Battle Floyd
		This was my first competitive combat plane.  Joe Geiger the owner of Battle Floyd was very helpful in advising how to construct the planes for maximum effectiveness.  Joe can be reached at www.battlefloyd.com and is a great guy. I polled our club members for what size engines they would like to try in combat and for how many would be interested in a $30 airplane.  Twenty one folks responded that they wanted to use .25s and would take an airplane.  I snuck the checkbook out and bought twenty one planes.
								My first Battle Floyd
			The kits arrived within a week and building commenced.  By the time all was finished I built 11 of them and gave 8 away as finished planes.  The instructions for the Battle Floyd are very good and it took about four nights in the shop to have the first batch ready to go. We learned a lot about how to make them more durable.  For instance, since we were running .25s the main balsa spar was not strong enought to hold up to the stresses of repeated dives and zooms.   We replaced it with 1/4" ply and doubled the fiberglass strapping tape over the top and bottom of the wings.  We also began to use 1/8" balsa for the fuselage sides rather than the supplied 1/16". The Battle Floyd is an exceptionally good flying airplane.  It is fast, highly maneuverable, and makes a great first combat plane.  It will not survive a mid air or dirtnap like some of the others that have come along since it was introduced.  As a first plane it is probably right up there with the SPAD as the best to begin with. The advantages of the Battle Floyd design are its light weight, ability to fly well with anything from a .15 to a .32, and its flight performance.
				Finishing Notes: The trim on the plane shown above was one of those experiments that worked out very well.  The wording and graphics were created on a computer.  The German Emblems were found on RCCAs web site and enlarged.  All were printed in color on clear overhead projector transparency film using a Canon Color Laser Copier.  They were then lightly adhered to the raw uncovered foam using just a dab of silicone glue to hold them in place while the covering was completed.  The wing was then covered with clear packing tape as recommended by the Battle Floyd company.  Its pretty easy to do and the results are well worth it.