CONTROL LINE SCALE - 2003/05
Bill Boss
77-06 269th St., New Hyde Park NY 11040
THE F-4 PHANTOM featured in this month's column was built by Dennis Slater of Chicago, Illinois, from a Westcoast Radio Control (RC) kit he found at a swap meet; he had never seen one before and hasn't seen one since. The very yellow newspaper found stuffed between the parts in the box was dated 1972.
Dennis noted that the kit was in excellent condition and easy to build, and it is a great size for a control-line model. It has a wingspan of 44 inches, a length of 48 inches, over 500 square inches of wing area, and was designed as a tractor-propeller model. Power is an Enya .60 III, and the model has a standard three-line bellcrank system for throttle control.
The fuselage is all fiberglass, the horizontal stabilizer is solid balsa, and the wing is sheeted foam covered with fiberglass cloth and Z-Poxy. The dual-shock nose gear comes with the kit. The model is painted with Formula-U airbrushed in a vintage Vietnam color scheme and markings. All is topcoated with Minwax Poly-U satin spray.
The scale details were also easy. Bombs and rockets are Great Planes kit accessories for the Tomcat and the Eagle. The belly drop tank was made from two Estes rocket nose cones butt-joined at the bases. Cockpit interiors were scratch-built, and the pilots are modified action figures from a dollar store.
Added scale operations are the drop tank and drag chute. Both are operated via electric servos, controlled by sending power up insulated lines. The servos are regular RC units with the electronics removed. Battery power sent up the lines is supplied by four nine-volt batteries in series to provide 36 volts. The voltage is required to overcome the resistance of the lines and provide efficient operation of the servos.
The finished Phantom weighs 5 pounds and is a great-flying model. Dennis says that it never fails to stop traffic on the final landing when it taxis to a stop with the drag chute deployed. What makes the drag chute work is a small hardware/variety-store item: a spring-loaded key reel. Not a heavy-duty type for a pound of keys, but the small-diameter reel with a nylon or .021-inch coated cable cord.
The reel is mounted forward near the servo or wherever it's easy to access. Dennis extended the length of the cord with the same nylon used for the chute shroud lines. The cord is then run through an eyelet at the tail of the fuselage, and a 1/2A line clip is used to connect it to the chute.
The chute compartment is built with a hinged door that is controlled by a control horn and pushrod to a servo. The chute is rolled and packed with the cord pulled out through the eyelet to its full extension on the reel. The closed door pinches the cord and holds the chute in place. Simply opening the door allows the reel cord to retract, and it pulls the chute out of the compartment for deployment.
An added benefit of the reel is that it acts as a strain relief or shock absorber for the deploying chute. Dennis cautions anyone using this as an operational feature: the deploying chute can give the airplane different taxi characteristics. He suggests only deploying the chute when the model is rolling dead into the wind and will be stopped within the next 30 feet or so.
I have presented a number of Dennis's models (he has 26), and you might be wondering what he uses for handles and lines. He has equipped his airplanes so that he is able to control all of his models with three handle-and-line arrangements:
- He uses an electric handle with voltage up the lines (four nine-volt batteries in series for operation of servos with the electronics removed) for his B-29, C-130, B-25, and F-4 Phantom.
- An electronic encoder/decoder system "signals up the lines" for his B-17 and P-61 Black Widow.
- He uses a standard three-line throttle only, and maybe a "full down" nose-wheel brake on multiengine tricycle-gear models.
Care taken during building and setting up the control installations in his models allows him to use handle type 1, 2, or 3 from model to model without any adjustments. No matter how many airplanes he brings out to a flying field, he only needs the three handles and lines.
Documentation
Documentation for the Phantom is readily available. Warbird Tech Series Volume 8 — McDonnell Douglas F-4 Gun-Nosed Phantoms — has several pages of Vietnam-era color photos, information about the F-4E gunfighter version, tech-manual excerpts, exploded views and cutaways, and some fine detail and arrangement of the front and rear cockpit panels and instrumentation. The book is a product of Specialty Press, 11481 Kost Dam Rd., North Branch MN 55056; Tel.: (612) 583-3239.
A good selection of three-views for the Phantom, and hundreds of other airplanes, is available from Bob's Aircraft Documentation, 3114 Yukon Ave., Costa Mesa CA 92626; Tel.: (714) 979-8058.
Good News: Nationals and NASA
Stan Alexander, president of the National Association of Scale Aeromodelers (NASA), reports that the 2003 National Scale Championships will be held at the AMA Headquarters site in Muncie, Indiana, the weekend of June 27-29, and that the 2004 Scale events will also be held the last weekend in June.
Stan noted that this information should help all competitors who work in planning their vacation time and days off for attending the national competition. The weekend schedule might also help get more scale competitors to the Nationals by cutting down on the number of days off work that were required with the former middle-of-the-week dates.
It was also reported that the AMA Executive Council has approved a plan for the construction of a 200 x 400-foot paved area to the north of the L-pad, where control-line (CL) scale events will be flown in 2003 and thereafter. This will be a great improvement with respect to the "overfly problem."
NASA is working on becoming a nonprofit organization. However, it is quite costly in legal fees, so NASA has set up a special account for the project and is asking all members and friends to make a donation to the cause. Nonprofit status will help the organization with mailing costs, keep the dues as low as possible, and put NASA in a better position to receive donations of money, merchandise, etc., from sponsors. All donations should be sent to NASA Secretary/Treasurer Bonnie Reddish, 128 Darnley Dr., Moon Township PA 15108.
Field Tips
Bob Furr of the Orbiting Eagles of Omaha in Nebraska says that if you're having the problem of a propeller nut coming loose inside a spinner, one thing that works well is a jam nut. This is nothing more than another propeller nut up against the first one you put on. It locks the first nut in place and keeps your propeller from working loose.
Keep in mind that a wood propeller will compress in time, and both nuts will need to be retightened. Do this one nut at a time: get the nut closest to the propeller tight first, then tighten the other nut while holding the first one in place. If a rounded propeller nut is required for safety reasons, it can serve as the jam nut.
With the spring and summer months coming, Bob also has a tip for controlling bees and wasps around the flying site during those hot days. This is an item for the flying field, but it also works well in the back yard.
You can make a simple flying-insect trap by cutting off the upper one-third of a two-liter plastic soda bottle with a hobby or utility knife. Pour a few ounces of regular soda — not diet — into the lower part, then invert the top one-third and nest it in the bottom. Leave a space between the neck of the bottle and the pool of soda. The bees and wasps are attracted to the sweet smell; they find their way through the bottle neck but cannot find their way out. Eventually they get exhausted, fall into the liquid, and drown.
Please send ideas, notice of upcoming CL Scale events, contest reports, and especially photos of CL Scale activity to me at the address at the top of this column. MA
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
