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Militky-Braditschka MBE-1

The March 1982 edition of Aeromodeller had a two page spread of the Militky-Braditschka MBE-1 in its series "Aircraft Described", the MBE-1 was number 252 of the series. For 75p plus 30p p&p you could send away for a 1/24 scale dyeline print of the aircraft. It is this print that I scanned and used below, so thanks to Aeromodeller and A.A.P. Lloyd who drew and traced the plan.

I don't have the actual Aeromodeller, only a poor photocopy of the article, so just the text is reproduced here. Thanks again to Aeromodeller, click to reach their current web page.

Click for the Wikipedia page on the Brditschka series of gliders.
whilst there is a video on Youtube of the "First Manned Electric Powerd Flight in Wels, Austria on 21st October 1973."

The reason the MBE-1 gets a mention here is that my depron, indoor electrc free flight model has the same outlines as the MBE-1 and the model won £5 in the spot landing competition at Bushfield on 7th January 2017. (Did it again in Spring 2018 - this is the only model that has actually earned me money!)

As you can see, very basic, no decoration and with too many wires and bits showing. However, much flown and at over 6 years old it continues to fly well.

For indoor electric powered models I prefer pusher installations as this means the first thing to hit the hall wall is a depron nose rather than the motor unit.

The MBE-1 propellor shaft is a structural item connecting the boom with the pod, no need for that at 50cm model sizes, just some carbon re-inforcement at the bottom of the boom.

The wings are depron, taking on a curved "airfoil" section where they are stuck to the pod. Eliptical dhedral is used with some fishing line attached to the wing tips bracing against the airfoil shape and giving a stiffer result that you would for flat plate thin depron with the apsect ratio of the MBE-1.

I have used this sort of "braced" eliptical dihedral in several indoor models and have a feeling it can give tighter circling than v dihedral - just a feeling, no real comparisons done.

In the event the model flew for 33 seconds, reached about 2/3 ceiling height, circled the £5 note during the flight and wasn't too far away when it landed.

Tony Beckett
January 2017