Control Line: Racing
LET'S talk about forces, in particular, the forces which act on a racing model in flight. We need to state a couple of laws of physics and then try to see how they apply to a model airplane in flight. Old Isaac Newton was a smart old cuss. He figured out some basic physical laws that really explained a lot of things. In particular, there are three laws of mechanics that he stated: 1. Motion at a constant velocity is the natural behavior of bodies. 2. The force acting on a body is equal to the mass of the body, times its acceleration. 3. Whenever one object exerts a force on a second object, the second exerts an equal force in the opposite direction on the first.
Control Line: Racing
THIS column will be in your hands sometime either late in November or early December, just in time to start thinking of the Christmas-time events. The contest season is over, in many places for several months. Winter is the time that we all should be spending getting everything together for next year. Of course, we all spend our winters profitably that way, don't we? Some parts of the country are not blessed with that great and glorious season called "building season," some people that we know have to fly all year around! Poor people! They just don't know what they are missing by not having to be inside with the weather on the outside being so awful!
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
A COUPLE of months back I reported on the contest in Arizona, at Buckeye, the Southwest Regionals. The big event there, and at most of the contests in the Southwest lately, has been the Big Goodyear event which I described in that column. If you recall, I made the point that this event, while extremely popular right now, will probably follow the same pattern of all the other racing events that we've had, a very active, very competitive beginning, followed by a gradual decline in popularity as the performance levels go up and the pros start to take over. This was evidenced in Big Goodyear at Phoenix by the winning (and currently still the record) time turned in by Joe Klause with a Tune O.S. Max 35. Recently, there appeared in Patty's Pinkie, the Control Line Flyer, a letter from one Mr. Ron Duly, a noted competitor in Southern California. Ron has some interesting thoughts that I would like to pass on to you.
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. . . .
