Full size printed plans Peanut Scale "PIPER PAT 1" his model offers challenges to those who want them

Full size printed plans No material

PIPER PAT 1

Full size printed plan on a sheet 11” x 17”

Five page article with building notes and photos

Peanut Scale

Wingspan 11.5”

Rubber Powered

THE PAT-l IS THE PROTOTYPE for an all-composite (plastic) canard light plane designed from the start to be commercially produced. I'm not sure whether it is the first light plane so designed, but I understand it is the first canard. Aircraft manufacturers on both sides of the Atlantic have been trying since the mid-1950s to produce a powered composite aircraft commercially (See Peter Garrison's article in the April 1982 issue of Flying magazine regarding techniques and earlier attempts.) Although a canard, the PAT-l looks much the same as any other four-place, low-wing, single-engine, fixed-gear plane. The wing is just aft of where it usually is, the fuselage is about the same size, and so is the vertical fin/rudder. What sets it apart is moving the stabilizing surface from the tail to the front (that's what makes it a canard) and attaching the main landing gear to the fuselage like a Cessna. Peter Lert, test pilot on the development project, has a pilot report in the November 1981 Air Progress magazine accompanied by-several outstanding photographs by Budd Davisson.

                                                  Construction

Though not really difficult to build, this model offers challenges to those who want them and something out of the ordinary for those who want that. As this is a fixed-gear ship, there is no alternative to doing that part, but to me that is the thrill of Scale modeling. Loosening the grasp of terra firma on takeoff and then capping a successful flight with a real landing: what could be better than that?

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