Free Flight Duration
Louis Joyner [email protected]
2010 Junior FF world team
Every two years young modelers gather from around the world for the FF Junior World Championship. This year the contest will be held in Salonta, Romania, August 1–7. The U.S. team members are:
- F1A Towline Glider: Oliver Cai, Miles Johnson, Logan Tetrick
- F1B Wakefield Rubber: Brede Doerner, Sevak Malkhasyan, Brian Pacelli
- F1P Power: Chinmay Jaju, Taron Malkhasyan, Brian Pacelli
Oliver, Chinmay, and Brian were on the 2008 team. Then Brian was flying F1P; this time he is doubling up, flying both F1B and F1P. George Batiuk will again serve as team manager.
To be selected, members had to make a 75-minute qualification time and compete in two contests, for a total of 14 rounds of flying, at the 2009 AMA Nats. Contestants flew in the special Junior Team Selection Contest on the Sunday before the Nats and then against Open-class modelers during the event.
To give you an idea of the level of flying these Juniors do, Miles Johnson placed third in F1A—18 seconds behind the Open winner. Oliver Cai, a fellow F1A team member, was sixth, finishing less than a minute off first-place pace.
Although the AMA offers support for airfare and entry fees, the Junior team can use your financial aid to help defray some of the costs of competing in a contest in Europe. Donations can be made to the AMA Junior Free Flight Fund.
If you are, or a Junior you know is, interested in trying to make the 2012 FF team, check the National Free Flight Society (NFFS) website for information about rules and team selection procedures. A considerable amount of help, including kits and engines, is available to qualifying Juniors, who are eligible up to age 18 according to the FAI classification.
The America’s Cup offers a multi-contest format that encourages modelers from the U.S., Canada, and Mexico to compete in as many as 30 events across North America. Points are awarded at each contest, with first place receiving 25 points, second 20, third 15, fourth 10, and fifth 5.
Additional points are awarded depending on the number of fliers in the event. The best results from four contests are counted.
To encourage travel, only two competitions at any one site can be counted; the other two results must be from two other sites. In case of ties, results from more contests are counted. You can find detailed rules for the America’s Cup on the NFFS website.
The America’s Cup winners for 2009 are:
- F1A Towline Glider: Andrew Barron
- F1B Wakefield Rubber: Blake Jensen
- F1C Power: Mike Roberts
- F1P Power: Dave Rounsaville
- F1G Coupe: Mark Belfield
- F1H Towline Glider: Brian Van Nest
- F1J Power: Austin Gunder
- F1Q Electric: Bernie Crowe
- F1E Glider: Peter Brocks
Results in all events were close. Only a point separated first and second places in F1B and F1P, and there was a 2-point spread in F1A. There were three-way ties in F1G and F1H. The biggest spread between first and second places was 6 points. In most events it took more than 100 points to win.
The America’s Cup, created by the Southern California Aero Team and administered by its president Jim Parker, also recognizes the top-placing Junior fliers in each event. For 2009, they are:
- F1A: Timothy Barron
- F1B: Brian Pacelli
- F1P: Brian Pacelli
- F1G: Sevak Malkhasyan
- F1H: Miles Johnson
- F1J: Brian Pacelli
Last year was busy for Brian. His F1P score placed him third overall in the America’s Cup standings for that event. Another Junior flier, Taron Malkhasyan, placed fourth overall in F1P.
Coupe Front Ends
At the Nats last summer, I noticed a neatly machined front end on Sergio Montes’s F1G Coupe model. A front end is what we used to call a nose block. Instead of the bent wire, solder, and plywood of old, the new front ends are typically machined-aluminum marvels of engineering, and they usually mate with a turned-aluminum nose ring fitted into a carbon-fiber or aramid motor tube.
Sergio’s unit was different. It featured turned and machined-aluminum parts, a torque-actuated Montreal stop, and wire outriggers for the propeller blades. But it was fitted into an old-fashioned plywood piece that plugged into a rolled-balsa motor tube. Sergio told me that a fellow Chilean, Edgardo Figueroa, made the Coupe’s machined front end.
For many years, Sergio has been in Australia, where he edits Free Flight Quarterly. This year he is the editor of the NFFS Symposium Report.
I followed up with an e-mail to Edgardo. He replied:
“My front ends can take motors of more than 16 strands of 3x1 mm rubber; some people have used them in Vintage rubber models. Shaft and hook are 2 mm diameter piano wire, running directly in plastic bushings or in ball bearings if demanded. One design is fixed pitch, the other is variable pitch.
“Prop hangers are 1/16 inch music wire with the blade hinges at 40 mm radius or any other if specified by the customer. The front end can be made to fit into any size nose ring or motor tube.
“Weight ranges from 8.6 grams for the fixed-pitch unit to 12 grams for the VP unit. Since I am only an artisan (retired mechanic) I don’t make them massively, only a few dozen per year.”
The custom-made aspect of the front ends is a big advantage. With most ready-made Coupe front ends, you have to use a matching nose ring, motor tube, connector, and tailboom.
With Edgardo’s unit, you can have it sized to fit any motor tube or, as Sergio did, have it made to insert into a conventional plywood nose block. This opens up all sorts of possibilities, such as using it for small rubber models with built-up, square fuselages such as Mulvihill or Old-Timer designs.
The torsion-activated Montreal propeller stop provides a more positive stopping action than the traditional tension stop. This is especially important for models with short noses and long blades; tension-type stops often lead to bad folds, with one propeller blade caught on the wing and spoiling the glide. The propeller outriggers can also be made long enough to clear the larger fuselage that is often encountered on older designs.
If you have ordered the two-volume Coupe d’Hiver (F1G) Survey 2009 from Free Flight Quarterly, you can find an excellent article by Edgardo on his Coupe design philosophy, as well as three-views of one of his F1G designs.
For more information about the Coupe front ends, you can e-mail Edgardo. He also produces Kevlar motor tubes, lightweight clockwork timers, and other items for the rubber flier.
Because natural disasters have been in the news so much lately, I sent a message to Edgardo about the massive earthquake that hit Chile at the end of February. He replied:
“Thanks a lot for your concern about me and my country. We shall prevail as we have done from long time ago. It is a large one, this one [earthquake], but we will remake the country.”
Rising Off Water
In the old days of Navy Nats, rise-off-water (ROW) drew many entries and even more spectators. For many of us, ROW was a last-minute thing. Floats were made the night before in the work hangar and strapped onto whatever gas model was at hand.
Floats added not only weight but also lots of extra drag, so both climb and glide were adversely affected. But getting the model off the water and into the air was the first problem and the reason for the crowds of spectators.
Given a too-hard push, the model could turn into a submarine. Or torque could take over, causing the water equivalent of a ground loop. However, the worst scenario was for the aircraft to skim along the top of the water until it hit the edge on the other side of the ROW tank.
The best advice I received about the event was to hold the model by the wing center-section and push the front float completely under water, being careful not to let the propeller tip hit the surface. Then release the model without a push. If done properly, the front float would pop completely out of the water and the model would be airborne.
That did work for me at the 1961 Nats, flying a cut-down 1/2A Zeek powered by a Cox Space Hopper and ballasted up to close to 9 ounces, to meet FAI Power rules. By the time the ROW event rolled around, my 1/2A FAI airplane was the only model I had left.
Its weight exceeded 10 ounces with floats, but at least it got off the water. The glide was another matter. Anyway, it was enough for third in Junior ROW.
A few people developed purpose-built ROW designs through the years. The Spit Ball by Bob Hatschek was featured in Frank Zaic’s 1951–52 Model Aeronautic Year Book. Designed for a .045 cu. in. Spitfire engine, the model spanned only 30 inches projected.
In 2006, Bob’s club, the Brooklyn Skyscrapers, selected the Spit Ball for its one-design model, to celebrate the group’s 70th anniversary. The airplane could be flown in Pee Wee .30, Early Nostalgia Gas, ROW, and 1/2A Gas.
You can read more about the Spit Ball in the Issue 1, Winter 2006 edition of Skylines, which is the Skyscrapers’ newsletter. It is available on the club’s website.
A later ROW-specific design came from one of the Skyscrapers club founders: Sal Taibi. His Hydro-Star was a 280-square-inch design with a 43-inch wingspan. It was a popular kit in the 1960s, both for ROW or, with floats removed, for 1/2A Gas. Plans and a short kit are available from Bob Holman Plans.
Errata
As several readers have pointed out, my February column about carving propellers used the wrong term for the trigonometric function used to find the blade angle, knowing the height and width of the block. It should have read “arctangent” instead of “cotangent.”
The arctangent is what you get by pushing the second function key and then the “Tan” (tangent) key on a scientific calculator. I was getting the correct answer (26.57° in the example in the article) but using incorrect terminology.
In the same column, I forgot to include a mailing address for Alan Abriss’s Homegrown Productions. He wants to accommodate readers who do not have Internet access so they can order the Nats video. His information is in the source listing.
Sources
- National Free Flight Society
- Edgardo Figueroa
- Free Flight Quarterly
- Brooklyn Skyscrapers
- Bob Holman Plans
(909) 885-3959 www.bhplans.com
- Homegrown Television Productions
94-20 66th Ave., Suite 1G Forest Hills, NY 11374 www.homegrowntv.com
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
