Hi guys. I am a Hobieholic......Can anyone else relate?? I started
flying R/C sailplanes when I was 16 years old and the Hobie Hawk was
at it's tail end of production by Hobie Alter. I was just in High
school and always wanted one since I saw one fly at the 1976 USHGA
Hang Gliding championships at Dog Mountain (20 NM North of Mt St.
Helens) in Washington State. Unfortunately I saw this one take a
meteoric plunge earthbound from about 400' up and it destroyed the
airplane. Guess the guy forgot to change drycells in the Kraft
radio.....Doooooo! I was so determined to get my hands on one of
these I took my first job as a "Human Backhoe" for a friend of the
family and worked my tail off to get the money to buy one, but by
then they were too scarce to obtain.
A few years later I learned that Bob Martin had bought the tooling
from Midwest Products who had made a short go at production and had
QC problems. I still have the flyer I picked up from Bob Martin
himself while I was at one of the model shows in Long Beach, CA. back
in the early eighties. At this time I was working for a small
fiberglass model Co. in Kent, Washington. I was also taking Technical
Drafting courses at my school and applied this to drawing the plans
for several models we made. A couple of our Hughes 500's were blown
up in the making of "Blue Thunder". I was also working part time for
a medical/industrial prototyping co. near downtown Seattle for a guy
that designed the Fisher Canard hydroplane ( R/C and full size;
Remember the weird looking Circus Circus Hydro?). I built a couple
hundred of the Fisher Canard boats for him as another side job until
he sold the tooling. I only made one Kevlar boat, so if you've got
it, hold onto it as it's rare.
While doing all of this, I was approached by Great Planes Model Mfg.
to do plans for some of the recently acquired Bridi designs. I think
I did three or so and did a partial trade for a Bob Martin Hobie Hawk
kit. I still have this kit NIB.
I was getting into designing and building heavily at this time and
one design made it on the cover of R/C Modeler during March 1985.
Shortly after this I got burned out on the hobby and got out of it
for awhile. About 6 years ago I got back in when I lived in
Sacramento, CA. and joined the SVSS. I built and flew several all
glass F3B ships and even designed one myself. The performance was
impressive of these new designs and all could fly circles and loops
around the Hobie Hawk.
As a challenge for my skills as a designer and an avid R/C'er I
started to reverse engineer the Hobie Hawk. My goal was to scratch
build the airplane so it would be virtually identical to the original
albeit made from newer composite materials but keep the foam/plywood
open bay wings. By far the hardest part to reproduce on the plane was
the wing. That complicated elliptical, infinihedral planform was
gonna take alot of work to reproduce. The foam cores of the original
plane are cut on a machine the size of a Studabaker!! No joke. I had
to limit the size of the machinery to my 20 X 20 shop. Alas this
problem was solved and Plattens were made to vacuum bag the wings on.
The first prototype flew at the Davis field in Sacramento in 1996.
One of the guys in the club, Arnold, couldn't beleive it was scratch
built. It looks like the real thing. I also made a set of 6' slope
wings. I thermalled the plane with the 6' wings for well over an hour
in Davis and use them almost exclusivly here in the Pacific Northwest
at Ebey's Landing (Seattle Area Soaring Society has links for pix of
this site). I still fly the same plane five years later. I even took
it to L.A. on a trip with me and flew it at Redondo Beach. What a
kick in the pants!! Does anyone know if Hobie made 6' wings ever??
They fly suprisingly nice.
I really hope that Dennis Ross decides to build the original plane
again as it is a true Nostalgic classic. I spoke with Bob Martin
years ago and asked him if he would be making any Hobie Hawks again
any time soon and he said, "Why? Do you want to buy the tooling??" I
thought he was joking. I asked him why he wanted to sell it and he
said that it was easier to make money on the Duralene (?) kits than
it was to try and clear a profit on the Hobie Hawk. I spoke with
Dennis Ross last year and he says the same thing. Materials cost
alone is over $150 for one Hobie Hawk. This does not include Labor
and other fixed costs. You can bet next time around the Hobie Hawk
will cost more then the $350 from 10 years ago if Dennis can get
reliable help or time to put some more together.
In case some of you are wondering, I sold canopies for the Hobie Hawk
on e-bay. No, this isn't an ad, I just don't want to be criticized as
I didn't realize e-bay was so controversial for many of you. In fact
I didn't even know about this list until recently. I think these new
forums are great and hopefully informative for those who want to
discuss their own projects.
Best of lift for your elliptical wings,
Tony
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