Control Line: Scale
Bill Boss
Rules Change Proposals
By the time you receive and read this column we will be about half way through the rules-change cycle for the 1988–89 rule book. According to the Rules Change Procedure schedule, you should have had an opportunity to review the new rules proposals in the Competition Newsletter section of the December issue of Model Aviation.
I submitted a dozen or more proposals this cycle. If you are interested in the competition aspects of C/L Scale, please review them carefully and let your district's Scale Contest Board member know your views — they have input when voting on proposals.
Major proposals and clarifications include:
- Multi‑engine demonstration
- For multi‑engined models that use diverse types of power plants or power plants of the same type but of widely different sizes, the contestant and the judges must agree on a method of demonstration proving that “all power plants used are contributing significantly” to the model’s performance before an official flight is permitted.
- Documentation and drawing sizes
- Permit the use of three‑ or more‑view drawings up to a maximum size of 24 × 36 inches in Sport Scale. This addresses difficulty in finding suitable 8½ × 11‑inch drawings for Proof of Scale documentation.
- Page limits for documentation
- Increase the Sport Scale documentation limit from six to eight pages.
- Impose a 25‑page limit for Precision Scale documentation.
- Rationale: more pages in Sport allow additional useful data; a page limit in Precision forces selectivity and specificity for static judging.
- Operational features and flight scoring
- Allow additional operational features on competitive flights and adjust scoring.
- Reduce Touch‑and‑Go credit from 20 to 10 points because the maneuver has become relatively easy to perform.
- Require flap operation to be independent of throttle control to earn full flap‑operation credit.
- Pre‑flight demonstration of operational features
- Allow awarding points for operational features demonstrated before the official flight (provided the model completes an official flight). Examples: unfolding wings, opening/closing cockpit canopies, self‑starting a model in the circle via a starter‑equipped engine, etc. Current rules neither allow nor award points for features performed outside the official flight.
These are some of the more significant proposals; others also deserve attention. Please review all scale proposals, form an opinion, and inform your district Scale Contest Board member. Additional comments on several of these topics can be found in my February 1986 column.
Contest Report
It is with great pleasure that I report on the Garden State Circle Burners' Tenth Annual Scale Rally, held September 28, 1986, at the Bendix parking lot adjacent to Teterboro Airport, New Jersey. The meet was well attended: 18 Scale fliers entered 25 airplanes across three categories:
- Precision: 7 entries
- Sport Scale: 12 entries
- GSCB Profile event: 6 entries
Notable attendees included the 1985 Westover Nats winners, Massachusetts' Hanson Weissendorfer, club members Sam Andro, John Paroila, and John Componeschi; the Flex Team of Pete Bianchi, Bill Boss, and Ed Robinson; GSCB members George Gaydos, Augie Buffalino, Bill Reynolds, Ben and Steve Mechler; and several other local‑area Scale fliers.
Highlights:
- Berkely McCullom (Vauxhall, NJ) brought the meet's oldest model and was the most veteran competitor in Precision: a 23‑year‑old SE5 built from Walt Musciano plans. It had a 28‑inch span and was powered by a vintage McCoy .19 Red Head.
- Rich Firestone (Cookstown, NJ) flew a well‑built Focke‑Wulf FW‑190G‑3 (Royal RC kit) powered by a K&B .61. The airplane featured a bomb‑drop and a self‑starter unit. Firestone's starter is an Eastcraft H unit powered by an 8‑volt Ni‑Cd pack; an auxiliary control line actuates the starter and a switch in the front cowl supplies power to the glow plug.
The meet was a fine example of competitive C/L Scale activity and camaraderie.
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
