Home Stretch

It’s not hard to get George Heaven wound up about his project. A kid who grew up hanging around airports, he washed airplanes in exchange for flying lessons. Now Heaven is the aeronautical engineer and designer who fine-tunes flying hot rods for the annual Reno air races. Sitting in his hangar at Van Nuys Airport is “Perestroik,” a souped-up World War II Russian Yak now used in high-speed, piston-driven air races.

But delicately propped next to the fighter is something else--the world’s biggest airplane powered by a rubber band.

Yes, a rubber band, like those that power cheap model planes for kids.

Except this one is a big rubber band. The mother of all rubber bands.

Uncoiled, it would stretch from Van Nuys to Pasadena. Laid out on the floor of the hangar like a neat pile of spaghetti, the 90 pounds of oiled rubber is referred to as “the motor” by Heaven and his crew of volunteer builders.

Despite three years of development, the “Rubber Bandit,” as Heaven’s plane is dubbed, hasn’t flown yet. There are those who say it never will. But Heaven whips out a well-worn scientific calculator, tapping out figures that he says prove it will.

When the plane takes off on its maiden flight, possibly by the end of July, Heaven plans to be strapped into the bicycle seat suspended below the 71-foot wing, with a model airplane radio control box at his fingertips. Like its tiny cousins, all the plane’s controls work by radio signal, not by direct inputs.

According to Heaven’s calculations, seconds after the coiled rubber band is released, spinning a two-story-tall propeller at 550 revolutions per minute, the plane will lift off at a speed of 55 mph, cruise at 32 mph at an altitude of 50 to 100 feet, and land at 19 mph. The total flight will last less than two minutes and should cover almost a mile.

Unless something goes wrong.

Like, say, the rubber band snaps.

“If it quits vibrating, I’ll know I’m in real trouble,” said the 44-year-old Woodland Hills designer.

Why is a respected aeronautical engineer doggedly pursuing a dream of building a plane not much different from the toys the Wright brothers played with as kids? “Nobody in their right mind is ever going to want a rubber band airplane,” Heaven said. “But why do people climb the mountain?”

Actually, he and his crew are hoping to earn a place in the record books--as well as a spot for the plane in the National Air and Space Museum. No plane powered by a rubber band has ever carried a human aloft. Nor has anyone ever piloted--other than by remote control--a plane controlled solely by radio waves.

In every respect, it’s the world’s largest model airplane, crafted out of space-age, ultralight, ultrastrong materials--like those used in bulletproof vests. Despite its size--it has a 33-foot-long fuselage--the plane, sans motor and pilot, weighs only 200 pounds.

Heaven was talked into the project in March 1994 when KLOS-FM deejays Mark Thompson and Brian Phelps were concocting another zany feat for their Bob’s Big Boy statue: planning to “fly” it a half-mile across the Grand Canyon, Evel Knievel-style. Heaven was called in as the engineering consultant.

After two months of calculating, Heaven announced that the 240-pound statue was just too heavy to feasibly perform the stunt. But a man, he said, could do it, and he wanted to be the pilot.

The deejays eventually gave up on the project after nine months of planning, but by then he was hooked, Heaven said, hoisting a 3-inch-thick notebook of calculations. “The Bandit turned into a business.”

Scores of volunteers have worked on the project, but only about 10 have stuck with it since the beginning, Heaven said. The crew chief is Tom Beardsley, another aeronautical engineer who tinkers with race planes.

Almost 100 sponsors have been recruited and hundreds of T-shirts have been sold all over the world to help fund the project, which has cost about $150,000 so far.

Construction has taken twice as long as expected, largely due to lack of money, Heaven said. Now, only the wings remain to be finished.

Everything has been made by hand, including 108 carved wooden molds used to form the composite pieces of the airplane. Even support stands and winding mechanisms for the rubber band had to be built from scratch.

“There are no books written on it,” Heaven said.

He initially fashioned a small, crude wooden model to test the concept. Then he painstakingly built a quarter-scale model with a 17-foot wing span, duplicating every detail, including materials to be used in the real thing.

“George is a perfectionist,” said Larry Watson, one of the project’s volunteer fabricators. “You think it’s good if it fits within a half-inch. He wants it within a quarter of one-thousandth.”

To test-fly the model, Heaven recruited Reseda hobby shop owner Jay Replogle, an ace radio-control pilot.

“There are a lot of people who doubt that the Bandit will fly,” Replogle said. “All that’s in there to supply the power is a huge rubber band. Most people reason that it’s not capable of doing the job. But there is no doubt in my mind that [Heaven] will be able to carry himself and a passenger.”

One of the critical aspects of the flight will be the proper winding of the rubber band, which fits within the plane’s fuselage. Using a specially designed winch attached to the power takeoff of a tractor, the rubber band will be stretched to three times its folded 25-foot length, then carefully wound from 600 to 800 rotations as the tractor slowly moves toward the plane, keeping the tension even.

Tests have shown the rubber band will snap at 980 rotations, with enough force to kill anyone in its path, Heaven said. A protective steel cage was fabricated to protect the tractor operator. The number of twists, without knotting, will determine the duration of the flight. Because the rubber begins losing power every second it spends fully wound up, Heaven said speed in getting the plane off the ground once the motor is wound will be critical to a successful flight.

He said the eight-member ground crew “will need to train like an Indy-500 race team. Everybody has to have their job down just right.”

News of the rubber band project in recent months has drawn widespread interest, particularly from science-oriented television programs that have broadcast the story around the world.

“The interest is phenomenal; it shocks me every day,” said Heaven, holding a letter from a youngster in Dorset, England, who wrote that he thinks rubber band airplanes “are extremely cool.”

Two to three times a week, airport tour buses loaded with children stop at Heaven’s hangar for a brief lecture and demonstration. Heaven modestly claims he is not adept at public speaking, but invariably enthralls his young audiences.

With all the enthusiasm of the kid that’s still a part of him, Heaven gleefully raises his hand to release his ornithopter--a rubber-band powered version of a Monarch butterfly that he sends fluttering into the air.

Not too unlike the Wright brothers playing on the kitchen floor.