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.
CL Racing
THE real story of Racing at the 1980 Nats must include some items other than who won what, and what equipment they used. First, there is the story of the Nats site itself. The airbase at Wilmington, OH, is an active, commercial field with some old, abandoned runways in addition to the active portion. Upon arriving on Sunday, the racing competitors found that the circles had been laid out on one of the abandoned runways, not bad if the runways are in good condition. But at this site, the runway was only 148 ft. wide, on which you must put a 152-ft. circle for racing. The circle was painted off the edges of the runway into the grass on each side. You were flying over the corn on one side and over the soy beans on the other.
Control Line: Racing
I HOPE you have read the report published a couple of months ago in Model Aviation about the CL World Championships held this past summer in Czestochowa, Poland. I attended this contest, and feel some additional comments are in order. First, the flying site in Poland was a competitor's dream, but was a nightmare for practice, there was no place to practice where flying could be done in safety, either for the modelers and their equipment or the spectators. As Doc Jackson mentioned in his general report on the Champs, the practice circles for TR were on a paved area near a high-rise housing development. The paved area was not quite large enough to put in a circle, so the organizers moved the curb back about four feet in an arc and laid in a little temporary paving.
Control Line: Racing
A PERENNIAL PROBLEM is where to get the specialty equipment that we need to fly competitive racing. Since most of your local hobby shops don't even understand that model airplanes were meant to fly on wires, let alone race, we shouldn't even expect them to carry the little things we need. So, it was with a great deal of pleasure that I recently got a letter with a product list from a new source, Dick Tyndall in Highland Springs, VA. Dick has been one of those few of you out there who occasionally send a picture or two, and to find out he was producing some specialty items was especially pleasing.
Control Line: Racing
IT SEEMS THAT some things we do in our racing setups are so "normal" that we forget just what it is we are doing. A case in point is the following information that I'm taking from a 1976 issue of the Duke City Dope Sheet, the club publication of the Albuquerque, NM Thunderbirds. This short article was originally authored by Phil Shew and is titled "Landing Gear Setup."
