Full size printed plans Peanut Scale "MOONEY MITE" Clean lines and no gear means long outdoor flights.

Full size printed plans No material

MOONEY MITE

Full size printed plan on a sheet 11” x 17”

Four page article with building notes and photos

Peanut Scale

Wingspan 13”

Power Rubber

By WALT MOONEY

   First of all .. no relation. Walt's full-size creation was the "Honey Bee." This is a M.I.A.M.A. nine-inch-fuselage-rule Peanut. Clean lines and no gear means long outdoor flights.

   Here is a "Miami Rules" Peanut model of the first airplane built by the Mooney aircraft corporation after World War II. It was not the first airplane designed by Al Mooney, but it was one of the earliest to bear his name. It was followed by a large number of slightly different production Mooney Mites and then a lot of follow on Mooneys, such as the Mark 20, Mark 21, 201` etc.

   The prototype Mite lends itself well for a free flight scale model effort, especially if the event, like Peanut, allows hand launched flights so that it can be built with its landing gear "retracted." The prototype was powered by a four-cylinder Crosley automobile engine, which results in a long narrow nose. Production versions had Lycoming or Continental aircraft engines, with their four cylinders exposed, two on either side of the cowl, which would add a lot of complexity to the front end as well as weight and drag.

   The model in the photos will average about thirty seconds in flight and has proven to be very stable. It is slightly nose-heavy with the plastic propeller shown, which helps the stability, but requires about an eighth-inch of up-elevator to trim out. Lifting the aft end of the horizontal tail also tilts the vertical tail slightly forward but this is OK on this model. The whole back end of the fuselage of the real Mites, including the horizontal and vertical tails, tilted for pitch trim. The model with a seventeen-inch loop of 3/32 rubber, weighs 11 grams and balances at the point shown. A lighter, larger balsa propeller (that I'm going to have to carve someday), would probably make the model fly significantly longer.

   Although the model Mooney Mite is relatively simple, there are a few areas that need to be discussed

Thank you for