Dave McDonald

ONCE AGAIN, Control Line Racing at the Nats was an outstanding success. Entries were up, as was the excitement level because of close racing. NCLRA Fox Racing: Julio Isidro of Portugal provided a technological advance: take-apart construction. Transporting these airplanes as luggage from Portugal necessitated this. Most of the airplanes were the Mongoose Fox Racer, with a few Vultures, and others. Tim Stone brought a flying-wing airplane called the Foxbat. The introduction of this model brought about a protest, with the airplane being ruled not to be in the spirit of the event. (Unfortunately for the protesters, Tim's backup airplane was much faster than the flying wing. In fact, Tim ran what would have been a record-setting time in the final.)

Here is a simple, effective fast-fill device that will work for a suction-feed fuel system, and with some very minor modifications, will work on a pressure system. The lineage of the design is unknown. Bob Whitney provided me with a filler very similar to this, and further modifications have produced the version seen here. Many of these filler systems used a Glo-Bee clamp ring, and the top portion of a Cox .049 cylinder. This design is similar in appearance, but is dimensionally different. (These dimensions are what I used for a particular application; you may wish to change the dimensions to suit your particular needs. I am currently working on a slightly smaller design for a Scale Racing application.) This filler may appear to be difficult to build; it is not. The first one is always more difficult than the second, third, etc. You should be able to build one of these in an hour or so. Simple machining is required to manufacture this design; this filler was made almost entirely using a small lathe. Only one part requires some mill work, and that may be accomplished using a drill press and mill vise.