Free Flight: Duration
THE MONTREAL STOP. It's funny how you go for 10 years without anyone mentioning a particular subject, then you get three letters in the same mail asking about it! So it has been with the Montreal stop. The version of the Montreal stop shown in the drawing is one developed by Roger Gregory for his Wakefield Rubber model. Roger has a similar but much lighter version-it uses a bent sheet-aluminum hub rather than milled-out bar stock-for his Mulvihill models. The blade attachment is one that Roger has been using for years which has proven to be reliable. Roger says that the whole shebang can be made with an electric drill and hand tools! Many of us might have a bit of difficulty doing it that way. The basic Montreal stop features of Roger's, however, can be readily adapted to the bar-stock hub sold by NFFS Supplies.
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
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
OUTDOOR HLG record broken. By now, you probably know that Bill Blanchard's record, of some eight years' standing, has been broken. Bill broke his own record so many times I've lost count, and he put it up there where it was something worth shooting at. Bill sort of dropped out of competition after winning both Indoor and Outdoor HLG in the Open age classes at the 1977 Nats; not much left for encores after that. Meanwhile, several fliers, particularly in Southern California, have been making a specific effort to break Bill's record. Notable among these is Jim Lueken, who in his first year of flying, and as a Senior, copped the Tulsa Glue Dobbers Trophy for high time in Outdoor HLG at the 1977 Nats, even beating Blanchard's Open score. Since that time, Jim has acquired a truckload of trophies in the event.
Free Flight: Duration
REPORTS of my death (as a columnist) have been greatly exaggerated. I've received a number of letters that start off with "Now that you're no longer writing your column . . ." and such. Not true! If we told you once, we told you a thousand times, I'm still writing this column-but only once every two months. My alternate, Harry Murphy, leans more toward the gas-engined stuff, I lean more toward rubber-power and sport-type stuff. Both of us have a keen interest in all aspects of Free Flight but have insufficient time to pursue many avenues that we would like to. So, don't send all of your good material to Harry; I need input from you, too!
