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| Bob Parks designed the "Raven" R/C R/G for the 1983 WSMC in Poland. It was the first R/C R/G to be designed for the Aerotech E6 engine, which Bob had worked with Gary Rosenfield to develop. Bob and his wife Karen Dillon flew Ravens, Karen taking the Bronze medal at the 1983 WSMC (Phil Barnes using a Dark Star-5 to win the gold), and the US team had the top team score. Bob shared the plans with others. Ben Roberto made his own series of Raven models. At right is an overview plan of one of Ben's Raven models.
In early 1992, Bob Parks designed the Raven-7. It was like his earlier Raven designs, but was scaled up to 60" span to be flown on 32mm reloads such as the F13 and G12. It was intended to be a second R/C R/G kit by Aerotech, but unfortunately it was never kitted. While it was still a prospective Aerotech kit, Bob asked me if I'd be interested in building the second prototype, to give feedback for the instructions. Of course!. It was a nice model to build, I had not even built a Raven style model before. Was a nice flying model, would have made such a nice kit for an F or G powered model. It was a bit heavy, as Bob wanted the wing to be able to hold up to an F23 boost, and the 1/2" fiberglass tailboom was pretty much bulletproof. I ended up using it in G R/G at NARAM-34 in 1992, using an F10 and D12 that lit about 1 second into the boost (The G12 reloads were not contest certified at the time). That flight went pretty well. Second flight was an F10 with a second F10 intended to ignite about 1 second before the first F10 burned out. The second one ignited about 4 seconds into the first F10 burn, causing an incredible acceleration till the first 10 burned out, so it was a good thing that wing was "F23" rated after all. Have flown Raven-7 a few times since, though not since 1999. It boosted best when using and G12 and E6 clustered, flew that way a few times at NSL-99 in Huntsville. Click here for a 50% drawing of Raven-7. The Raven type layout may be familiar to those who never have seen it before. Kevin McKiou's "Knightstar" was strongly influenced by the Raven design. And Kevin's 'Cuda kit looked even more like a Raven (at least when a 'Cuda is built with the "T" tail option). |  Raven 150 by Ben Roberto
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