Hi Neil,
The success that you have is because of you, Neil. You are passionate educator, people know you and they are comfortable enough for you to teach their kids. Nothing wrong with that, just not enough Neils to go around.
On the otherhand, the American attention span gets shorter every year and even a build-on-the-plan model takes too long to get results. If these novices last long enough to finish the airplane, it better jump out of their hands fly a "very long" time. We can thank toy manufacturers for that mentality.
Let me speak from some authority as the past Education Products Director at Midwest Products. I have visited many (thousands of) build sessions that featured the Delta Dart. It was easy for me to knock one together and fly a minute plus, but.... ALL the novices had their issues (read impatience) and struggled with construction. This means teachers, parents, and students. The local Tech teacher uses the DD in 8th grade and I asked once what the best flight had been? He laughed and said, "Fly?, I am lucky if they just sorta look built."
Working with the AMA Education Committee over the past 8 years more than proved to me that a "slip-together" airplane is an overwhelmingly better first stage model. Simple,easy mods makes for super performance without depending on experts to help them trim each flight. Its the "wiping-out-the-pre-conceived-flight-expectations" when the airplane "really does fly" that gets their attention.
A build-on-plan version is ok as a second stage airplane.
Tom Sanders
--- In Indoor_Construction_at_yahoogroups.com, Neil Dennis <wombatt@...> wrote:
>
> Tom, what is so hard for "starters" about building directly on the
> pre-printed tissue ( like the Dennydart series), I've got a few batches
> of kids doing it every year, mostly no problem.
>
> To "blow my own horn", the MarkII (flat wing) and the MarkIV ( airfoiled
> wing) aren't that hard and capable of a minute in a gym.
>
> wombat
>
Received on Mon Jun 08 2009 - 16:52:11 CEST
This archive was generated by Yannick on Sat Dec 14 2019 - 19:13:45 CET