P. Blommaart

YESTERDAY, a friend told me the following story: "Model aircraft with electric motors will go up very slowly-at the edge of their performance. After the batteries are dead, the model will be at some 350 ft., and will come down after a couple of circles above our field." This had been my opinion about electric flight for quite some years. There had been very little change, and I thought that it was all a matter of batteries. Then I visited one of the international contests in Belgium. A completely different picture was presented! Motorgliders went up within one minute to 900 ft., and the multi-channel models flew the same pattern as our .60 combustion-engine models did a few years ago. Noiseless Pylon models flew the standard AMA Formula I course at 100 mph in 120 sec. or less, and the Stand-off Scale models did their thing in front of very serious judges.