Thanks to NHK Enterprises! This is a great interview of Mr. Tsuruno and two other Kyushu Hikouki Engineers who buit Shinden! (I wonder it will include Japnese subtitles, and / or English subtitles...)
Finally, I could fit reasonable parts in a single A4 paper... Simple instructions are written in this PDF too.
Adjust its canard wing by hand launch first, then try catapult!
WHy?
- Reason one: "Shinden Project" completed on August 16th!
"Shinen Project" is organized by Mr. Katsu"SHIGE" Naka"HASHI", a famouse artist who does ZERO projects. The original idea of Shinden project was build a real-scale model of Shinden using photographs of a model plane and burn it at the end as other ZERO projects. However this "Shinden Project" originally organized in 2006 cound not finish usual way, because Fukuoka city recommended (ordered?) not to burn because of safety issues. Then in summer of 2009, he decided different way to return to zero: disassemble it into small pieces and distribute to audience.
- Reason two: TAIYO will release Shinden in Nov.2009!
TAIYO is one of the famous R/C model company in Japan and they successfuly developped a market of "toy R/C scale-model planes" for beginners and experts by thier "Sky Club" series (free flight, motor-powered foam plane: discontinued) and "Flight Masters" series (2ch hand launch R/C planes). Their sample Shinden was displayed at the 48th Shizuoka Hobby Show exhibition: it will be released in Nov. 2009 (12,800 yen without GST, 13,440 yen with GST).
BAD NEWS! Unfortunately, Sega Toys Co., which invests 100% of TAIYO Co., decided to terminate TAIYO Co.: so no SHINDEN from TAIYO.... Originally, Sega Toys announced on Oct 28, 2009 to transfer R/C business from TAIYO to Sega Toys. However, on Dec. 01, 2009, they decided not to, and dissolved TAIYO on Jan. 29, 2010. (TAIYO's products support will be continued.)
- Reason three: ZOUKEI-MURA announced in Aug. 2009 that their first scale model will be Shinden!
ZOUKEI-MURA is a small model company which is famous for ANIME, TV and movie 3D character models. They will release their scale model planes as "SUPER WING SERIES", and their first model is 1/32 scale J7W1 Shinden! (It will be released in Jan.2010, but pre-orders will be shipped in Dec.2009)
- Reason four: Movie "The Cky Crawlers" released in Feb. 2009.
One type of the airplane in this movie, "Sanka Mark B", is definitely based on Shinden.
- Reason 5: Kyosho also displayed a sample R/C model of SHINDEN at the 49th Alll Japan Plastic Model Hobby Show at Makuhari, Oct.8-11, 2009!
There is a short description in Japanese at Mr. R/C Kiyokatsu Kishi's R/C reasearch lab site.
If you look carefully, you will find that its dihedral changes slightly around vertical stabiliers, which is almost at MAC (Mean Aerodynamic Chord): I wonder we can categorize this as gull-wing configuration.
According to Mr. Masayoshi Tsuruno, the original designer of Shinden, one of his inspiration came from sea gulls when he was on an aircraft carrier.
