Designer's Notes - "Evolution of the Weasel"
"It was back in the mid-1990s that I was approached by
a local Santa Barbara RC glider pilot, who asked if I
might cut him some one-off foam wing cores based on a
flying wing design called the "Little Devil", by British aero
modeler Duncan Simey. I was presented with the 1994
issue of Silent Flight, which included the build article for
this particular model. The tapered, ultra-wide chord of the
Little Devil design immediately caught my eye - it looked
fun! I was in High School at the time on summer break with
plenty of time to spare, so I decided to give it go.
The original build article called for a plywood-sheeted
wing, which seemed quite heavy for our light coastal
breezes. To reduce weight, I used a packing tape-
covered foam wing with balsa sheet control surfaces for
simplicity. The foam material was scrounged from a
damaged hot tub cover (I still recall the strong smell of
chlorine-saturated foam!).
The foam and tape prototype was an immediate success! It
flew like nothing else on the slope and outperformed most
chevron-style combat wings that were popular at the time.
It was nimble, had an extremely wide speed range, could
slow down to a kite-like hover in very light wind, and the
stout, yet lightweight shape allowed it to take the tumbles.
All these attributes allowed me to take more chances, and
soon I found myself creating a new style of in-your-face
slope soaring. When everybody else was into slope
combat at the time destroying servos and airframes left
and right, I was enjoying this creative freestyle form of
RC soaring; pylon turns around shrubs and small trees,
touch and goes off park benches, quick rolls three feet off
the deck, grass skimming, hand catches instead of the
traditional landing; all became part of the new routine,
and my piloting and reflexes improved quickly as a
result.
After flying the foam and tape prototype for a couple
months, I came to find that the aircraft had character,
more so than any other airplane I had flow in the past. It
was slow yet fast, extremely quick in the turns, could
