Free Flight: Indoor
AN INCREDIBLE EXPERIENCE: Indoor HLG's need quiet air for maximum times, right? Picture a 28-ft. room about 8 feet larger each way than a basketball court, with six gaping air-conditioning ducts pointing down and dumping torrents of air into the room. Anywhere in the room, one feels buffeted by variable air currents. Is this any place to set a new HLG record? Stan Stoy, whose home is in Woodridge, Illinois, worked last summer at General Dynamics in Ft. Worth, deliberately chose the site described above to try for the Cat. I Open HLG record-and succeeded with time to spare. A number of spectators and AMA officials watched in amazement as Stan's tiny featherweight glider bobbed and bounced through the turbulence to rack up flight times much better than average for such a site under ideal conditions. That's not just occasional flights either. Seldom was a flight below 25 seconds, while many exceeded 35 seconds.
Free Flight: Indoor
CONTEST Season Underway: The South West Ohio Free Flighters (SWOFF) kicked off the indoor season for the Midwest with a contest on October 30. The site, the Union Terminal in Cincinnati, Ohio, is a domed building with 105¢ maximum ceiling, which is one of the highest ceilings in the area. Perhaps, other Halloween activities were a reason for fairly low attendance, but the contestants who showed up didn't lack for quality. Bucky Servaites won HLG with 103.0 seconds, Jim Miller won Easy B with 13:01.6 (as times soar, Easy B gets less easy?), Junior Mike Van Gorder beat both his father and Jim Miller in Novice Pennyplane with a record flight of 10:08.6, and Walt Van Gorder won Manhattan Cabin with 7:47.0. In Peanut Scale, Jim Miller's Fike trounced Martin Richardson's Mosquito and Jim Miller's J-3 Cub.
Free Flight: Indoor
FOLLOW-UP: A couple of columns back, Stan Stoy's controversial HLG flights in very high turbulence were reported. By the time that issue hit the stands, a number of things had happened. First, some HLG fliers protested the flights, and FF Contest Board Chairman Joe Boyle expressed an opinion that the flights were illegal in spite of careful supervision by a number of AMA officials. Ultimately, the matter was referred to the Contest Board for a vote, which upheld the record. Then, in early December, 1977, Stan's new, slightly larger Coot set a two-flight total of 79 4/5 seconds to exceed the same record his controversial flights beat. The new mark was set in dead calm air, in a St. Louis, Mo., site, where the high temperature for the day was 50ºF. Outside, the weather was cloudy and 30ºF. Later in January, 1978, Stan requested that his turbulent air record be withdrawn. His reasons were (quoted from Stan's letter to Frank Ehling, Technical Director of AMA):
Free Flight: Indoor
COME FLY YOUR MODELS! The Third NIMAS International Record Trials (THNIRT for short) is being tentatively planned for June 23-25, 1978. This highly enjoyable indoor contest is once again being set up for the almost unbelievable Atrium at Northwood Institute, West Baden, Indiana. The contest format, which has been used before, is a mixture of record challenges and more standard indoor competition. In the record challenges, all entrants pit their models against the existing AMA record for the model class. The flier's score is the ratio of his recorded time to the record time, and the highest ratio wins. For example, if the record is 10 minutes and the flight time is 11 minutes, the score is 11/10 or 1.1. In practice, the score has been expressed in %, so this score would be 110%.
Free Flight: Indoor
INDOOR State of the Art-The Midwest: Thanks to the activity of several model clubs in the central U.S., indoor contest activity during last winter was plentiful. Even with the extra-cold winter which threatened to close some sites during the fuel shortage, St. Louis and Chicago area indoor fliers had four or five monthly meets and fun-fly sessions during the "indoor season." Six clubs in the Great Lakes area sponsored indoor sessions and contests: Calumet Modelers, Bong Eagles, Illinois Model Aero Club, Central Indiana Aeromodelers, and Chicago Aeronauts. In the St. Louis area, the Thermaleers and the McDonnell-Douglas Free Flight Clubs account for the activity.
