With the considerable success of my original, smaller Daddy-O, I began thinking about larger versions almost immediately. I had also been thinking about a few changes to the basic design. Some CAD sketching had revealed that the Daddy-O would look fantastic on floats, and I had always thought that the original planform didn't seem quite balanced. It wasn't off enough to make me want to change the small one when I built it, but I did want to see how it looked with a slight tweak.

The wing seemed just a touch too stubby to me, especially with a horizontal stabilizer that was rather large due to its Free Flight heritage. A few more sketches showed that the smaller Daddy-O would look fantastic with a 35-inch span, without giving up any of the Golden Age character of Jason McGuire's original Free Flight design. That extra wing area would also be welcome when it came time to mount a float kit. I juggled a bunch of numbers, and decided that a 50% increase of the 35-inch span sketch would be interesting. This percentage scales the new model to a 52.5-inch span.

Though only a 50% increase, the apparent size difference is significant.

Well, somehow life got in the way of my modeling again, and I just made it to NEAT with a completed, covered airframe, but it was far from finished. A little work at the field had the radio and power system installed, and ready for the test flights by Saturday afternoon at NEAT. In deference to the event rules, I waited until official flying had ended for the day, then handed the transmitter off to David Payne for the first flight honors. David landed after about 8 minutes and was all grins. I flew for another 5 minutes or so and found, as the numbers and David's smile had indicated, that this one felt almost exactly the same as the original.

The performance is just as delightful as the small version, though with quite a bit more power available. It will climb almost vertically, and I have measured a sustained rate of climb at over 1800 feet per minute. Throttling back for normal maneuvering and cruising gives an honest 16 minutes on a 2100mAh pack. Bill Stevens liked what he saw, and we are hoping to offer a kit through Stevens AeroModel soon.