CL Speed
SURPRISE! When I first heard about the '89 Nats being held over at the Tri-Cities area of Washington State, I kind of figured that it might just be a small local affair with a few long-distance participants. As it turned out, the overall entry was at about the usual level for the Nats of recent years, but the Speed entry was unusually high at over 130, accounting for a full third of all 385 Control Line entries. It was great to see so many Speedsters make the trek all the way up to the Northwest corner of the continent. We had people from Florida, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa as well as from most of the Western states and Western provinces of Canada, thereby making the first-ever Northwest Nats truly national in character.
Blondie
Anyone should be able to fly .21 Proto Speed and be competitive. The speeds average around 125 mph, which is no problem to fly on 60-foot lines (and the models take off and land easily). At the 1996 Nats at Muncie, the North American Speed Society (NASS) conducted an unofficial .21 Proto Speed event. Of the 20 entrants, 14 showed; all got flights, and the lineup of these beautiful models was something to behold. Blondie is now in its third season of competition and is one of the most consistent models around. It has won four first-place trophies and is the holder of the NASS Northwest record at 125.74 mph. The model uses many local hobby shop items; sources for special parts are included at the end of this article. Aside from the Darp speed pan, construction is balsa, with a little maple thrown in.
Wildfire
MANY OF YOU will look over this design and ask yourselves how a model airplane ever came to look like this; and more to the point, why? The asymmetric Control Line model has been around since the 1940s, but it never gained popularity until it was discovered that there was much speed to be gained through the use of a longer inboard wing to cover up the two control lines used in FAI Speed. Chuck Schuette, the current AMA FAI class record holder, was one of the first to utilize asymmetry, and it caught on internationally in the mid-70s when two Hungarians took it to the limit with wings as long as five feet! The outboard asymmetric sidewinder model, as it is now known, is much more complicated to build than the conventional AMA-style Speed model, but all else being equal, it offers a three to four mph advantage.
