Voyager: a 24-foot-span tribute

Model Airplane News, Mar 2004 by Dunlap, Glenn

I first saw the Voyager on a trip to the Smithsonian Institution in the spring of 2000 and was intrigued by the unusual aircraft. In the summer of 2002, the Greater Cincinnati Radio Control Club challenged its members to build a model based on significant aircraft from aviation history to commemorate the 100th anniversary of powered flight. I didn't know how I'd do it, but I volunteered to make a model Voyager. If I had only known the adventure that awaited!

I scoured the Internet, AMA archived files, EAA and the Smithsonian websites and didn't come up with anything usable. I tried to contact Jeana Yeager and Burt Rutan without success, but Dick Rutan sent me a video, a book and a packet of miscellaneous information with some sketches and incomplete dimensions. It was a start!

I took the information and started to plan. 1 wanted my model Voyager to be made mostly of foam, to use electric power and to have retracts. My original plan had a 12-foot wingspan, but after considering the strength needed for the canards, I went with 24 feet, and this still yields only a 4.S-inch-wide chord! And bigger flies better, right?

Don Stackhouse of DJ Aerotech (who worked on the props for the full-size Voyager) gave me an accelerated course in the fundamentals of aerodynamics, and club member Tom Scott designed and built the spar joiner boxes and the landing-gear supports. Jim Ryan, another club member, helped to select the motor and the battery system. Soaring columnist Mike Garton helped me choose the proper covering materials for the foam wings.

The fuselage is an all-pink-foam shell that covers a plywood crutch that I used to hang everything on. The shell is covered with a layer of 6-ounce fiberglass and epoxy. I used the same technique with the booms. I cut the booms and fuselage in sections at home with a hot wire, and the folks at CompufoamCore.com cut the 14 wing panels. I built the wing in three sections and covered it with Uni-web carbon fiber, two layers of fiberglass cloth and West Systems epoxy. I capped the top and bottom of the spruce spars with unidirectional carbon fiber to form an I-beam. To strengthen the canards, I constructed them with a wrapped carbon-fiber phenolic-tube system in the foam-core. This served as a spar and as an attachment system. I sheeted the canards with 2.9-ounce fused unigraphite (basically, a sheet of carbon fiber) top and bottom and added two layers of fiberglass cloth. Rustoleum paint finished the project. Judging from the information I have, the model is actually very true to scale and has only slight deviations in the chord and rudder area.

After 10 months of intense building and spending more money than I ever expected, it all came down to one very nervous moment! Voyager slowly built up speed down the runway. When I thought it wouldn't go any faster, it literally leapt off the runway as if it couldn't stay earthbound another moment! It stayed aloft for 3 minutes. It was exhilarating and unbelievable to see this unusual but graceful ship sailing through the silence of the evening. I made two large ovals around the field at about Ve throttle. The elevator was very sensitive, but ailerons and rudder were not; Dick Rutan told me that the full-size Voyager was the same way. I made a final approach, reduced power to ¼ throttle and missed the centerline by only a few feet.

Building this model Voyager was an incredible experience that stretched my knowledge and skills, brought me new friends and was a fitting way to commemorate an incredible aviation achievement. I encourage fellow modelers to take a chance, risk a new limit and, in the words of Eleanor Roosevelt, "... do the very thing you think you cannot do."