Musings from the Combat Pits

A plane on the author's new stooge, ready for launch. All photos by Buzz Wilson.

Stooge revised

April 2019

By Buzz Wilson

In October 2018 I wrote about my Prokopov Stooge, or launcher, as the folks in Europe like to call them. I took the Prokopov and mounted it to a portable table.

Recently I have seen a couple of versions of these posted launchers on Facebook. I saw that Bill Maywald was using one of the metal ones. He posted about how much he liked it and the quality of the stooge. For those of you that know Bill, if he liked the quality then it is indeed a quality product.

I ordered one from Antonio Giandrini. It was a simple process using PayPal. Antonio shipped it on the promised date and it arrived about two weeks later. The quality is excellent. It will hold either an F2D plane or a 1/2-A plane (not at the same time). Unfortunately, it does not accommodate a Fast plane. The advantage the aluminum stooge has over the Prokopov stooge is the way the stooge holds the elevator in place and will accommodate any shape elevator.

The only change that I had to make to the launch platform was to drill a different hole pattern for the hold down. The following show a series of photographs of the new stooge.