Free Flight: Duration
Dave Linstrum 4057 San Luis Dr. Sarasota, FL 33580
FREE FLIGHT
What's Free Flight? A thrill, a challenge, a puzzlement.
It's other guys like you, the world around, striving for the same graceful beauty of flight. It's comradeship across all human barriers. It's bull sessions through the wee hours.
It's fierce competition — with the highest of sportsmanship.
It's a battle against nature . . . her perversity . . . her law of gravity.
"Free as a bird" describes God's most unchained creation. Man's is a model airplane soaring birdlike in a thermal. You created it. Vicariously you soar with it, with its freedom.
Free Flight is the mist of the dawning's calm as you test. It's the noonday sun as your model thrusts for the heavens. It's the cool drink after a dusty chase.
It's the piercing scream of a peaking engine . . . the silence of the glide.
It's sunburn and poison ivy and weariness to the marrow . . . made worthwhile.
It's skill in your fingers. It's knowledge learned for the knowledge alone.
It's perfection sought . . . never attainable. A goal everlasting.
Free Flight is all of these. Yet much more! I tell you this, and you may believe. But you cannot know . . . unless you know.
Bob Hatschek July 1962
Publication and subscription
The poem was published in Round 3 of the Flyoff newsletter edited by Bob Hatschek. I wanted to bring it to you here because it evokes so much of what we are about in Free Flight.
If you want more technical and down-to-earth stuff, Bob has that, too, in each issue of Flyoff. For your subscription, U.S. residents should send $10 for five issues ($15 foreign address, U.S. funds) to Bob Hatschek, Editor, Flyoff, 316 Grosvenor St., Douglaston, NY 11363. Any contributions you have of plans, technical data, details, and photos are also welcome.
Remember, we are all Free Flighters and must stick together to enjoy the thrills and satisfaction cited in Bob's poem.
The Fifties (book)
The Fifties presents 94 pages chock full of model construction plans from the Fifties. Included are Free Flight, Rubber and Gas, Control Line, and some early RC. Featured are a variety of subjects, many unusual, such as flying wings, helicopters, a Martian space ship, some flying scale, lists of Fifties kits, and specs of model engines. Many famous designers, including those from the U.S.A., are represented. Even if you are not an Anglophile, this book makes great reading.
Published by Aeromodeller in England, the Smeed book is available in the U.S.A. from Hannan's Runway for $14.95. While you are at it you may want to pick up some of the Nostalgic Aviation Postcards handled by the Runway. These are delightful, full-color cards featuring aircraft from the Golden Age in orange-box-label format. They are sold in sets of eight: Biplane, Fly Me, Happy Landings, Peashooter, Glider, Red Baron, Air Mail, and Hi-Steppin. A set is $4.80 postpaid. Order the book and cards from Hannan's Runway, P.O. Box A, Escondido, CA 92025.
F1B / Mulvi Simplstooge
While this clever winding stooge was mentioned briefly (with photo) by "FF Scale" columnist Bill Warner in the April 1989 issue of MA, I present it here because many "FF Duration" readers may have missed it. The stooge first came to my attention when Mike Meyers took me to a club meeting in Los Angeles. I fell in love with it and know that Wakefield fliers and those who wind the big Mulvihills will want it as an essential piece of field equipment.
FF Duration / Linstrum
Continued from page 71
Some of the stooge's important features follow:
- It is made of hardwood and extra-strong aluminum tubing and sheet. It has two sizes of pins and holes for large or small models.
- You can assemble the head block four ways, so you can get two widths and two heights. This can be changed easily in the field to accommodate different models.
- The fuselage support arm is infinitely adjustable, elevating the nose to just where you want it when the motor is stretched out. Two pegs and 300-lb.-test nylon cord will hold up under the biggest motor you can wind.
- You can put all your stuff on the stooge with a small plywood table and holes for a winder (see drawing), stuffing stick, winding tube, and fishout wire.
This stooge belongs in every serious rubber flier's kit. To get your simply terrific Simplstooge by return mail postpaid, send a check or money order for $52 (in U.S.A.; California residents add sales tax) to Simplex Simplstooge, 143 Richmond St., El Segundo, CA 90245.
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
