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This is one of two planes I purchased from Joe Simpson, also known as "the Clock Man." The plane is made of galvanized sheet metal and steel. The fusalage is 1/8 steel, and it is a very heavy craft. It came with a McCoy .35. As you can see, I dubbed the plane "Beer Can" for lack of another name. The wings are riveted along the trailing edge, and joined in the center by a airfoil-shaped block of wood. The fusealge is two halves; the top half is secured to the lower half with two screws. The one thing missing from this photo is the little canopy that attaches to the fuselage about mid-chord. The plane was originally designed to fly clockwise, but I changed that so it would fly counterclockwise. The fuel tank, which you can see behind the engine, is a white plastic aspirin bottle. The original paint scheme is as shown, orange fuselage, orange/white wings and black elevator. Thinking it would be an improvement, I have covered part of the orange in stick-on Monokote of about the same color. It doesn't look very good.

The Beer Can's only flight was on April 29, 1973 at Samuels Field, the airport serving Bardstown. My logbook states briefly it was one of three planes we took out there to fly -- Denny Greenwell's Blue Max, the Beer Can and my Carl Goldberg Lil' Jumpin' Bean. Bennie Brooks is listed as groundcrew. We flew for about 2 hours, and I crashed both of my planes that evening. The logbook page has a photo of the shatter Jumpin' Bean laying on the tarmac at Samuels Field with my notation it was "tore up, but not real bad."

If memory serves me, the Beer Can's handling characteristics resembled a brick on the lines. It pulled very hard, and was difficult to control, due mostly (I believe) to the negative dihedral (the wings are so heavy they droop). It flew a minute or two before I lost control and it crashed. The only damage was to the wooden block the wings were secured to in the fuselage. I replaced that block and tried to build in postive dehradal (or get the wings as close to level as possible). In the end, they still droop. I've never seen another plane quite like the Beer Can.