R/C Parachuting Airplane Home Page

When I first started R/C Parachuting the only airplane I had available was a Midwest Sweet Stick 40. Then I used rubber bands to hold Little Juan under the airplane. It was a very marginal airplane to use for parachute dropping. With Little Juan strapped to the aircraft it was vastly overloaded. Since I needed a better airplane I put together a Midwest Sweet Stick 60. I was still using rubber bands to hold Little Juan under the the airplane. One thing I feel was affecting the flight of the airplane was that the rubber bands were stretching and Little Juan was being pulled down into the prop blast. After awhile I made a holding strap out of parachute webbing. This really held (and holds) him close to the underside of the airplane. I used the Sweet Stick 60 for several years until it finally gave up the ghost on a rough landing.

At the present time I'm using a Hobby Lobby Senior Telemaster for a parachuting airplane. It has a Super Tigre 75 with an APC 13X6 propeller. I have rigged the aircraft up so that the parachutist is strapped underneath the airplane forward of the Center of Gravity (CG).

I found out from experience (Is there any other way of learning?) that I had to have some way of keeping Little Juan from sliding sideways underneath the airplane (He did that once, while we were using the Sweet stick 40, and was like putting on air brakes.) The pictures below show the neck and leg brackets. They are made up of 1/4" dowels and a piece of 1/4" thick plywood for the base. The pictures show how Little Juan looks held in place by the neck and leg brackets.

The hold down strap is attached on the right side (looking from the rear of the aircraft) with an old wing attachment bracket. On the left side of the airplane is the release pin. To retract the release pin I am using an extra servo which is activated by the retract gear switch on the transmitter.

I changed the landing gear by using the Klett large size gear and the Dubro 6" piper cub wheels. I did this to give me more ground clearance under the airplane.