Radio Control Slope Soaring-2007/04

122 MODEL AVIATION
[[email protected]]
Radio Control Slope Soaring Dave Garwood
A short history of the life and times of Brian Laird
Above: Brian’s original-design Boeing B-17 slope
glider. “Fighter pilots make movies. Bomber pilots
make history,” Stephen Coonts said in Flight of the
Intruder.
Brian takes a break from flying for a Slope Soarer’s lunch of fried
chicken at Del Cerro Park in approximately 1980.
Brian works on his third molded design, a P-39 Airacobra, in 1984
or 1985 in Torrance CA. He began molding his own designs early
in life.
Left: Brian Laird launches his B-17 at Little
Mountain Slope Soaring site in San Bernardino CA
in May 2006 after the PSS Festival.
BRIAN LAIRD IS one of the luminaries of Slope Soaring. He’s
a designer, a maker, an organizer, a writer, a photographer, and
a top-gun flier who has contributed a stunning amount of
knowledge and enthusiasm to the sport and hobby.
More amazing than how much he knows about designing,
building, painting, and flying is how consistently willing he is to
share his experience and expertise to help other fliers advance
their own skill and knowledge of Slope Soaring. I met Brian at
Soar Utah in 1995 and remember being impressed by how
magnificent his and Paul Masura’s warbird gliders looked and
how amazingly well they flew them.
Slope traveling buddy Joe Chovan and I were mightily
astonished by the adrenaline-pumping action of “Slope Scale
Party”-style flying, where five or more fast, heavy fiberglass
warbirds fly in a tight “half-pipe” formation. They shoot up and
pull stall turns at each end of the course, and they race by
together at the bottom of the pattern “in the lane,” or close in
front of the group of pilots standing at the lip of the ridge.
Is it risky to the sailplanes to fly like this?
“As long as we’re all going in the same direction, sailplanes
can tap wings, exchange paint, and suffer no real damage,” said
Brian. “If someone gets going in the opposite direction, a head-on
collision can be disastrous.”
ISR members at 1996 Los Banos Scale Soaring meet with 60-inch
Tucano club projects. L-R: Frank Cavazos, Brian Laird, Carl Maas,
Dan Sampson, Mike Wofford, Robert Cavazos.
Brian Laird and Dave Garwood at Cajon Pass during the Southern
California PSS Festival in 2006. Photo by Carl Maas.
No guts, no glory. This type of slope flying is not for
everyone, but it sure impressed Joe and me. We ordered our first
Slope Scale kits when we returned from Utah.
Brian Laird was born in Scotland in 1964, and at age 10 he and his
mother, father, and brother immigrated to the United States, moving to
Torrance, California (near Los Angeles). That area is basically the
heart of Gliderland in the USA.
Brian had an early interest in airplanes, and he remembers seeing
RC models in hobby shops. For years he built plastic airplane models.
He first flew RC at roughly age 14 with a Sig Colt: a high-wing trainer
with a .15-size engine.
“My first flight lasted 15 seconds and consisted of a takeoff, a spin,
a stall, and a crash,” Brian remembered. “I kind of gave up. I did put
the airplane back together but did not fly it again. It sat in my room
until my dad knocked over a book case and flattened it.”
By chance Brian saw RC Soaring in action.
“We were bike riding and saw guys flying gliders off of hi-starts at
California State Dominguez college,” He said. “I bought a Craft-Aire
Drifter, and Bryon, my first flying buddy, bought a Mark’s Models
Wanderer.”
The two Brians embarked on a journey of self-instruction.
“My second flight was in 25 mph wind,” said Brian. “The launch
went fine, but when the airplane came off the line it went downwind
and, of course, out of control. My balsa glider hit a baseball backstop
and was pulverized.”
The young wannabe soaring pilots did not know about flying clubs.
“No one told us gliders are supposed to fly in still air,” Brian
claimed. “We had no training, no support. Basically I went through
four more airplanes before I could keep one in the air for more than 30
seconds.”
The two Brians then discovered slope flying.
“Bryon and I were riding bikes in Palos Verdes and we saw
models flying so we pedaled over,” said Brian. “No hi-start? This
looks good, I said to myself.”
The flying site was an old Nike missile base on the coast, a
popular spot for flying floaters.
“The next weekend we had our parents drive us to the slope
with our thermal gliders,” recalls Brian. “There were plenty of
people there, and they watched two young newbies crash—over,
and over, and over, without offering an ounce of advice.”
It seems that these early experiences with unhelpful flying
companions led Brian to his untiring helpfulness to lessexperienced
fliers later in his life. In the years since he has taught
model designing, building, molding, painting, finishing, and
extreme flying to almost anyone who has asked for his help.
Back to where Brian and Bryon taught themselves to fly on the
slope.
“In thermal gliding, when you lose control you’re likely to
crash in the same field in which you’re standing,” Brian has said.
“In slope gliding, when you lose control you can crash quite far
away, and in some very tough terrain.”
He and his bike-riding and flying buddy kept at it.
“After enough times tossing the thing off the hill, you
eventually grasp the concept of how to control it, and your flights
progressively get longer and longer,” said
Brian. “So eventually the other Bryon and
I did learn to fly.”
Then they saw their first slope jet
[Power Scale Soaring glider]. Brian saw a
scratch-built F-18 Hornet at a hobby shop,
and his imagination raced. He found an
Advanced Glider Concepts F-16 Falcon
molded-fiberglass kit for $109—priced
almost out of reach for a teenager.
“Plunking down $109 as an 18-yearold
kid, when I’d never spent more than
$40 for a kit before, I was expecting
something wonderful,” said Brian. “It was
very difficult to build, but I finished it
with decals and panel lines. It flew better
than anything I had ever flown, and I was
accepted into the Slope Soaring incrowd.”
Now accepted by the local flying
group, Brian struck up a conversation with
the designer/maker of the F-16 kit, asking
why he didn’t make the airframe stronger
to better resist crash damage. The reply
was, “Because I wouldn’t sell as many
kits.”
Another early experience shaped
Brian’s design philosophy, and then he
started down the path of a kit maker.
Another guy hanging out at Bluff Cove
made his own airplanes,” said Brian. “He
showed us how to cut wing cores from
foam and to make plugs and molds for
fiberglass fuselages. My first mold, an F-
15 Eagle, was totally impractical, but it
flew.”
The plug was carved from balsa, and
the mold was made from Ultracal: a
concrete-type material.
“Next was a Spitfire, while Paul made
an Me 109 mold,” said Brian.
Brian Laird and Paul Masura joined
forces to begin designing and making
high-performance warbirds under the
Slope Scale business name. They
generally had balsa-sheeted, hot-wire-cut
foam-core wings, and molded-fiberglass
fuselages.
With 44- to 48-inch wingspans, these
models could take inexpensive standardsize
servos, receiver, and battery pack.
They were covered with tough Solartex
fabric, constructed as one piece, and
strong enough to withstand a cartwheel
landing.
“We were doing business as Slope
Scale in 1985,” said Brian. “Paul, Judy,
Lesley (baby), Rachel, and I would go out
to dinner with the proceeds of our kit
sales.”
From the mid-1980s through the mid-
1990s Brian, Paul, and Gary Kawamura
designed and shipped kits for nine
warbirds, finding that the World War II
planforms looked good and worked well
for the kind of rock-and-roll flying these
pilots liked to do.
The designs included a Messerschmitt
Me 109, Bell Airacobra, North American
Mustang D model, Supermarine Spitfire,
Mitsubishi Zero, Grumman Hellcat,
Focke-Wulf Fw 190A, and Bede Aircraft
BD-5.
Brian also designed and molded, for his
own enjoyment, a Messerschmitt Me 262
Stormbird and a Boeing B-17 Flying
Fortress. Since then Brian, Carl Maas, and
the other members of the Inland Slope
Rebels (ISR) have molded an Embraer
Tucano and a Lockheed U-2 Spyplane,
both for ISR club projects.
A distinguishing characteristic of Slope
Scale and ISR designs is that they are
heavy. I had spent all my modeling life
trying to build light, but these sailplanes
did not follow that design philosophy.
Their 20- to 30-ounce and heavier wing
loadings were quite different from
anything I had experienced in soaring
flight before.
One reason is that these fliers in
Gliderland have serious lift on plenty of
days. If it’s not strong sea breezes coming
ashore at Point Fermin or Bluff Cove, it’s
Santa Anna winds at inland sites.
You’ve heard of Santa Anna winds,
right? They blow trucks off the road and
close highways. Well, these dudes fly in
’em, and we need heavy airplanes to stay
out in front of the hill in these wind
conditions.
Another reason why these sailplanes
are heavy is that they are built strong to
resist landing and crash damage.
“The two main places slope sailplanes
have critical damage after a crash is the
nose breaks off right in front of the wing
or the wing is shattered,” said Brian. “You
might as well have extra layers of
fiberglass in the nose as lead weight.”
Heavily built Slope Scale models use
basswood for the LEs, sometimes carving
an LE from a 1/2 x 3/4-inch basswood stick.
“If you can keep the damage from
penetrating the LE, the wing will survive,”
said Brian.
When Joe and I met Brian and Paul at
Soar Utah 1995 I asked how they got to be
such hot-shot fliers—especially in their
spectacular close-formation maneuvers.
“Paul and I worked near Palos Verdes
and both get out of work at 3:00,” replied
Brian “We flew together every day, five
days a week, for nearly three years.”
When Joe and I flew with Brian the next
time it was on our first visit to Point Fermin.
That site looked gnarly to us Cape Cod
sand-dune fliers. Peering down from the
edge, the cliff, the small beach, and the
rough ocean looked positively treacherous.
These guys were not only flying close
enough to the beach to see the models and
their shadows on the sand 200 feet below,
but they were flying touch-and-gos off the
waves. As you can imagine, this is a good
way to splat your airplane into saltwater.
“If you lose your sailplane, you build
another one during the week,” said Brian.
Joe asked Brian how many receivers he
had lost in the ocean. Brian gazed at the
horizon, mumbling to himself and
counting on his fingers. Four, he replied. I
vowed to myself then and there to worry
less about any given airframe and to
become more efficient at building.
I understand that “Laird” means “Lord”
in Scottish. The Brian Laird we are
fortunate to have with us in Slope Soaring
is an ace-of-the-base flier who has a gift
for aesthetic and effective aero design, has
unrelenting energy and enthusiasm for the
sport, and is willing to share any of it with
other fliers. This guy is truly cool. MA