Control Line: Racing
I'VE been writing this column for a little over five years now, and in that time, it has often been a lot of fun to write and has often been somewhat difficult. During that whole time, I've tried to be informative, witty, smart, whatever a columnist is "supposed" to be. Sometimes I have succeeded, probably more often I have not. But in any case, every two months I sit down, usually at the last minute, and crank out a column that has some remote bearing on Control Line Racing. Each column is usually made up of information that has come to me in some way over the previous couple of months. I do get material to use occasionally from readers, but mostly what you see written here is my own words from my own experiences.
Control Line: Racing
THE last couple of months have been very busy for me, and while the "busy" has been associated with model airplanes, it hasn't been just racing, my real first choice. As most of you know, every two years the Control Line World Championships are held somewhere in the world. This year, 1980, they will be held in Czestochowa, Poland, in July. The World Champs has four events: Speed, Aerobatics, Team Race, and Combat. Many countries all around the world send teams there, including the United States.
Control Line: Racing
WELL, first off, there is this badly sunburned nose. And then the lips that are so chapped you really do want to keep your mouth shut (no mean feat!). And all this just from a simple weekend of flying model airplanes. Yup, flying in January! In Arizona! At Buckeye, the Southwestern Regionals, where else? I had the chance to go again this year. And it was as last year, one of the most enjoyable meets around. This year the competition was even better than last in nearly all the events with a lot better AMA event competition. This meet is of such stature that it is attracting many of the big name fliers. Gillott, Ballard, and Garner to name three that are really into AMA events, plus those who live in the area who you would expect to be in Buckeye: Shew/Pardue from Albuquerque, Klause and Charlie Johnson from So. California, Russ Brown and Mike Gale from Colorado. Of course, there were a couple of Texas fliers that "showed up," too.
AMA Nats Lincoln '79: CL Racing
THE Nats site was an old air base that the city of Lincoln uses for their airport, but which leaves a quite large area on the west side unused. And this is where they held this year's Nats. Control-line competition was on the far west edge of an old ramp, while RC was held further north, and generally in the middle of the available concrete. All during the Nats operation, full-size operations were in progress across the field with regular commercial flights arriving and departing. And quite often there were departures and arrivals of military jets, F4s and F5s in abundance. Enough to make shivers run up and down your spine just watching them take off with full throttle noise and smoke! There was even a B-57 that visited the base early in the week. Quite an interesting sight. Racing started out with a bang on Monday with Open Goodyear. The overall contestant level was about the same this year as last in Lake Charles, and about the same as at Winston-Salem in June, with about 20-30 Open entrants in each event. It was quite obvious this year that a lot of people have been working on the Goodyears to get them going faster with a fair number of sub 15-second planes in evidence. The fastest plane in the field belonged to Tim Gillott, which was running quite commonly in the very low 14s in practice. This year, though, as contrasted to last year, the speeds were up, but the reliability was definitely down. Last year in Lake Charles, it took a qualifying time nearly into the two-minute range to qualify, whereas this year the cutoff was around 3:18 or so. In the finals, this reporter was fortunate enough to turn a good time of 5:46 early, and then stand around and watch as all of those who should have turned better times didn't for one reason or another.
Control Line: Racing
I KNEW it when I wrote it. I should have kept my big mouth shut! Here I am with a good thing going and I have to open up my yap and spoil the whole thing. You probably wonder what all that is about. Well, I'll tell you the sad tale. A couple of issues back, I wrote about the success I had last year flying Goodyears in contests around the country. Some pretty good times and a few wins at some contests. I then related as to how I was running a small-crank Rossi and preferred it to the later, larger crank versions. And that I had not to that time ever broken one. Well, I might as well have gone out in the shop and taken a hammer to that engine because destiny was upon me as soon as that issue hit the stand. That's right, you guessed it, the next contest I blew up a Rossi. Went to the Southwestern Regionals in Buckeye, Arizona and really did a number on it. Had a rod gall on the crank pin causing the rod to lock tight to the crank. The sudden stop caused the crank to break directly in front of the crank web. Oh, my, how that hurt! But I shoulda known, I should have suspected it. Damn. . . .
