[RCSE] A true story
Fellas, this is a true story. Sometimes I kind of blur the line between truth and fiction, between the hallowed fact and hallucination as it were. That probably comes from the influence of some of my favorite writers, Mark Twain, James Thurber, Gordy Stahl, people like that. But this one is true, so help me Dave Thornburg. I have be flying RC sailplanes for seven or eight years now, and my son Andrew has been tagging along the whole time, since he was about 5 years old. I have been offering him the chance to fly my planes since he was old enough to hold the TX. He hasn't been interested. He still tags along, though and has driven retriever carts at the Nats three times now. This summer when we went back to Muncie we took along one of his middle school buddies. Nostalgia/RES got rained out, so we wound up in the AMA museum in mid afternoon. The boys looked at stuff, played the flight simulators and then headed into the gift shop. They decided to spend some of their money on small balsa hand-toss gliders. Late in the day, Andrew and his buddy held an impromptu hand-toss glider contest in the back yard. The next day we were down in the basement and I showed him how to round the LE, taper the TE, round the fuse and saw off extra wood. The little 99cent toy glider began to fly better. Andrew said he wanted to build his own plane, and did I have any balsa? We got a couple of sheets of 1/16th balsa at the local hobby shop to supplement my giant box of scrap pieces. I have Andrew a few rules of thumb for model glider design and went to work. Andrew worked on his design while I was at the office. Late Friday night he and I had his first plane built--a biplane no less. We hand tossed in the yard and he was ecstatic when it actually glided a little bit. (I built a skinny monoplane with poly wings, taped on the bottom to keep them from tearing off on launch.) Then last Saturday we were back at the home field. A new member had a beautiful new Sailaire he wanted to fly for the first time; another guy wanted to try out a buddy box system; there were several high tech planes on the field as well, a Mantis and a Psycho I think. Somehow we all wound up throwing the little toy balsa hand-toss gliders, trying to see who could get the best flight out of them. The best times approached 13 seconds, about what I get on my typical RCHLG flights. I think I'm onto something here. All those batteries and servos and receivers are just weighing me down, making me interfere with the model's natural inclination to fly just fine all by itself. And maybe they were getting between Andrew and his desire to fly airplanes, too. Sunday Andrew built his second plane. Tom Nagel Columbus, Ohio RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [RCSE] A true story
The paper and wood kits sold under the name of White Wings have similarly captured my attention in the past. I don't remember the particular models I had. White Wings offers some really wild styles. I had the most success with a more traditional design. I used a rubber band to launch and kept trimming the airplane for the best launch. Once trimmed, I would typically get 30 second flights. Kind of a zen experience. Bill Swingle [EMAIL PROTECTED] Janesville, CA RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [RCSE] A true story
The paper and wood kits sold under the name of White Wings have similarly captured my attention in the past. I don't remember the particular models I had. White Wings offers some really wild styles. I had the most success with a more traditional design. I used a rubber band to launch and kept trimming the airplane for the best launch. Once trimmed, I would typically get 30 second flights. I learned a new definition of time when I got a 1 minute flight. Seemed like forever and was the first time I encountered LIFT that wasn't due to a gas engine. Kind of a zen experience. Bill Swingle [EMAIL PROTECTED] Janesville, CA RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [RCSE] A true story
At 11:25 AM 8/9/00 -0400, you wrote: Fellas, this is a true story. Sometimes I kind of blur the line between truth and fiction, between the hallowed fact and hallucination as it were. That probably comes from the influence of some of my favorite writers, Mark Twain, James Thurber, Gordy Stahl, people like that. But this one is true, so help me Dave Thornburg. This summer when we went back to Muncie we took along one of his middle school buddies. Nostalgia/RES got rained out, so we wound up in the AMA museum in mid afternoon. The boys looked at stuff, played the flight simulators and then headed into the gift shop. They decided to spend some of their money on small balsa hand-toss gliders. Late in the day, Andrew and his buddy held an impromptu hand-toss glider contest in the back yard. The next day we were down in the basement and I showed him how to round the LE, taper the TE, round the fuse and saw off extra wood. The little 99cent toy glider began to fly better. Andrew said he wanted to build his own plane, and did I have any balsa? snip Great story. That's how real modelers are created. The story about modifying toy hand launch gliders brought back memories of a similar experience I had at the 1953 Nats. In the summer of 1953, I had been accepted for Air Force Pilot training as an Aviation Cadet. My brother and I drove up to Philadelphia, PA to attend the Nats at Willow Grove NAS. We went mostly as spectators but I did take my remaining free flight models and entered 1/2A, A, and B free flight. As it turned out, I should have entered indoor HLG. This was in the good old days of the Navy sponsored Nats and the Navy provided a large hanger for modelers to work on their models. The hanger was always full of modelers building all night for models to crash the next day. I managed to hit the only obstacle within a mile in any direction when my best free flight hit the big wind tethedral in the center of the field. I was busy repairing the model in the big hanger that night when Jim Walker came through handing out 10 cent gliders his company manufactured. Naturally, an impromptu contest quickly arose. Everybody began sanding and carving in an effort to improve performance and we were soon getting flight times in excess of 30 seconds. My first modification was to set the stab at zero incidence relative to the wing. This considerably improved launch altitude but the camber molded into the wing created too much drag. I wet the wing and flattened it with a scrap board. Drying was speeded up by occasionally by holding the wing against a light blub. When dry, I had removed the camber but had also removed the dihedral. I cut the outer 1 inch off each wing tip and reglued them at an angle to provide tip dihedral. The performance improvement was remarkable. Flight times soon approached 1 minute if I could miss the exposed hanger roof trusses on launch. Jim Walker came back through the hanger during one of the better flights and came over to inspect the model. He didn't say a word. He just held the model for a minute and shook his head. I later found that my best flight of 1:05 would have been good enough for third place if I had taken it to the Lake Hurst airship hanger and entered Indoor HLG. I tried several times to duplicate the modifications but was never able to even come close to the performance of the original model. Chuck Anderson RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
