There are people who win contests regularly but they cannot design their own airplane. Other people win very often, but they cannot build nice airplanes. Others win trophies yet don’t understand much about engines. There’s only a small number of people who combine many of these skills. Yves Fernandez of France is one of those. He graciously sent me a few pictures plus some information about his latest creation.

“TORNADO” is a typical (small) 60 size airplane. Span is 146 cm, wing area 42 square dm, tailplane area 8 square dm. For the construction method Yves said he was inspired by free flight building methods. The spars in the wing are 3 x 6 mm balsa strengthened with 3 x 1 mm carbon rovings. Fuselage sides are 3 mm balsa with vertical grain 2,5 mm balsa plus 44 gramm fiberglass doubler in the front area. Fuselage top and bottom parts are 2 mm light balsa shells rolled over wooden or foam moulds.

The wing is covered with Polyspan plus 12 gramm tissue on the inboard wing , 20 gramm on the outboard wing. With this method and using very light balsa for the inboard wing panel the difference between wing halves is about 20 gramm, so Yves doesn’t use wing tip weight.

Weight for wood construction without finish is : wing 280 gr, tailplane 45 gr, fuselage 250 gr, landing gear 95 gr. Weight of finish including Polyspan+ tissue,+5 coats of dope+ laquer is 260 gramm. Laquer is a 2 components auto varnish. Weight of “hardware” is: Tornado engine + header + pipe + propeller + tank + spinner = 500 gramm.

Yves also builds his own engines. The latest design is his 64 size TORNADO. Stroke 22 mm, bore 24,6 mm. It’s an ABC version. The crankshaft is made out of a M20 X 70 high strength steel socket head bolt. The engine is a BSE type = milled from aluminum stock ! Yves uses a PA header plus adapter plus Brian Eather pipe Nr. 7. The engine runs with a TopFlite PowerProp 12 X 5 at 8800/9000 RPM, 180 ccm tank with 20% Castor 10% Nitro fuel.

Engine installation is made with steel brackets so that different engines can be used. Final weight of the airplane is: with Tornado = 1480 , with PA 75 = 1495, with OS LA 46 = 1330 gramm.