Whimsey Embryo

After more than a few years in the queue, Curt Haskell's Whimsey finally sifted to the top of my "Must Build" list.

The Whimsey caught my eye as soon as Bruce Stinshoff sent me a photo of his delightful version 15 years or so ago. I was looking for something fun to build a few months back for the 2016 FAC Nats, and while the original Whimsey design doesn't readily qualify for any of their official events, I quickly realized that a bit of scaling could make it an interesting Embryo. It certainly has more than the needed fuselage volume!

Embryo rules require the fuselage to be able to enclose a box measuring 3 x 1 1/2 x 1 1/4 inches and have a maximum wing area of 50 square inches for monoplanes, or 70 squares if you are adding at least another wing. A bit of CAD sketching showed the right size, and I soon started building.

While the basic construction doesn't hold any real surprises, it does require a lot of bending or laminating to get all those outlines sorted. I thinned Titebond II with water to laminate two strips of 1/16 X 1/32 for all of the curved parts. The rest of the structure is 1/16 square, save a bit of sheeting around the nose. It is covered with Esaki tissue, sealed with a dusting of Deft lacquer.

Unfortunately the wind was formidable this year and the Whimsey spent most of the week in its box. On the day Embryo was contested I chose not to put it in peril and flew my back up Prairie Bird instead. Jason McGuire took the moody photo below as I was flying in calmer evening air, well after official flying had ended for the day.

Still experimenting with trim and power, I am currently using just a 12-inch loop of 1/8 rubber in the Whimsey. The best flight to date is 53 seconds, made in some buoyant air in a local schoolyard on a mere 500 turns.

Oh, and as for the spelling, Curt Haskell mentioned years ago that he accidentally misspelled the name on his early plans. He decided that the accidental "e" worked well with the whole theme of the design, and so he opted to leave it as "Whimsey".