RC Canadian Aeroplanes Ltd. JN-4 Canuck

If you’d asked me three weeks ago whether I’d like to build a WW1 biplane, I’d have said no. I’m interested in groundbreaking planes like the Avro Arrow, or the Concorde - and in aircraft from the Second World War.

But I had a social studies assignment, which was to research a historic period between 1750 and 1919. I wanted it to be about planes, naturally. So I went to the very end of that period, and chose the 10 years that included WWI to look at aviation in Canada in its infancy. That led me to the Curtiss JN-4 Canuck.This is a single-engine, multi-wing plane produced by Canada in WW1, from 1917 to 1918. Around 1,210 were built. They were used as trainers for new pilots going to serve overseas (5,000 were trained to battle readiness) and for pilots who wanted to become instructors. It was “the most numerically important trainer of Canadian and British pilots,” to quote the Government of Canada’s website. (I’m guessing “numerically important” means there were more of them than any other trainer.)

This was an aircraft of many Canadian firsts. It was the first plane to go into mass production here. It was used for our first air mail service. It was the first to cross the Rockies. It was also the first to be used as an air ambulance.

After about a week of reading about this aircraft and learning to love its looks, I decided to build an RC version. It didn't look TOO hard to build because of all the flat surfaces on a typical WW1 biplane.

My grandfather and I have an interesting way of scratch-building aircraft. We print out a photo of the plane, decide on a wingspan, then divide the wingspan of the aircraft by the wingspan on the print. That number is the scale-up for the rest of the plane. For this aircraft, the scale-up was 8.275.

There were two challenges: the wing, and the centre of gravity. I wanted to avoid using wires to connect the top and bottom wings, so it needed to be built strong enough so the wings would not move in mid-air. Finding the CG was even more difficult. You can’t tell where it will be on a double-winged plane just by balancing the thing.

There were differences between the real one and the model (aside from that 8.275 thing). For one, my engine is electric because my grandfather will not let me do gas (he wants me to keep all my fingers). For another, there are no stringers –  I didn’t want to do them. 

But I wanted the Canuck to look as realistic as possible. I’ve been learning about 3D printing for the past year, and it came in handy for this project. The frame for the radiator, the cylinder heads and the control horns are all 3D printed. (I also scored some bug netting for the radiator grill from my grandfather.)

When I took off for the first time, something amazing happened: it flew WELL! Since I had no idea where the CG was going to be, I did not expect the plane to fly properly. But it did.

As it turned out, however, flying was not the hard part: landing was. I forgot to turn down the amount of control the elevator had, thus it was very pitch sensitive.

I bounced across the field for ages.

Mind you, the real plane also had problems landing. When training on the Canuck started in WWI, there was one fatality for every 200 hours flown, usually related to landings. Fortunately, the safety record improved rapidly, and by the end of the war, the casualties were down to one for every 5,000 hours flown. 

So far, I’ve flown three times - and no casualties yet, which is a good thing, as I am  hoping to keep this aircraft around for a long time. Because despite its faults, I  love flying a piece of Canadian history.