Free Flight: Sport and Scale
LUDDITES AND CYBER-BEAVERS: There seem to be two emerging groups of Free Flight (FF) Scalers: The Luddites (named for Ned Ludd's machinery-smashing followers from the early days of the Industrial Revolution) contend that time spent on the computer is time away from the building board and the flying field. The Cyber-Beavers treasure their computers and fingertip access to plans, online catalogs, research, pictures, worldwide correspondence with other FF Scalers, and news. My heart is with the Luddites, but my head is on line with the Beavers. If you don't own a computer, many colleges, libraries, and copy stores have them for use.
Free Flight: Sport and Scale
It has been 20 years since I took up this column from my good friend Von Rottensox (Ralph Kuenz). Not only does time fly when one is having fun, but one tends to forget, in the never-ending search for new things to write, that many newcomers to Free Flight (FF) Scale were not reading what we wrote 10 or 15 years ago; a few useful hints might need to be repeated. After a good deal of thought about what I would like to know if I was starting this fascinating hobby again, I came up with these: 1) Get your hands on the Cottage Wings resource guide, which lists almost everything you'll need to get into modeling! (See below.) Get a beginner's book from one of the sources listed; the Bill McCombs and Don Ross books are "must haves."
Free Flight: Sport and Scale
Stop In The Name Of Reduced Drag! In the December San Diego Scale Staffel newsletter, Tom Arnold wrote of his shock in learning that Red Boyles' Tony, which won many mass-launch events (including one at the FAC Nationals), had a non-freewheeling propeller! Tom quoted Red as saying, "Freewheelers never seemed to help. This stays up just as long with a stopped prop. so why bother?" What to make of this world-shaking statement? Whenever the prop stops on my Rubber model, the relative wind wants to spin the aircraft on its longitudinal axis, inducing a dropped right-hand wingtip with the subsequent loss of lift and a spiral down to earth!
Free Flight: Sport and Scale
Free Flight Scale models fly away, get banged up, and are destroyed too quickly, leaving you with little more than vague memories of how fantastic the airplanes looked when they came off the board. If you are serious about this hobby, it is hard not to become involved with photography as a way to preserve good memories, and as a medium to share your models with others via letters, newsletters, and magazines. I highly recommend preserving your little gems on film; the pictures will be around long after the models are gone, and maybe you'd like to get a picture published. Branching out to taking pictures of other modelers and their airplanes follows. If you have access to a good 35mm single-lens reflex camera, you are ready to go! Shooting indoors allows much control of lighting and background, and there is no wind to blow your small models around. A table near a window can bring in light, and a reflector (an aluminized "pop-open" automobile windshield sunshade or foil-covered cardboard) can be positioned on the side of the model farthest from the window to reflect the light onto the model. Use a "slower" film, such as Fuji ISO 100; it allows longer exposure at a smaller lens opening to bring all parts of the model into focus.
Now You're Talking: Soap Box
I received a letter from an old friend who is a model plans dealer, and it has opened up a topic many modelers do not want to think about: "piracy." Some plans he was selling (legally) were being copied and sold without so much as a "by your leave." The subject was already on my mind from a conversation I had last year with Ed Packard of the venerable Cleveland Model Supply, who has complained of the same thing for many years. I put the piracy issue out for discussion via the "FF Sport & Scale" column and received a landslide of feedback, much of it quite emotional. The term "can of worms" was used by a number of respondents, and I was chastised for even exposing the issue!
