CONTROL LINE SPEED
Glenn Lee, 819 Mandrake Dr., Batavia IL 60510
When I wrote the 1998 National Aeromodeling Championships (Nats) Speed report, I stated that the US Speed Team was going to Kiev, Russia. That is wrong; Kiev is in the Ukraine. My mind still calls that entire area the USSR, Russia.
The US team, consisting of Tommy Brown, Billy Hughes, and Jim Rhoades, placed third in the World Championships, just behind Russia and England. Luis Parramon from Spain won first place at a speed of 301 kph. Jim was ninth at 285 kph; Tommy was 11th; and Billy was 16th after his engine threw a bearing.
Summer is gone, so if I want to fly any Speed I'll have to go south. I'm working on propellers and airplanes for the Florida contest in January—just two months away as I write this. It's already cold here in Illinois, so it will be great to visit friends and fly where it's warm.
Dayton
Can you visualize two perfect days of Speed flying, with continuous action and flight after flight going up? That's the way it was at the Dayton, Ohio Cold Cash Speed Bash this year. It was similar to the old days, with a long list of waiting contestants on the sign-up sheet.
The Dayton contest is traditionally held the second weekend in September. The weather in Ohio is normally very pleasant that time of year, and this year was no exception. There were 29 contestants who flew 75 events and made 185 attempts, for 134 official flights! There were 18 winners, and contestants came from as far away as New York, Florida, and Missouri. It was a good time!
However, the Dayton flying field is surrounded by trees, and model visibility is a problem. The dark-colored Speed models—especially the flat sidewinders—disappear against the dark-green background when they are going fast. Yellow or white models are much better, are easier to see, and the timers' stopwatches get more accurate readings.
Keep this in consideration if you build a new model. My fluorescent-pink Class C model was invisible at high speed, so I painted the inside—the side that the timers see—bright yellow. It helped.
Sidewinders
Modelers think that the sidewinder Speed models with the laid-down engines are the latest "trick" for going fast. Jack Wilson, AMA number 2842 and NASS (North American Speed Society) number 312, sent a nice letter telling me about early Control Line (CL) flying in Southern California.
Around 1947, Jack and Richard Tejeda (a current member of the Channel Island Condors R/C Club) spent many evenings flying CL sport airplanes under the lights at the Yosemite Park softball diamond in the Eagle Rock area.
Two "older" builders would dazzle them with their small and very fast Class B Speed airplane that featured a side-mounted, fully cowled Ohlsson and Rice (O&R) .23 engine, inboard wing only, no vertical fin, and dolly-type gear. One of the guys' names was Les McBride, and he called the model Sidewinder! The two builders also introduced Jack and his friends to the many benefits of that "new thing": glow-plug ignition!
Jack is from Brookings, OR, and is also a member of the Lake Havasu Desert Hawks R/C Club; I thank him for sending me this bit of modeling trivia.
RCHTA Show
I visited the Chicago model show last weekend, and walked past all of the trains and games, but stopped to look at the engines in the Radio Control (RC) cars. Some of them might be suitable for Class A, FAI (Federation Aeronautique Internationale), and .21 Sport Speed, but I don't know of anyone who has tried them.
The cars use "tuned mufflers" instead of tuned pipes, similar to the ones that Pylon racers use on their side-exhaust .40 engines. I saw the .15s and .21s sold by Serpent, USA, Inc. They are used in the Impact 1/10-scale and Vector 1/8-scale RC race cars. These engines are built by NovaRossi, and might be suitable for Speed.
According to an advertising brochure, the SX-21 Series features several technologies found on other 21-size engines manufactured by NovaRossi. Seven-port and five-port liners are available, giving a choice of enhanced high-end speed or bottom-end torque characteristics. Also, a Turbo-plug combustion chamber is available. Whatever the means, it would be fun to compare the SX-21 NovaRossi run in a .21 Sport Speed airplane, especially since the SX-21 is rated 48,000 rpm. I'm pretty sure a well-tuned exhaust muffler would compare to a mini-pipe. I also don't know if an aero crankshaft is available—car engines use a different shaft stub; I don't have information on the SX-21. I'll try to obtain more information.
Good Old Days
Don Jehlik—Chicago show line. Chinese rubber-powered and electric foam models came out. I visited Don; the first Speed fliers met at the first Nationals, probably 1954, and I've had friends ever since. Don was flying Speed; Bob Lauderdale later got into Team Race; Herb Stockton eventually worked up to World Champion status. He also worked with the late Paul Bugl on high-performance (HP) engines.
Bob and I had a great time with our war stories of Speed flying days, and went through a bunch of Air Trails magazines. Some were from 1941 to 1947, and it was interesting to see the reports on the early days of CL and the ads for early engines.
I never had an engine before 1948, so I missed almost all of the spark-ignition stuff. Merwyn Krahn, a friend of mine in South Dakota, had an O.K. 60, so I learned a little about gas-and-oil, vibration, points trouble, and booster batteries. I stuck to glow plugs.
Merwyn and I used O.K. glow plugs; they worked very well, and they rarely burned out. The hottest fuel we had was Francisco Power Mist, and I doubt if there was a lot of nitromethane in it. When we got a can of O&R 30 Plus, we didn't dare run it straight; we mixed it with the other fuel!
Looking through the old magazines, Merwyn and I saw data about engines such as:
- M&M .29
- Giant .35
- Precision .36
- World Wide Demon .15
- Trojan
- Rebel
- G-9
- Ajax
- Feeney
- Little Dynamite
- Drimmer
- Dwarf
- Dragon
- Hi-Speed
- Everson .29
- Mite Diesel
- Tom Thumb
- Novo Diesel
I had never even heard of most of those engines, but I sure wish I had one of each now! Those names came out of the September 1947 Air Trails, and showed the terrific demand for model engines right after World War II.
Most models from 1941 to 1947 were big Free Flight models. The CL models were also large, with fixed landing gear, and all used ignition engines. Most CL models featured Jim Walker's patented U-Controls, but Stanzel sold models with "G-line" control.
Many controversies arose, since everything was new. Some modelers couldn't travel to contests, so could they send the model and have it proxy-flown? Rules were not universal, and AMA managed a system to standardize official rules. Engine size was used to set classes.
Protests about "whipping" were rampant; Hal deBolt even wrote an article in which he calculated how much speed you could add to a model by putting the "arm" to it.
Joe Campione of Rochester, NY, designed a pylon that was strapped to your waist and extended out toward the model. The post had a finger pointing up, and if you tried to lead the model, your lines would knock the finger over and you were disqualified!
What kind of wood is best for propellers? They tried orange crate pine (I did that, too), spruce, basswood, and mahogany, but decided that sweet gum (gumwood) was best. Many props were handmade, so maple and other hardwoods were too difficult to work with. However, the "hot fuels" containing alcohol and nitromethane were coming out, and the more powerful engines, such as the Hornet, soon dictated hard maple props.
There were so many contests that at least $1,000 in prizes was needed to draw contestants. A kid named Babcock won two Curtiss airplanes at the Mirror-Meet! Engines, kits, and scholarships were normal awards.
John Brodbeck of K&B engines offered every winner of the 1947 Nats who used a K&B engine $50 in cash, a new Torpedo engine, and a year of free service on it.
Now, any modeler who sets an AMA record with a Torpedo engine receives a free engine. The first person to get one was Tony Naccarato, who upped the Class III Open CL record to 102.8 mph!
You think the stuff you see now is new? In the March 1941 Air Trails there was a picture of a full-scale Taylorcraft airplane that was covered with woven glass fabric. It was non-shrinkable, rot-proof, and fireproof, but it didn't say what kind of adhesive or filler was used. They didn't have epoxy or polyester resins then, did they?
It's fun to read the ads in these old magazines. There were diesel-head conversions for Arden engines; John E. Clemens, from Dallas, sold Inferno fuel; and the Humming Bird engine featured an internal turbine supercharger.
There was some humor too. It was written that Hugo's friend Lootweller went flying. His model came back home two hours later, but he didn't show up for days; he said he got caught in a man-carrying thermal!
The June 1942 Air Trails told about a Junior who holds six records: Paul MacCready? Chicago leads the nation with 20 recognized records; Albert Hansell did 10 consecutive loops!
Tether-flying (before they called it Control Line) should stimulate Speed contests since contest rules include speeds of at least 60 mph for Class C, 35 for Class B, and slightly less for Class A. Stories of 100 mph speeds are hard to believe, though! So little they visualized of what was to come.
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
