RADIO CONTROL AEROBATICS
Rick Allison
15618 NE 56th Way, Redmond WA 98052
AS PART OF THIS JOB, I'm often asked for advice on various subjects related to the building, flying, and judging of aerobatic model aircraft. I try to do my best to respond within the limits of my knowledge and ability, and within the constraints of my available time and energy. After all, at the heart of the matter, columns like this one are advice columns.
I believe that most of my fellow Model Aviation columnists and other modeling writers also try to respond in a like fashion. For that matter, most experienced and successful modelers I've known have been (and are) willing to give freely of their time and knowledge when asked.
In fact, I can't think of a hobby or avocation where the inexperienced have more access to the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of the experienced than they do in aeromodeling. In addition to old-fashioned word-of-mouth advice, the major publications in the field publish articles and columns full of data every month. Handbooks and pamphlets exist on nearly every subject under the modeling sun, and most can be purchased at your local hobby dealer. Special Interest Group newsletters, like the National Society of Radio Controlled Aerobatics' K-Factor, are a font of technical expertise.
Other sources of information include:
- Local club meeting programs
- Building and judging seminars
- Online modeling forums
- Contests
- Kit, engine, and covering-material directions
- Weekend bull sessions at the club field
The amount of available information is staggering; almost all of it is good; and most of it ranges from free to inexpensive.
Unfortunately, a great deal of what flows from all of these relentlessly generous springs of knowledge is poured down the drain.
As has been pointed out here before, modelers tend to be rather independent personality types who are prone to experimentation and innovation. There is virtue in this, but also vice. Reinventing the wheel seems to be the number-two modeling fun activity—right after gluing small airplane parts to large fingers and attempting to separate them without damage.
All of this valiant stubbornness causes considerable frustration: some on the part of those unfortunates whose newly invented wheels have turned out on the squarish side, and more on the part of those whose expertise, time, and energy were poured out in a vain attempt at square-wheel birth control.
It is an ancient circle-dance that provides its own energy. Old modelers love to give advice almost as much as new ones love to ignore it. Any attempt at reformation is doomed; the root causes lie too deeply buried in human nature.
However, the open opportunity is there for those newcomers sharp enough to recognize it and humble enough to seize it.
Do good research
The first step in gaining this advantage is to do good research. Read all you can whenever you can. Books, newsletters, pamphlets, and magazine subscriptions are cheap sources of information compared to the tuition extracted by the School of Hard Knocks.
Make it your business to find out all you can about every aspect of your sphere of modeling interest: history, current events, past and present methods and equipment, and the like. Many of us do this required reading without even thinking, simply because our curiosity and interest are engaged.
In addition to research, it is possible to cut the learning curve dramatically simply by soliciting good advice and then taking it. This is especially true in any field of competition modeling, including RC aerobatics. Judging from my mail and what I see, most of us don't do this nearly as well as we do the research.
Advice about advice
Regard this as advice about advice. Ask serious questions in a polite and courteous manner of those whose results you admire. Listen carefully to the answers. If you are blessed with a poor memory for detail, write things down and draw little pictures. Even barely decipherable squiggles can spark recall later.
Pick your time with care. Approaching someone while they are preparing to fly an important round at the Nats or Masters is obviously neither courteous nor wise. Buttonholing your source while they are tight on time and trying to sort out a problem of their own may also draw a sharp, short answer.
Be sure you understand what is being said. Ask more questions if you don't, and keep asking until you do. Don't be afraid of wasting your source's time. If you don't understand the information, you have wasted the time of two people: theirs and yours.
If you feel the need to argue and disagree, stifle it. Giving in to the urge to debate stops the information flow almost immediately, and usually for good. Most people will not want to have to defend their private, proven methods in order to help you, nor do they want to hear your opinions about them. Remember, you asked them for the information—they didn't ask yours.
Check more than one source, and compare the answers. A preponderance of the time, there is more than one good way to accomplish any given result. Often, there will be multiple ways. Any source that tells you their method is the only proper, fully ordained way to accomplish anything and that every other method is wrong should be cross-checked very carefully. They may be right, but most often they will be mistaken. Either way, cross-checking will provide needed confirmation.
Still, even if your research shows that your chosen source was off-base, this doesn't necessarily mean that their "only way" is a wrong way—just that there may be other methods that work as well or even better, and that your source is operating with a closed mind on at least one subject.
Careful comparison will often show that many methods which appear different at first differ only in semantics and non-essentials. Acquire a focus on the overall concept and avoid getting lost in the details. Combining several similar ideas is often possible.
Local help first
The more inexperienced you are, the closer to home you should look for advice. It may seem smart to solicit help from nationally known experts, but in the very early stages, finding local help is a far better bet. Local experts may not have all the answers, or the best answers in every case, but the help is immediate, thorough, and often hands-on. A local mentor can not only get you started, but can also check your results personally and offer further suggestions for improvement. The usual outcome is very rapid progress with minimum pain and expense—up to a point. That point usually is the limit of the mentor's own knowledge.
This isn't much of a problem; by that point you usually have a good flying and building buddy, and both of you can look for the more advanced answers together.
When soliciting advice on which products to buy, always consider the source. Very often, the acknowledged experts are either sponsored by manufacturers, employed by manufacturers, or are manufacturers themselves. This doesn't mean that the advice you receive will be bad! It is very seldom that anyone becomes successful with poor equipment—or lends their name, credibility, and hard-won reputation to such.
It can and usually does mean that a certain amount of slant or bias will be attached to the opinion offered. You can usually peel the skin from this onion merely by looking to see if the equipment you are interested in has been successful. Again, for the very inexperienced, it pays to take the local advice and use what is in general use locally—if only because a pool of local expertise exists as an available resource.
Innovation and apprenticeship
There is definitely a time and place for innovation and experimentation, but that time shouldn't be at the beginning of your modeling career. Using well-proven methods and products can eliminate at least a few of the potholes on the road to the top. Along the way, you will accumulate the knowledge base and experience which will enable you to strike off in new directions with a better-than-reasonable chance of success. And then people can ask you for advice! Serving your necessary apprenticeship may be a nuisance to your proud and independent soul, but becoming a master of anything requires some degree of effort and sacrifice.
Besides, finding answers to difficult and challenging questions isn't something you can totally avoid in any case. It is possible to avoid finding difficult and challenging answers to easy questions.
There exists an old saying in modeling that an expert is someone who has made all the mistakes—and a master modeler is someone who has made all the mistakes twice. It has an unfortunate ring of truth about it in far too many cases. Do your best to prove it wrong in yours.
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
