Free Flight: Duration
TWIN PUSHERS. Twin-pusher canards dominated Outdoor Free Flight for a quarter century, until the early Thirties, for the simple reason that they won! Other configurations were tried, but failed. Why? Perhaps it was simply a matter of everyone following the beaten rut. Indoor single-prop tractors were well understood by then, but the decalage used was like 8 or 10 degrees, which must have put the CG somewhere near the leading edge, OK perhaps for Indoor flying, but far too "loopy" for Outdoor success. (Outdoor models are much happier with small decalage, big tails, long distances between the wing and tail, and then necessarily, a CG position a long ways back from the leading edge, and perhaps even behind the trailing edge.) It would be interesting to trace the transition from twin-pushers to single-tractors in Outdoor competition, but I'll have to leave that up to guys who
Free Flight: Duration
IF YOU WERE TO ASK what's the handiest, most often-used, most indispensable tool in my messy, totally disorganized shop, I'd have to say it's my "jug," it gives me instant, one-hand access to a virtually unlimited supply of Meuser's Patent Elixir, Thinner, and Universal Solvent for cleaning or softening dope brushes, or diluting whatever it is I'm using that needs a bit of diluting. "One-hand" is the key-word; no monkeybiz of laying down what I'm holding in my obverse hand in order to use both hands to unscrew the lid from a gallon can. And since the Elixir is an adhoc combination of every solvent and thinner known to modern or ancient man or beast, it will dilute or dissolve 'most anything in town, except perhaps the glass jar that contains it, and I'd swear that sometimes even that gets a mite limp!
Free Flight: Duration
THE SHADDO KNOWS: It is no great secret that most successful designs are the result of an evolutionary process, a continuing program of eliminating the weak aspects and refining further the desirable. John Sites of Rockville, MD has traveled this design-evolution road in developing his Hand-Launched Glider, Shaddo. Having built 35 to 40 of the buggers over a five-year development period, even Lamont Cranston would agree that John's Shaddo is now a fully developed competition glider. Shaddo's heritage harks back to Ron Wittman's Supersweep, itself a product of a lengthy evolution. John began by adapting the Indorr record-holding design to be suitable for outdoor work, flying both 22- and 24-in. wingspans. Several development problems were encountered early on, such as the inability to achieve a high altitude on launch.
Free Flight: Duration
MORE THAN you ever wanted to know about gussets. Gussets are those teeny-weeny balsa triangles glued into corners between Part A and Part B. Without them, the glue joints of our Free Flight structures are the weakest parts. That isn't necessarily bad; gussets, and the glue required to hold them, weigh a bit, and adding a full complement of gussets can easily double or triple the time required to build a model's framework. Without gussets, there is often crushing of the wood at the joint caused by the shrinkage force exerted by the covering, and that promotes unsightly crows-foot wrinkles in the covering at the joints. Avoiding those wrinkles might not ensure your winning more contests, but it might make you a lot happier about losing!
Free Flight: Duration
RIB TEMPLATE FOLLOW-UP. Since I presented the non-skid devices for rib templates in the February 1982 issue, several others have come to my attention. O.C. Stewart, using templates of 1/32-in. plywood or aluminum, puts two dabs of rubber cement on the template. One dabbing will do for several ribs. Any cement that remains on the ribs can be removed simply by rubbing with the finger. Cyrus Stow and Tom Sanders suggest placing the template, which has to be aluminum for this work, on a soft wood surface, then hammering a nail through it at a couple of strategic locations. The resulting burr, then, bites into the balsa rib stock. This doesn't provide neat pinholes for aligning the ribs prior to stacking, as the RomakMeuser scheme does, but that step is probably unnecessary inasmuch as the completed structure will-or should be-sanded before covering, anyhow.
