Free Flight: Duration
GIPAC II. At this writing, the Second Great International Paper Airplane Contest has come and (by the time you read this) gone. Entries were to have been mailed in by May 1-my last batch would have taken a bit of superhuman effort on the part of the Postal Service to make it-and judging will have been completed and the winners announced by May 28. The preceeding one was in 1967; that's 18 years ago, although it seems like about half-past yesterday. Eighteen-year intervals seem about right for such things. I don't think I'll care much when the Third rolls around. The First GIPAC got something like 12,000 entries. I doubt if the Second will have gotten a third of that. Publicity wasn't all that great.
Free Flight: Duration
HOW do you make a paper airplane fly far? Easy. Make a fin-stabilized missile, make it heavy, minimize the drag, specify that it be thrown hard and high, and hope that it isn't disqualified for not being a more conventional airplane. Simple. It would seem incredible that out of the 4,000 who entered the 1985 meet and the 11,000 who entered the first one, I was the only one who doped that out. (I'm sure I wasn't.) Perhaps I put the idea into practice a bit better or was a bit less unlucky than the others. Actually, my goal was something a little different from a simple ballistic missile or arrow. If an arrow had been the goal, I'd have omitted the front fin, and reduced the size of the rear ones in order to minimize drag.
Free Flight: Duration
BIPLANE Ornithopters are OK by me. A flippant remark I made in the October 1985 column appeared to indicate that I proposed banning biplane Ornithopters from competition. I certainly am not in favor of such a ban, as I see biplanes (and tandems and canards, for that matter) as legitimate forms of Ornithopter. However, one might consider adding an event limited to monoplanes, now that biplanes have taken over the Ornithopter competition scene, in order to give those interested in developing the potential of that simpler form a viable place to live.
Free Flight: Duration
LET'S SEE, it must have been about 1933 when I first attended a model airplane contest. That would have put me at age 11: It seems about right. It was what we would now call a slope soaring contest; I don't know what they called it then. I remember these guys tossing their models from the top of a hill, and then running like the dickens to retrieve them. I don't know whether the name of the game was Distance or Flight Duration. After the meet, I found one of the models just sitting on the trail! There was no name or address on it; I made no terrific attempt to find the owner. I never flew it, but I sure drooled over it a lot. The memory is dim, but I distinctly recall the model having continuously-curved dihedral. The wing was stick-and-tissue.
Free Flight: Duration
SLIPS that pass in the night. If you were wondering why I made such a big deal out of having discovered a bunch of 1981 NFFS Symposium Reports, which we still have in plentiful supply, and pointing out that you could buy one for $2 over the regular price, well . . . I was talking about the 1971 issue. The price, however, was correct: $12 plus $2 P&H to anywhere in the world and lesser nearby planets. Order from NFFS Pubs, c/o Fred Terzian, 4858 Moorpark Ave., San Jose, CA 95129. In a previous column, I mentioned that John Oldenkamp had been using the plastic bags that are available in supermarket produce departments as a covering material for outdoor rubber-power models. But, it turns out, most of the bags I've seen are plain old polyethelene and aren't worth a lot. The stuff John is using is much tougher. He is getting a bunch of the stuff and plans to peddle it off to Free Flighters. Check with him at 3331 Adams Ave., San Diego, CA 92116.
