Sal Fruciano

I RETURNED to competitive Free Flight flying in 1983 (after an 18-year layoff!) and quickly found some facts of life that I somehow thought would never occur. Item one was my loss of skill through inactivity. Construction techniques which had been easy, second-nature abilities suddenly had to be relearned and reacquired. Too many thumbs and elbows! But persistence and practice managed to take care of these shortcomings with the passage of time. Even more disconcerting was item two, the racing ahead of technology. Design and building techniques had changed considerably. Airfoils were thinner. The last Wakefield I had built in the early Fifties still had a 10%-thick airfoil. Wings were now of longer span, and stabs were smaller, thinner, and much lighter.