Neil's Meccano And Stuff
The Stanley Flyer
As a lad, the person who really got me involved with this strange fascination for Meccano was my late Grandfather, Stanley Bedford. Grandad was an old-school Meccanoman throughout his life and built some very good models.
Some time in the early 1970's, Grandad built a large Meccano aeroplane – probably the Cabin Monoplane from the Set Ten plans for 1937-41. As a naïve lad aged under ten, I regarded this model with its large spinning prop and aerofoil wing and I asked Grandad whether there was any way that we could make it actually fly. Grandad chuckled and said to me “Neil, I am afraid that Flying, is the one thing that Meccano will never do”.
Grandad had accidentally started something, as I never forgot those words and they became something of a personal ‘Holy Grail’ for me. In the past twenty years I have tried a couple of times to build a Meccano model which could actually fly – and have always failed dismally. During September 2019, I was thinking about Grandad and once again his words came back to me “Neil, Flying is the one thing that Meccano will never do”.
So I had another go...
The biggest problem is the wing. As you will imagine, it is all about balancing strength against wing size, against rigidity, against weight - and with an amount of aerodynamics thrown in for good measure.
This early attempt had a fuselage made from plastic plates formed into a tube. The wing tips were angled upwards. Whilst this one didn't work, it was already better than anything I had ever done before. When this one was launched, it did not just fall to the ground, it also traveled forwards a short way. Too early to celebrate but this was just quietly promising.
Whilst the fuselage tube was made of light plastic plates, it still needed a fair number of nuts and bolts, which added weight back in - and it wasn't that strong either - so I took a chance and changed it for a strip fuselage - much stronger and probably not much heavier - maybe even lighter. This one behaved slightly better - but was still fairly rubbish.
However, the fact that each prototype behaved in a different way - all rubbish but not all rubbish in the same way - was indication that they were not just a collection of Meccano parts falling to the ground - they would only behave differently if there was something else happening - and I reasoned that this 'something' could only be flight - albeit a really shoddy sort of flight.
Here we have flat wing tips rather than angled ones - slightly better again (although I don't know why). A cord runs the length of the wing and tensions it by passing over a vertical pillar in the wing centre - like a WW1 monoplane. Whilst the leading edge is made from steel plates, angled for strength, the rest of the wing is made from red and clear plastic plates for lightness.
Online research uncovered a lot of information about the science of flight - a whole set of ratios (wing area to wing span, fuselage length to wingspan and so on). This let me make a range of changes.
Throughout I have done without a vertical rudder as the concept of it flying far enough to worry about direction, was just not a factor. At this stage it was more important to keep the weight down.
Here we have a longer nose, a reinforced leading edge and a nose skid for landing - more weight but it actually seemed to help.
The tail area is increased as my research said it should be 22% of the wing area.
After a lot of tweaking, on a very still day, I went into my garden and chucked this model gently from shoulder height. It landed 23 feet in front of me!!
A few days later was the NMMG September 19 meeting and I took the glider along. It was a slightly windy day and the glider did not like this at all. Again, this might indicate another flaw in my design - if only I could interpret it. I picked up some good advice at this meeting and the next version is being planned.
I have certainly not finished yet and my target is for a 30 foot flight - but as far as I know, I am the first person to build a Meccano model that can genuinely fly. I have stuck to the standard parts range from the early 1970's, which is when Grandad accidentally threw down the challenge, which would take me more than 4 decades to figure out. Watch this space...
Stop Press...
A new wing with a more rounded leading edge and deeper section (a longer wing 'cord') and an extended nose.
New longest flight - 25 ft!