Control Line: Speed
THE DAYTON OHIO Cold Cash Speed Bash was held September 7th and 8th, and that essentially ends my speed flying for this year. Nothing to do but build some new airplanes, put some new engines together, and machine some new jet heads. The Eastern FAI Speed Team Trials were held at Dayton the same weekend with two rounds flown each day. The Western Trials were held September 21 and 22, but I don't have much information except for the top speeds. The top fliers from the two contests were Carl Dodge at about 179 mph, Jim Nightingale, second at 171, John Newton at 170, and Bill Hughes, the alternate, at 161. We had six fliers at Dayton: Carl Dodge, Ed Gifford, Raul Diaz, Bill Hughes, Chris Montagino, and Bill Johanson.
'91 All American Nationals: CL Speed
"BOY, is that thing moving!" "What is it, a .15?" "Nah, it's just a 1/2A Speed job." "You're kidding!" That's just a sampling of the comments I heard while Bobby Fogg was setting a new Junior 1/2A Speed record with his .049 Shuriken-powered airplane at this year's Nationals. Monday morning opened with the scream of high-revving engines in 1/2A Proto and 1/2A Speed. These events have been dominated from the start by Cox Tee Dee engines, but lately new alternatives, both manufactured and home-built, have jumped to the forefront.
Control Line: Speed
NEXT AUGUST 12 is a notable date. That's when the Golden Anniversary Speed Contest will be held at the Whittier Narrows site in California. Chris Sackett, Editor and Publisher of Speed Times, the newsletter of the North American Speed Society, sent this information along with a copy of Volume 2 No. 2 April-June 1983, wherein he has documented the first Speed contest. The write-up was from the September, 1941 issue of The Model Craftsman magazine. Hugh Frankenfield (Allentown, Pennsylvania) sent it to Chris, and I had forgotten about it.
Control Line: Speed
I NEVER really stopped to realize just how many people read this column! Any place I go I meet modelers who comment about things I've written about, and I've received letters from others, RC fliers, racing people, free flighters, sport fliers, and speed fliers. Guess I'd better get my stuff together! My question about where speed contests started brought several responses from early days speed fliers all over this country and even from England. Letters came from Bill Caldwell in Dallas, Texas; J.D. Walter in Madeira, Ohio; Lloyd Zink in Hernando, Florida; Jon Simpson in Escondido, California; and Clarence Bull Jr. in Eugene, Oregon.
Control Line: Speed
"WHO NEEDS Speed?" "Speed is dying out!" "Who cares, anyway?" "It's too dangerous, so get rid of it." "There aren't enough Speed fliers left to bother with it." Such are the comments regularly heard from non-Speed fliers, RC fliers, and even some AMA potentates. I thought I'd dream up a few items that might show the benefits of this special mania that has such a hold on some of us. Let's start by going back to what I call the golden age of modeling-the 1950s. There were a couple thousand entries at every Nats. Free Flight was dominant, racing, Speed, and other CL events were well attended, Scale and Indoor drew pretty good numbers, and RC was still in its infancy.
