CL Navy Carrier
CONTROL LINE NAVY CARRIER
Dick Perry, 427 Live Oak Ln. NE, Albuquerque NM 87122; E-mail: [email protected]
Mystery Aircraft
I received a record number of responses to the February Mystery Airplane contest. There seem to be many more biplane aficionados among the readers than I expected.
A few people supplied me with additional information about the Avia B-534, which expanded my knowledge of the aircraft.
Dale Drew of Jeffersonville, Indiana provided drawings from a Czechoslovakian publication that included the carrier modifications that the German Luftwaffe made for its trials in preparation for outfitting the Graf Zeppelin.
The actual designation for the aircraft that were modified was Bk-534. The drawing I provided was of the B-534-IV.
The Bk-534 varied from the B-534-IV in that it had a single gun on each side of the fuselage rather than the two guns housed in a larger blister on the IV. It also lacked the circular air intake under the propeller spinner, and was equipped with a tail wheel rather than a skid.
The winner was Robert Allen of Donvale, Victoria, Australia. It's good to see that Model Aviation is so widely read.
Robert's name was selected at random from those who correctly identified the basic model as the Avia B-534. Thanks to all who participated in the contest, and especially to those who provided me with additional data on the various models of the B-534.
There is no Mystery Airplane this month; I wanted to use my time and space to editorialize. That's the privilege of being a "contributing editor."
Nostalgia
I heard from Tom Pearson, who competed with Dave Domizi in the 1954 Nationals (Nats) Control Line (CL) Navy Carrier competition at Glenview Naval Air Station in Chicago IL.
Tom provided the following description of his equipment and his experiences.
"I used a Grumman F4F Wildcat powered by an Atwood Super Champion .624 engine swinging a 12 x 8 Top Flite® prop. The engine was modified for two needle valves—high- and low-speed (lean and blubbering rich). The venturi stuck up like a smokestack at the rear of the engine. It was relatively simple to add the second needle valve to this long venturi.
"The fuel flow to either needle valve was controlled by a Bonner R/C motor control that alternated fuel flow to one or the other by opening an air bleed to one or the other fuel lines, thus starting or stopping fuel to that needle valve.
"The Bonner was really like a relay escapement that when pulsed allowed a stepping plate to turn 90 degrees with each pulse so you had high, low, high, low and so forth. The rotating stepping plate was driven by a rubber band.
"I had found that the two-needle valve arrangement worked better than using a two-speed ignition timer (dual points) and spark advance as far as giving a wide speed range. The Atwood could be equipped with dual points, but the needle-valve setting had to be a compromise setting for running either set of points.
"Power for the Bonner's relay was via the control lines and a battery at the control handle. The lines had a flexible varnish-like insulating coating on them.
"At the end of the low-speed laps, I kicked the Atwood back up to high speed as running blubbering rich for 7–8 laps could flood out the Champion VG-2 glow plug. Before slowing back down for the landing I proceeded to do a horizontal Figure 8, probably the only time aerobatics was ever performed during Carrier competition at the Nats.
"By then the fuel level was down quite a bit so the Atwood would not slow down as much so my landing was a bit hot! Much simpler back then.
"The next time I flew Carrier at the Nats I used the Wildcat, but I had an Anderson Spitfire .65 powering it that used what was called a 'Rotovave' on the exhaust. The Rotovave essentially restricted the exhaust, strangling the engine with its own exhaust and slowing it down.
"This was a real improvement as the engine could now be hand held and had variable speed but required three lines to operate the airplane and the engine."
Ultimatum
If you are a member of the Navy Carrier Society, by now you have seen the names of the principal officials for our CL Navy Carrier competition this summer. There is still a need for support personnel to run watches, process scores, transfer time cards and pull test forms, and take care of all the small, but very important, tasks that make an event run smoothly.
Without the extra personnel, a few people run in a constant high-stress mode because there aren’t enough helpers to share the essential duties.
If you’d like to help out this year, please give me a call at (505) 856-7006 or contact me at my address shown above. You may also contact any of the Navy Carrier Society officers, and they will get the word to me.
You may work any or all of the days of our competition—Thursday, Friday, or Saturday.
You are guaranteed a front row seat for the action!
Rules
When I was first involved in rules changes activities, the cycle was repeated each year.
In most cases, the new rule book came out after the contests in the Southern United States in the early part of the year, such as the Southwest Regionals in Arizona and the King Orange in Florida.
With a one-year cycle, there was really no chance to evaluate the new rules in actual competition to see what was wrong with them in time to propose fixes to faulty rules in time for the next rule book.
In reality, the result was a two-year cycle that began each year.
The delay in publication and the reality of a two-year cycle led AMA to expand the rule-making process to two years. The idea was to ensure that there would be adequate time for discussion and analysis, to avoid some mistakes of the past.
There would also be time to see what was wrong with the new changes (when mistakes did occur and faulty rules were enacted). Changes to correct the faults could be submitted for the next rules cycle.
Unfortunately, the extra time didn’t solve the problem of rules being proposed without testing. Discussion time didn’t solve the problem of wording out faulty rules. Testing of rules didn’t take place until they had been enacted, and contestants were forced to use them.
When AMA went to the current three-year cycle, the problem of faulty rules got worse. Now when faulty rules are enacted, the extended period before a correction can be implemented forces us into panic mode. “Emergency” and “safety” rules changes are proposed only as back to the short cycle we tried to avoid.
We’ve probably all seen rules that haven’t worked. It is probably more accurate to have rules put in that didn’t achieve the objective they set out to achieve.
A perfect example is the change in Navy Carrier scoring to deemphasize the high-speed portion of the flight. It went into effect in 1976, and has been with us ever since.
I picked this particular rule because I wouldn’t offend the one who proposed the change—it’s my fault! The idea was mine, and so was the proposal.
A quarter-century ago (that puts one’s modeling career in perspective, doesn’t it?) there were discussions about how to get new participants in the Navy Carrier events. There were complaints that high speed was dominating the event, and flying fast was too expensive. The cost of custom engines discouraged event newcomers.
The fact is good engines will always be more expensive than lesser engines didn’t carry much weight. The fact that a good engine, even if stock, could top 120 mph was not believed by those who had never done it.
A “stock” engine rule was tried in Profile, and it discouraged many people; the rally pointed out other critical skill and experience were in fitting an engine if the design was fixed.
As a potential solution, I proposed that the scoring be changed to place less emphasis on high speed and more on low speed. I was very careful to achieve what I believed would be a balance between high- and low-speed performance, so that modelers would actually be able to decide how they wanted to approach the event.
I assumed that low-speed performance might improve through design as much as 30% after the scoring made slow-speed development worthwhile.
What I failed to consider was that flying style could completely change. I assumed using supported “flight” for low speed.
Reality reared its ugly head at the 1976 Dayton OH Nationals, when Dick Davis flew his Monogram in Profile at less than 10 mph by hanging it on the propeller at roughly a 45° angle.
I had really blown it! The two considered the new flying style a “problem” and tried to fix it with a rule limit that was poorly achieved if the goal was to produce “realistic” flight or wing-borne flight.
Even if the goal was to limit performance in low-speed flights so that there remained some balance between high and low, the 60° limit didn’t achieve that balance.
The idea of an alternative to screwing high speeds for winning in Carrier held too much appeal. Returning to the old scoring system was never really considered.
Did the change achieve its goal of increasing participation in Carrier?
If entries in the Nationals are any indication, it didn’t. Dayton was the high point of Carrier competition at the Nationals.
Why am I writing all this?
The next opportunity to submit rules change proposals is in the fall of 2002. The Navy Carrier Society banquet and annual meeting at the Nationals in July will be a year before the next rules cycle begins.
If there are any ideas to be discussed for rule changes, the meeting is the time to start discussing them.
If you have ideas about how our event can be improved, let’s get them on the table and start talking about them, and start trying them out at our local contests.
If you can’t attend the Nationals this year, send me your ideas and I’ll make sure they are brought up at the meeting.
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
