Rain Crow
DO YOU HAVE an urge to get outside with some guys of like interest for some exhilarating activity related to flight? And that without having had first to invest a mint in cash, or spend many hours at the work table. Build this little jewel and happily satisfy that yearning. At the same time you'll be creating a quite competitive flyer too. This model won a few club contests. Of my five or six gliders of different designs, Rain Crow is definitely superior. It displays a beautiful pull-out-or you might say recovery-from a viciously hard righthanded launch, followed by a stable left-circling glide. Its glide is, in fact, as stable or more so than any glider I've ever flown, particularly in windy weather.
Rain Crow 2
THIS DESIGN is probably the best-gliding HLG you've seen in quite a spell-that is if overheard comments mean anything. When thrown to altitude, it subsequently displays a very smooth transition to the glide, a combination resulting in continuing contest success by those flying the Rain Crow II design. This is a refinement of the Rain Crow I which appeared in the August 1975 MA. If memory serves correctly, Rain Crow II has won nine out of 10 club contests held over the past two years prior to submission of this article for publication. HL Glider fliers in the Brainbusters Club now fly this design. A significant feat of this plane in the hands of Paul Altenhoff was the winning of the HL Glider event of the 1981 Eastern States Championships.
Airmaster Peanut
DESIGNED by Clyde Cessna in the early 1940s, the Cessna Airmaster was a four-place plane for the air-minded public. At that time it was considered a superbly efficient machine. It boasted a maximum cruising speed of 145 mph or 165 mph when powered, respectively, by a 145-hp or 165-hp Warner Scarab radial engine. The airplane could be equipped with either of these. To achieve 1 mph for each hp was a somewhat remarkable performance for the time. Though the plane was exceptionally efficient even by today's standards, it had two drawbacks: The pilot's view was restricted by the big radial engine, and the Airmaster was somewhat prone to ground looping-probably because the vertical tail was too small.
