powered R/C

Secretary of Suburban Aeroclub of Chicago
Associate VP of District VI of the Academy of Model Aeronautics, the national governing body for model aviation in the USA.

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Beautiful animations of airflow around a wing (click on the picture) that dispel some common myths. In particular, notice that the air going over the top of the (lifting) wing arrives at the trailing edge (TE) sooner (much sooner) than the air going underneath. Many so-called explanations of lift by sources that should know better suggest that the airflows over the top and bottom surfaces have to arrive at the TE at the same time. This badly underestimates the difference in air velocity, and hence in dynamic pressures, over the surfaces, and therefore underestimates the lift. This leads to the erroneous conclusion that Bernoulli's theorem is invalid as an explanation of lift.