If It Flies - 2008/04
Author
Dean Pappas | [email protected]
Also included in this column
- Compare and contrast: electric and glow
What is the mission of “If It Flies ...”? From where I sit, it is to help tie together the big picture in aeromodeling, helping us all benefit from the knowledge, experience, and techniques used in other corners of “toy airplane-dom.” To garner that benefit we need to know just enough about some flying event or some particular type of flying to be able to have a discussion. Sometimes just knowing the jargon is enough. For example, if they look like ailerons on an RC model, they are probably the same things that are called “maneuvering flaps” on a CL aircraft. If you see the same things on a competition FF Gas model, they are probably called “variable-camber flaps” or something similar.
Once we get past the problems posed by the mere mechanics of talking to each other, we aeromodelers tend to enjoy each other’s company as much as we like finding out about different kinds of flying machines. Sure, some will scoff at whatever is different, but that’s just because they don’t understand it. For instance, lots (and I mean lots!) of fliers have never used anything other than heat-shrink covering. When most of them look at the elaborate finish on a tissue-paper-and-dope-finished CL Aerobatics (Stunt) model or the mirror-like epoxy finish on a Pylon racer, their responses range from “I could never do that!” to “Wow!” and eventually to “I have to learn how to do that!”
That’s our mission: to help connect each of us to other fliers in many remote corners of the aeromodeling world. You have to see the many different things other people do, whether it’s something you think is interesting, useful, or just cool. Then the eager research staff at “If It Flies ...” finds people who know how to do that thing well, and we suck the information out of their brains and present it in these pages!
To carry out this grandiose mission, the research staff (that’s me, myself, and I) need your questions! What do you want to know about? What little snippet of strange (to you) aeromodeling have you seen that needs an explanation? Have you seen something at a flying field or in any magazine that needed much more explanation than the little caption underneath the tiny picture? I’m betting there’s something you want to know about, but you didn’t know whom to ask. Finding out more about it might make your flying better or more enjoyable.
I was surfing through a handful of the many model-flying forums on the Internet (this particular one was predominantly devoted to electric flight), where a flier wrote that he thought it was a shame that “nobody flew Control-Line anymore.” Approximately a zillion helpful souls pointed out to him that he wasn’t looking in the right circles and that there is plenty of CL activity all over the world. Yes, that was an utterly shameless play on words, but the neat bit about this episode was what followed. Nobody took the guy to task; instead the thread exploded. There were those who thought much like the person who started the thread. They found out too! Still others materialized from cyberspace and admitted that they, too, were looking to pick up a handle again. Many of them started reminiscing because nostalgia can be fun.
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
