Control Line Combat - 2006/01

Milissa Huber wins the 2005 Bladder Grabber Combat meet!
Mike Willcox is not dainty in the center circle. He has this Russian Junior off balance.
Alex Shalaev is the Junior World Champion.
Also included in this column:
Cyclon PC7 engine
his equipment in the air and flying.
Milissa joins the elite group of Combat
pilots who have won the Bladder Grabber. I
finished third, with fellow Southern
Californian Darrin Albert in the fourth
position. The rumors are that Bob Carver is
going to put up a considerable amount of
cash for the 2006 Bladder Grabber. Make
your plans now and be part of the action.
One reason for the low Bladder Grabber
turnout could have been that there was a
large FAI contest just a week before in
Chicago, Illinois. Most of the serious FAI
pilots needed a tune-up event before the US
Combat Team Trials, and the Bladder
Grabber fell between the two.
Rich Tupper, a 2002 US team member,
was responsible for organizing this tripleelimination
competition, and 20 pilots from
across the US and Canada gave it a go.
Richard Stubblefield is so amazing that at
his age he can still beat up on the younger
pilots and find his way to the top spot on a
consistent basis. Lou Scavone finished in
second place, and Allen Deveuve was third.
It seems as though more people are
interested in FAI than the other AMA
events. I would not mind seeing more FAI
contests scheduled throughout the US.
Perhaps we can hold the Pan-American
Championships every other year. A good
start would be to hold it in the US or in
Canada.
On to the F2D Team Trials. The fliers in the
Lubbock area—Bobby, Andy, and Nick
Mears; Larry Driskill; Jim Mears; and Riley
Wooten—had wanted to host the Team
Trials in their back yard for a long time.
Thirty-eight pilots obliged them by making
the trip to Lubbock, which is singer Buddy
Holly’s hometown and home of the Red
Raiders of Texas Tech.
Preparing for this competition takes a
long time. I have heard that Mike Willcox
did some intensive practice flying that
involved hours and hours of match after
match.
Mike has also made a concerted effort to
fly in a number of European contests to gain
every advantage possible through a careful
study of flying styles and strategies. He went
as far as importing an Eastern European
mechanic, Alexander Prokofiev, for the
Team Trials. Mike’s effort paid off; he was
one of the fortunate three to make the team.
Chuck Rudner is feeling young and must
have found the “Fountain of Youth.” He
made his way onto the team for a fifth time.
I know how Chuck practices and
prepares since I am usually present when he
does so. His flying-field routine consists of
approximately 50% testing engines and
trimming models, and the other 50% is
practice matches. He also spends a great
deal of time testing engines and
documenting their performance levels.
Almost all of Chuck’s engine work is
done in a soundproof engine-testing
compartment in his garage/barn. Propeller
testing and experimenting plays a big role in
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getting the last 100 rpm out of an engine.
He also knows that a propeller with good
rpm numbers on the ground may not yield
the best performance in the air or when
towing a streamer.
As a big contest nears, the testing and
trimming time is reduced and Chuck
spends more time on practice matches with
a painted circle on the ground. Sometimes
there is a specific technique he will work
on, such as using the entire circle.
Most of his practice is clean flying, and
we seldom fly in line wraps or hit the other
model. This happens frequently enough
without trying to do it deliberately. Two
weeks before the Team Trials Chuck,
Darrin Albert, Greg Hill, and I flew quite a
few matches with legal-length streamers to
hone our skills.
The third member of the team is
Andrey Nadein from the Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, area. He is originally from
Russia and has become a naturalized US
citizen. Andrey is no stranger to the rigors
of international competition; he was a key
member of the pit crew that took Mike
Willcox to his World Championship in
Sebnitz, Germany, in 2002.
The US team should pose a formidable
threat in Valladolid, Spain, in 2006.
Holden Hill will be attending his second
World Championships as the Junior
entrant.
The first and second alternates are also
keen competitors. Greg Hill is a former
FAI National Champion, and Mark
Rudner is a former Junior World
Champion, US team member, and pitcrew
member for Mike Willcox’s World
Championship. I wish them well and
know they will represent the US to the
best of their ability.
I just received word that Mike Willcox
has been back overseas in Ukraine and won
a World Cup event in Novomoskovsk,
where there were 52 entrants. Cary Minor of
Amarillo, Texas, made the trek with him and
managed a seventh-place finish. It is
impressive that Mike has been able to win
overseas several times to date.
Alexander Kalmnikov has outdone
himself once again by producing his latest
Combat engine: the Cyclon PC7.
Preliminary reports are that this engine
makes good power and will be extremely
competitive with anything that is currently
available.
I mentioned Goran Olsson’s Web site—
www.go-cl.se/cl.html—in the last column I
wrote. There you can link to Cyclon
engines.
Cyclon power plants are well engineered
and machined; they are nearly works of art. I
own four versions of the 15-size Combat
engines, all of which run exceedingly well.
They consistently start well and are easy to
tune. I have yet to have a mechanical failure
on one.
As with anything else that is high
performance, breakage could happen to the
best. With their 4mm venturis and the
limitation to 10% nitromethane fuel, these
engines will give you a great deal of fun for
the buck.
I mix my own fuel and am always
careful to make certain that there is 20% oil
at all times. The rules call for castor oil in
the fuel. I prefer 20% Ucon 625 or Klotzbrand
synthetic oil in my practice fuel.
The European Championships was held in
Hungary in 2005, and an old friend from
the United Kingdom—Mike Whillance—
was able to capture the title. Former World
Champion Mervyn Jones finished third.
Merv is also from the United Kingdom.
[[email protected]]
Control Line Combat Rich Lopez
The 2005 European World Champion: Mike Whillance. He
earned the nickname “Whacker” because of his propensity to
destroy models.
Andrey Nadein, with the hat, is photographed horse-training the
best circle marshall in the world: Mack Henry.
THE SUMMER OF 2005 saw some
interesting outcomes to some long-standing
contests. I will start with the premier Fast
Combat contest in the United States: the
Bladder Grabber.
Many years ago some members of the
Jive Combat Team of Seattle, Washington,
decided it would be a good idea to have Bob
Carver’s stereo company sponsor a Fast
Combat meet that would feature an
unprecedented amount of merchandise to be
given to the top-placing pilots. This is what
really set the trend in triple-elimination
money contests.
So here we are in 2005, and Bob Carver
still has a love for Combat that causes him
to bring out newer and better high-end
stereo components to give as prizes. The sad
part of this year’s event was that the turnout
was probably the lowest in the history of the
contest, at 15 entrants.
On the positive side, it was a young
lady—Milissa Huber—who won the contest
in a convincing fashion. When it got down
to the final two contestants, she was able to
pull it all together and beat a legend of long
ago: Howard Rush.
Howard has recently been flying mostly
CL Aerobatics rather than Combat. He is a
retired engineer from the giant Boeing
Corporation who will no doubt put a great
deal of time into overengineering simple
model-aircraft components. I think he has a
secret desire to emulate Rube Goldberg’s
propensity to develop complexity in
machinery.
But all kidding aside, Howard is still a
force to be reckoned with; he has no fear of
“bellcranking” his opponent. I was one
such victim at Snohomish, Washington’s
Harvey Field.
Milissa had no trepidation about flying
against any male opponent with or without
a reputation. She went into the finals
needing to win twice. Her support
personnel of Tom and Tim Strom, her dad,
and her brother provided her with strong
engine runs and efficient starts all the way
to the top spot.
Howard’s imported California pit crew,
on the other hand, was hard-pressed to keep
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