Flying for Fun
D.B. Mathews
909 N. Maize Rd., Townhouse 734, Wichita KS 67212
SOURCES:
One of the more worrisome aspects of preparing material that others will read is how accurate one’s sources of information are. Traditionally, if the yellow journalism and exposé press are avoided, one can be relatively confident when quoting from magazines, newspapers, and, to a slightly lesser degree, radio and television. As the Internet rapidly expands, we are learning that not all information found there is factual or complete. Traditional media is challenged to be certain of their sources’ accuracy to avoid losing libel suits. Since most E-mail is anonymous—that is, no one puts his or her name on it—there is no one to sue, and the “facts” it distributes must be taken with some degree of caution.
Last month I wrote a little about the history of the two Hughes racers using material I gleaned from several Internet postings. I mentioned that column’s subject to a friend after the copy had been submitted, to which he replied, “There is a really nice article on the subject in the April/May 2003 issue of Air&Space.”
None of the Internet sites I consulted mentioned this article. I certainly wish they had because after reading the Air&Space piece I learned that several pieces of Internet information were misleading, or even in error. For instance, I wrote that no drawings exist from the Hughes project. A set of accurate three-views is available from Paul Matt (Volume 2 #16-107A and #16-108A).
The Jim Wright group sent a husband-and-wife team to the Smithsonian to measure and notate all measurements and record them on enlarged Paul Matt drawings. Upon their return to Orchard Grove, Oregon, these measurements were used to develop CAD (computer-aided-design) drawings of the parts.
The Twin Wasp Jr. engine was found in California (not Africa) on Jim Wright’s first call, leading him to conclude that there must have been a warehouse full of them. Nearly 100 subsequent calls failed to locate another.
The last point is not a correction; it’s an addition worth reviewing in light of the fatal crash of the replica. In July 2002, the first test flight identified a problem. After takeoff, Jim Wright was unable to advance the propeller into high pitch. When the aircraft leveled off, the propeller remained stuck in low pitch, which gave him a paltry 120 mph at the engine’s 2,625 rpm redline. As the engine temperature rose, Jim quickly reviewed his options for an emergency landing. The temperature stabilized, and he was able to set the airplane down in Corvallis, Oregon, as planned.
The problem was an undersized propeller counterweight which, after closely observing old photos, was apparently also a problem for Howard Hughes, since larger weights were retrofitted in both instances. Nowhere in the Air&Space copy or on the Internet can I find any mention of engine inspection after this overheating event or the following incidents. Additionally, in January 2003 the left landing gear folded on landing, bending the propeller, among other things. Repairs were made, and the aircraft was back in service a few months later.
Why Would I Do That?
A local club held an auction that I would have liked to attend, but I knew nothing about it. When I asked one of the members why handbills about the event had not been posted in the local hobby shops, he replied, “We had it on our Internet site.” Why would I, or any other nonmember or out-of-towner, be looking in that club’s site?
I realize that club newsletters are primarily for passing information to the members, but what about the new people in town and nonmembers? It’s hard to beat a printed newsletter in local hobby shops. After all, not everyone is online or even has a computer.
Where Did They Go?
As we age, we might find ourselves in moments of reminiscence. Such may be the price of admission into the “golden years” — whatever those might be — but the result of such mental gymnastics is often mild anger coupled with puzzlement. What the heck happened to us, whose fault is it, and what could we have done to prevent it?
In the early years of my modeling memory, beginning in the late 1930s and extending well into the 1950s, I can't for the life of me recall much discussion in the various model magazines, at club meetings, or among modelers about a serious shortage of flying sites. Modelers were flying in city parks (often in areas specific to their use), on grass-strip airports, on baseball and football fields (no one played soccer then), and even on permitted farm and ranch land.
I'm not referring to Radio Control, since it really didn't exist then. What's more, most of the sites were close enough to the fliers' homes that they could use bicycles or even streetcars to get to them.
Readers who are older than 65 might remember those nearby flying sites. Those who are younger may find such a thing hard to believe. In spite of AMA's considerable efforts in helping local groups retain and/or find flying sites, the total number and the convenience continue to decline.
The problem is multifaceted; therefore, it requires a multitude of answers and solutions. I'm going to toss out some simplistic but pertinent factors involved in this erosion of flyable sites that I haven't seen mentioned before. This is my opinion, and it's rather controversial: there are too darn many people!
When I graduated from high school in 1950, the correct answer to “What is the population of the United States?” was 150 million. Today the correct answer is 288 million (plus uncounted illegals); that's almost double in roughly 50 years.
Not only has that number exploded, but the way we live has used up far more than twice the available open space. Consider where your grandparents lived. If city-dwellers, they likely lived in multi-story apartment buildings or in single-family homes with tiny yards. They rode to work or pleasure on the bus, streetcar, or subway, so there was no need for a monstrous freeway system.
Today we live in the suburbs, on acres, necessitating a power or even riding lawnmower (which your grandparents might have associated with golf courses), far away from our work, and we drive many miles to work or play on freeways that cover huge tracts of land.
Not only that, but unlike the earlier years, most suburban developments have no public parks, or the ones that exist in them are postage-stamp-sized scraps of land with a few children's playground items on them. All of the preceding defines “urban sprawl.”
Have you ever noticed that housing in Europe is multi-storied, around the edges of scenic areas and parks? In the U.S. we build single-family housing in the park and pave over the whole thing.
Retail stores used to be in the city center and many stories tall. Now the same firms have a dozen or more smaller but identical stores scattered miles and miles away from downtown. Most of these housing and shopping areas are built on top of what was farm or ranch land and the places where we used to fly.
Additional results of this burgeoning population are the huge sports complexes that are necessary to accommodate all those people, ever-growing university campuses, more school buildings, marginal land being farmed to meet the food and fiber needs of an exploding population as more of the good land has houses built on it, and a general attitude of, “Get away from here with your silly toy airplanes.”
So the “what happened?” and “whose fault is it?” questions have an answer, but what do we do about it? Short of following the advice of the demented anchor man in the movie Network and opening our windows and shouting, “I’m mad and I’m not going to take it anymore,” some possible solutions do exist.
Next month I will look at several novel and nontraditional approaches to finding flying sites. I hope to prove that there are solutions to the flying-site dilemma.
Free Flight, Engines, and Nostalgia Events
When more powerful engines came along in the early 1950s, we learned that we could fly sport-type Free Flight designs in areas where we had been flying small rubber-powered models. Many parks, baseball diamonds, school playgrounds, and industrial tracts were suitable and close to home.
That group of designs was intended to climb in tight arcs and rather slowly, then glide down the same way. They would thermal in monster boomers, but flight times were normally only a minute or so with little drift in the breeze.
Then the improved version of the engines was introduced, and competition designs began to appear. They climbed to considerable altitudes, glided well, and could hook a thermal and be recovered only by using a dethermalizer. They would drift over a large area if any breeze was blowing at all, and were therefore unsuitable for the facilities we were using for the sport Free Flight designs.
There were still suitable facilities for these sorts of models (1/2A and larger) but on the peripheral edges of town. Looking back, it is difficult to believe that we flew 20-second motor runs and five-minute maxes back then. In this more modern day, only Lost Hills in California is large enough to allow five-minute maxes without worrying that the model will end up in someone's front yard or on top of a building.
To survive, the Free Flight community has adjusted events to better fit the available fields and most often flies Category III, which allows nine-second motor runs and two-minute maxes. To further stimulate participation, the National Free Flight Society (NFFS) has introduced several events to appeal to those who left competitive Free Flight when it “progressed” to highly complex variable-incidence surfaces, high-tech materials, circle tow, complex machined parts, etc. Competitive Free Flight is recognizing some participants' desire for simplicity.
As an example, newly introduced to NFFS activities are A-1 and A-2 Towline Glider rules that are identical to those used in the 1970s, specifically outlawing circle tow and bunt launch, so it is no longer necessary to purchase complex machined hardware from Eastern Europe. Perhaps this will reattract modelers (such as myself) who were put off by the complication of what was once a wonderfully simple event.
How simple? My youngest son beat seven other Junior contestants to win A-2 Nordic (Towline) at the 1972 Nationals. At a modern Nats, there are usually roughly eight entries for all three combined age classes.
This return to simpler times and models more suited to small fields has filtered into other NFFS events, such as 1/2A Nostalgia and Early 1/2A Nostalgia. Both have design, publish, and kit cutoff dates. The Early 1/2A Nostalgia period is from the beginning to 1957 and cannot be scaled, and regular 1/2A Nostalgia can be scaled from the same group of designs.
Engines are cut off at a list that includes several early types; these events avoid late, high-performance engines so models remain suitable for small fields.
Typical allowed engines (examples)
- OK
- Early Wen-Mac with standard glow plug
- 1/2A Spitfire
- Torp .049
- Wasp
Regular 1/2A Nostalgia goes up to but does not include Cox Tee Dees and similar late designs. The most popular seem to be Holland Hornets and reed-valve Coxes.
To mentally separate these two events, the Early 1/2A Nostalgia models are approximately 170 square inches in area, and the regular 1/2A Nostalgia designs are usually scaled to roughly 300 square inches. In both instances, the size is best matched to the power plant.
These two events are proving to be popular with Free Flight competition fliers for many reasons. Most notably, there is no need for expensive or complex hardware. Only a timer and dethermalizer fuse are needed, and the required engines are not too difficult to locate at reasonable prices.
Bill Schmidt has an inquisitive mind and has learned that the Wen-Mac, which most of us associated with cheap, plastic Ready-to-Fly Control Line models of that era, is a strong performer. According to Bill, the only thing really required are good gasket seals to make the Wen-Mac competitive with any of the other early Nostalgia engines.
Bill has resurrected many of the model designs that are legal for Early Nostalgia 1/2A, cleaned up the original drawings, improved any glaring structural weaknesses, and converted some wood sizes to those available today.
I've included photos of Bill's work with this column. All model photos are of Bill's models covered with Polyspar (a synthetic, lightweight, heat-shrink fabric that is similar to silkspan but much stronger) finished in clear butyrate dope, and in some instances trimmed with Japanese tissue.
Bill has a long list of Free Flight and Control Line plans for sale. Contact him at:
- Bill Schmidt, 4647 Krueger, Wichita KS 67220
- Tel.: (316) 744-0378
For rules and more information about these new small-field, simple-model events, contact:
- NFFS Membership, 22 Pine St., Homosassa FL 34446
Do you remember how much fun you had with 1/2A Fubars and Hogans? If you're too young to remember, give the concept a try. Most of them can easily be flown from a Radio Control site with a short fuse.
Early on when Bill Schmidt first became interested in the Free Flight designs of my youth, he asked how the heck we worked the dethermalizer on those designs with the stabilizer on the bottom of the fuselage—particularly the Fubar.
As drawn on the plans, the Fubar (a personal favorite) used a Rube Goldberg-like wire frame of considerable complexity and questionable reliability that allowed the stabilizer to drop down at the trailing edge, then it limited its drop. A day or so of remembering revealed my solution: the fuse burned through the rubber band and the stabilizer fell off. That was effective and simple since it was easier for me to build stabilizers than to bend that darn wire.
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
