Free Flight: Scale-Sport
TWA of the Month: This month's thermalworthy airplane is the Zero with which "Iron Mike" Midkiff did five minutes and a mile cross-country in a relatively windy thermal. The ship was an R. Peck design with an 18" wing span, a 7 1/2 × 16" pitch prop, two loops of 1/8" rubber 22" long, and a weight of just over an ounce minus the motor. Mike built it with landing gear down, which seemed to actually help performance! The windier it got, the better the plane flew. A large amount of down and right thrust was needed due to the short nose. The only way the plane would fly was left-left. Have you had a scale job which proved thermal-worthy? If so, send me the vital statistics to share with others who are just dying to lose models! One of the secrets of a plane which will thermal is a good free-wheeling prop. "Iron Mike" has this to say about it:
Free Flight: Scale Sport
FLIGHTMASTER Cliff McBaine writes to say that our information on freewheelers lacked one very important item, a small bushing or washer assembly soldered to the prop shaft behind the prop to take the load of the wound or tensioned rubber. This allows the prop to float free on the prop shaft as soon as the driving force is exhausted (see sketches). Care should be taken to keep dimension "A" as small as possible so as to limit the movement shown as dimension "B." You do not want to have the 90º bend of the shaft to miss engaging the escapement or interfering with the "belt buckle." This certainly is a great idea which allows you to keep the slack up in your rundown braided motor. Cliff prefers "pre-tensioned" to "braided," since the Korda method of true braiding is something else again. Having no pretensions to great knowledge in this area, I'll let Cliff describe his method:
Free Flight: Scale Sport
ONE of the photos in the April issue was unintentionally left as a mystery ship! Those of you who noticed the words "Georgias Special" on the fuselage may know what it was. Well, after whetting your curiosity, here's the lowdown. The "Gorgeous Georgias" was scaled up 1 in./ft. from the 1931 Flying and Glider Manual (reprinted by the E.A.A.). Steve "Busto" Buso of the Mid-Hudson Modelmasters is the builder, and did it up at only one ounce. With a 106 sq. in. wing (27 1/2 ft. span), Steve decided to use what we sometimes call the "Hungerford" method of slicing trussed ribs from a sandwich of balsa pieces to get light, strong and scale-like structure. Steve gets top scale points with this little beauty every time he floats 'er out. Homebuilts are good subjects as they can be built stick-for-stick without weighing a ton.
Free Flight: Scale Sport
SUPERSCALE always draws a crowd at the judging table and on the flying ground. Finely-done structure and loads of detail are magnificent to see and many modelers love to do models of this type. The joy of seeing a model in the air doing what it was originally designed to do well has to be one of the most outstanding artistic experiences. A good friend of mine, when asked his opinion on enlarging the "stand-off" scale judging circle replied, "Why don't you guys just build better models?" How scale a model is will always be a matter of personal taste and reflects the builder's abilities and a mental image of what the plane should be when it is finished. Someone like Bill Caldwell, flying thousands of flights by himself out in the middle of Texas, is not going to make the same model that will someone who wants the glory of being a NATS trophy winner. The model will be done a lot differently. As there is really no upper limit to the superscale ship which could in theory be constructed of aluminum, have all working instruments, retracts, etc., the real question facing scale builders is how non-scale shall one go and still not be out of the category?
Free Flight: Scale Sport
SCALE 80 is the catchy little slogan of the Ottawa World Champs coming up next summer. A great deal of pressure is mounting for the inclusion of a FF scale event such as took place along with the 1978 Woodvale Internats. Although the principal site, adjacent to a "live" runway precludes FF activity near the RC and UC area, other more "primitive" sites have been proposed. This should delight most FF scale modelers who usually prefer tall grass to asphalt, and who like the more relaxed atmosphere anyway. Bill Hannan and Bob Underwood of the AMA's scale branch called A.S.A. (Association of Scale Aeromodellers . . . formerly known as N.A.S.A.) have been quite active in promoting the event. A.S.A. not only pushes scale from the competition point of view, but is deeply involved in making scale data more accessible. Jamie Gielens' compilation of scale sources went out to all members this year and made the $5.00 yearly membership fee seem well worth it. If you'd like to be a part of A.S.A., the man to write is Bob Underwood, 4109 Concord Oaks Dr., St Louis, MO 63128.
