Flexible Soldering Jig
WHEN IT COMES to holding all the parts in place for a delicate soldering job so often necessary to our hobby, no one that I know has enough hands. Even if you enlist the aid of your semi-cooperative spouse and your two oldest offsprings, eventually everyone's thumbs get in everyone else's way. Thrusting a hot soldering iron or torch into this particular melee will very quickly bring you right back to where you started-trying to hold everything together by yourself without dropping hot solder into your lap. Anticipating just such a struggle in soldering together the landing gear on my latest project, I came up with the gizmo shown here. Certainly I take no credit for originality, because I'm sure I've seen such an idea sketched some place or other.
CGS Hawk
THE TRIP from model building, to hang gliders, to powered flight, is becoming a rather familiar one nowadays, particularly with the advent of the ultralight aircraft industry. In recent years, commercial aircraft have become so complex that individual designers are only rarely given credit for their work, a circumstance in direct contrast to the early days of aviation when it was the individual that counted. The age of the ultralight has spawned what Walter J. Boyne calls "the second Golden Age of Aviation. As inflation and complexity hiked up the price of all aircraft, including the smallest Piper Cub types, would-be pilots and engineers began to seek their own solution in homebuilt aircraft, hang gliders, ultralights, and in some instances, the restoration of old classics. As a result, one finds reappearing the phenomenon of individual genius imprinted upon design."
Reno 1984 Nats: FF Outdoor Glider
TRICKY was what it was-very tricky. Picking good Glider air at Reno required a large amount of expertise, all the visual and scientific information a flier could gather, and a large dose of plain luck. The problem wasn't in detecting the thermals. Cattail fluffies, mylar streamers, and thermal sniffer needles all went up with equal abandon to be followed shortly by a horde of Gliders. Unfortunately, more times than not, everything came down just as easily-short of a max. There was something about the nature of the lift that proved much more troublesome to Gliders than to any other type of Free Flight ship. The thermals just didn't seem to build well below 200 ft., where Glider launches typically occur. Perhaps it was a combination of the nearby mountains on the east and the prevailing westerly winds that caused the low-level lift to dissipate as it got closer to the slope. Whatever the case, Gliders just seemed to have more trouble centering in strong upward air than the higher-climbing ships in Power and Rubber (although there were notable exceptions, particularly in A-2).
Reno 1984 Nats: FF Outdoor Rubber
RUBBER-POWERED competition at the 1984 version of the Nats ushered in some of the best individual contests in recent memory. Wakefield (FIB) set the pattern that was to be followed throughout the week by all four Rubber events, that of closely-bunched scores, tactical flying, and hard-to-pick air. Hank Cole showed the way in Wake by dropping only 10 seconds in all seven rounds to finish with 1,260 seconds. Using an electronic thermal sniffer with an attached recording drum, Hank studiously picked air right into first place. Joe Foster, another prominent name in Wake, was close behind at 1,203. Roger Gregory, flying an elegantly-crafted red-and-white ship with semi-elliptical tips, was third at 1,193. Best Junior was Dane Jensen who finished eleventh, overall. Best Senior was Dane's brother, Blake, who totalled a very respectable 876.
Reno 1984 Nats: FF Power
RUMORS. Each announcement of the newest Nats location, AMA's annual traveling road show, spawns its own set of rumors, hearsay, folk tales, and horse hockey. Ranging from Louisiana fire ants the size of dock rats to East Coast smog so dense you couldn't see a max if you could make one, each year the rumor mill keeps ginning along. This year was no different, with high-altitude concerns, inaccessibility of the flying site, creepy crawlers on the ground, and flights over the Sierra Nevada foothills being common topics of conventional wisdom prior to the contest.
