In its day as well as today the 1940’s Comet R.O.G. (Rise Off Ground) Indoor Model Plane still remains a good flyer and is a great project for both beginners and experienced builders.

This web page has been set up as a go to for information and building tips for the iconic indoor model. The original drawing needed to build the model plus additional supplemental drawings and tips by the author will help anyone to successfully build a well flying machine.

Currently there are no available kits available at this time for the Comet R.O.G. so this model aircraft must be “Scratch” built. Not a big deal for experienced builders, but for those new to the hobby—where does one begin?

To start out we are providing here the original drawing of the model in PDF form. The Comet Models Company’s Drawing dated 1940, called it the ADVANCED R.O.G. and was project No. 3 in a series of 5 that the company produced for the youth at that time.

Click HERE or click on the drawing below to access the PDF.

Depending on your printers capabilities or your version of Adobe Acrobat you may or may not be able to print the drawing out at actual size. You need a version higher than 9 for Acrobat to offer a tiling option to print the file with a number of “tiles” you then piece together. One option is to have a FedEx or Kinko’s take a copy of the file placed on your thumb drive and print the file at actual size. They should know how to do this.

Once you have the original drawing you can plan on how to build your model. The author built the airplane per the drawing and decided to make available changes and tips he came up with that dealt with the shortcomings of the original 1940’s design.

These are in the form of Supplemental Drawings that comprise the rest of this page. These again are in PDF format and are 8.5″x 11″ so no tiling is needed.

The first of these Supplemental pages deals with making a saddle for the wing mount in lieu of using the wires the drawing calls out.

Link 1.  Comet ROG Supplemental Drawing

This Drawing features a Wing Saddle to be used instead of the original Wing Mount Design that uses wires to grip the stick fuselage, and according to the author, Jeff Nisley, it doesn’t work so well. The wires tend to crush the balsa and trim adjustments are difficult to stay in place. Our HAFFA official rules now allow a Saddle to be used. Also included is a True size Landing Gear for the R.O.G. and a handy tip to accurately bend it. 

The next two PDF file links are to 4 more pages  of Additional Information and Tips that I believe will be helpful in building and flying  the R.OG.  I know it’s confusing, but the files I had ended up so large  I had to split it up this way to make it work. Bear with me…

Link 2. Comet ROG Additional Drawings & Tips pages 1 2 3

Link 3. Comet ROG Additional Drawings & Tips page 4

Make sure when you go to print these pages, your printer settings are not set to “Actual Size and not to “Fit to Printable Area” or something to that effect.

Not doing so will make the measurements out of true scale. In my case using an HP printer, my setting was Page Scaling: None.

In the first drawing above, the wire drawing to the right should be exactly 9-1/2″

Some additional tips: Make the motor hook as shown at right out of .025 wire. This keeps the motor away from the fuselage. As long as it’s in the right place on the fuselage, our Club is OK with the change as it is in the spirit of the original rules.

Here is a rear shot showing the tail feathers. A paper tab was placed to adjust the turning circle and it works quite effectively.

Good Luck on building a successful Comet R.O.G.

—Jeff Nisley—