Jim provided the following information with his entry:

Hi Jim,

This is the first of 3 emails regarding my October Design-of-the-Month entry. This message describes the Traucer. The next message has photos and the final message has PDFs of some of the templates I used to make it. [The other messages I'm sending just to dom@fliskits.com]

The Traucer is a 3x24mm clustered Saucer with canted engine mounts like the Tres. It is about 6" in dia, weighs 1.8oz and accomodates D or E engines.

I've flown it on 3xD11-Ps at the windy Tewksbury launch in September where it went about 250' high, weathercocking quite a bit at the top.

I flew it on 3xE9s at the windy CMASS launch last weekend. [It was just after you left.] It was a great noisy flight with 3 rollicky smoke trails behind it. Weathercocking was not nearly as bad. You can find a short review of the flight at here.

It's built using foam core board for the top and bottom plates and cardstock for the shroud.

To make the templates, I created a spreadsheet to compute all the dimensions based on things like:
- MMT diameter
- MMT angle ("canting angle")
- Saucer Diameter

Based on those dimensions, I then drew the templates you'll see attached to the last message. I cut everything out and assembled with white glue. Works great, but I have even more ideas on how to make it better! With the spreadsheet its easy to upscale or downscale.

Enjoy!

-- Jim