Some RC models

cicopo wrote in post #19350395
" Once for riding numerous thermals to an altitude of 3740' AGL back in 1995"

How on earth were you able to see it well enough to be in control?

The thermals were very strong that day and I really don't think I was in control most of the time. I was flying with a buddy and we took turns keeping an eye on it and were only able to see the black bottom of the wings from the glare it was putting off in turns. I flew the last half of the flight in full crow just to get it to desend. After that flight I never wanted to do anything close to that again..

I had a similar experience the first time my Grande Esprit hooked a big thermal which took it up pretty high but directly overhead. As I enjoyed watching it shrink in size I realized I couldn't really see it well enough to know what I was doing & would have to do to get it back down. After some work at that which wasn't getting the job done I kept adding down elevator & ended up in a steep & fast dive & when I realized that my next move (which I don't even remember what I did) broke a wing right at the spoiler. The cable for the spoiler kept them from separating & I watch it fall quite a distance until I lost sight of it because the corn field next door was so tall. I made the walk of shame searching through the rows for at least an hour before finding it just outside the corn up against some pine trees. To my surprise it must have hit a pine tree perfectly to break the fall & let it slide down along it with no other damage. I repaired it the next week & it flies perfectly still.
It was built from plans lent to me by a friend who had bought the kit & I was always a bit concerned that my home made fuselage boom wasn't that strong compared to the fiberglass boom in his kit. After that flight I had no more concerns about the entire fuselage.

Those Grande Esprit's are one of the best looking aircraft ever built and amazing in flight. Back in the late 70's I flew agaisnt them and Astro Jeff's along with many others with my Craft-Air SD-100 at a club in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

In the mid 70's the Grande Esprit seemed to be THE glider to get in it's class. When I fly mine I joke that all I have to do is blow towards it & up it goes again. It really doesn't take much lift to keep it in the air.

If you can see that sort of model well enough the 2 ways I have found that work are either to flip it on its back and it should descend or shove the stick in either the bottom right or left of its travel and spin it down. If the spin is a good one then it should come down and the drag caused by the spin will stop it accelerating too much.

Something that I have not worked out is that with a rudder/elevator model when flipped on its back it is still right rudder for right turns, etc. Upside down the right rudder goes to the left of the upturned model as you look at it from below, but it still turns right?

I was browzing through the Air Show photos thread (hope I got that right - age) and found one of your posts that REALLY impressed me. It is/was a BILLY JOEL shot. I'm sure you might have taken some flak for it, but I absolutely love that type shot.

Billy Joel - "It's a matter of trust".

Inspires me to post a few of my own and truly hope you will repost any you have (and other too! LOL!).

Hillbille

Hillbille wrote in post #19349907
I think it was. The owner was 90 years old (in 2010) and said he had built it in the 80's. It flew a couple of times and he hung it up in his garage. As sometimes happens his neighbor saw it and offered to convert it from rubber to electric. At least that's the story I remember. It was a nice plane. Built back when Elmer's was the glue! LOL! His neighbor is holding the plane and the old guy is being interviewed for an RC video.

Excellent. Also answers my other question: I hope the owner got to see it fly as an RC model.

I did a lot of RC flying for many years. I taught myself to fly with a Durabat. (well, more than one Durabat).
Teaching yourself to fly RC is not the best method, but I got there in the end.
After the first 20 or so crashes, I learned to throttle back before I hit the ground. So I no longer ended up elbow deep retrieving my motor.
It was common for me to fly on a Saturday. As I improved, after several flights, say 6 or more, I'd tell myself to go home a winner.
I don't think I ever did. I got over 10 flights numerous times, but it always ended with me putting all the pieces in a big plastic tub and going home.
I could usually have it rebuilt and flight ready for another go on Sunday.

These two photos taken about 1996, about 12 years after my first flights and by that time I had some decent skills.
The big Glider is a Calypso contest. A fully moulded 3 metre F3B (Multitask) glider.
I'm lucky in having a world class slope about 40 minutes drive away. A 620ft hill facing the ocean which meant huge lift and smooth wind as opposed to an inland slope where the air is bumpy due to all the terrain it had crossed before arriving at the hill.
The small glider is a Falcon, an electric 'Hotliner'. I never flew it electric, only as a slope glider.

The Calypso had plenty of room for lead in it's built in ballast tubes, the Falcon had plenty of room in the fuz to pile the lead in. 20-25 knots of wind on that slope and plenty of ballast made both models insanely fast.

Nick Wright blowing my mind! A UK pilot, Nick was 1989 F3B World Champion.
F3B is a Multitask Glider class.

3 tasks: Duration, Distance, Speed. All using winch launch.
Duration: fly for 8 minutes, spot landing.
Distance: complete as many laps of a course as possible.
Speed: 4 laps of the same course.

Nick came to Australia in 1996 and demonstrated his (own built) model and skills.
At Werrington in Sydney in these photos. Incredible to witness.
I arrived at the field, having spotted Nick's model at very high altitude as I was driving.
I was just in time to see him drop from high altitude into a speed run.
At the end of the run he still had plenty of speed to climb to around 150 feet height.
A few minutes later he had thermalled back up to high altitude and then dropped down for another speed run, then again, rapidly gained height as easy as jumping into an elevator.

I was the owner of an F3B model and a winch soon after!

I never achieved his incredible thermalling ability but I could fly a decent speed run.

I haven't seen a Calypso for a while now. There were a couple in our club, South Cotswold Soaring Association, and I remember that they went up the line like a rat up a drain pipe! I wonder where that expression came from?

About the only models I have in that category are my Bird of Tyme and Aquilla. Both second hand and a lot earlier than the Calypso, and slower! But still really good. I put my BoT up the line in one of our club comps and got a humongous ping off of the top. I pulled a load uf up in as it came off the line and bent the wing joiner! It's a 3/8ths steel joiner and the wing was held on with 4 elastic bands. I had to use a hammer with the joiner in a vise to get about a 15º bend out of it! it's still in use today, but not anywhere near so competitively

Thought I'd post a Billy Joel example photo so people "get" my obscure reference. LOL! (I do a lot of that LOL stuff - have to - as I get older most things seem funnier, especially if I'm the one doing them or it is something I have done.)

Most RC photos which include the pilot in them are great shots of the back of the pilots head, in some cases the side, but RARELY from the front, facing the pilot. Those are what I call Billy Joel photos, because they require a matter of trust.

I forgot to say that that's a lovely looking slope you have there Dave. Is there much landing space there, if there is and it's the same as you are stood on then near perfect!

We have several different slopes facing different ways, but not all perfect. This is the club compass

Hillbille wrote in post #19350758
Thought I'd post a Billy Joel example photo so people "get" my obscure reference. LOL! (I do a lot of that LOL stuff - have to - as I get older most things seem funnier, especially if I'm the one doing them or it is something I have done.)

Most RC photos which include the pilot in them are great shots of the back of the pilots head, in some cases the side, but RARELY from the front, facing the pilot. Those are what I call Billy Joel photos, because they require a matter of trust.

This is such a shot. Don flying his PZ Corsair at the dry lake.

I've spent all of last evening & a bit of this morning trying to figure out what you're "Billy Joel" comment referred to. I've never heard of it but I guess it's all about the crowd you hang with.

Re teaching yourself how to fly RC. My first try (how hard could it be if I could build & fly free flight) came VERY close to being an expensive disaster. I bought everything needed & built it all over the winter & when spring arrived I was ready. Heathkit 4 channel setup, Goldberg Falcon 56 & a Fox 35. My nice new house was in a corner of a farm property that was on both sides of the road so I decided to fly from the middle of the front yard & hand launched to the (wide open space)west with the house about 50 feet behind me. By the time I got my thumbs on the sticks the plane was heading right at the house. It hit the house just about 1/2 way between the ground & the bottom of the 8 foot wide living room window. After a rebuild (it saw several of those) I contacted a friend & had him teach me the old fashioned way of handing the Tx back & forth. That all took place about 1/4 mile away from anything but really tall grass.
Beginners today have the luxury of buying a Sim for their computer which is highly recommended even if you have an experienced friend or a local club with a training program.

Funny you should mention training Cico. Last Sunday we were all on the east faxing slope and a couple of us had out Lidl specials. All foam and Lidl is a German cheapo supermarket here and several times a year they have an all foam free flight chucky for the youngsters. Not cheap though as it costs £8 ! Loads of us have then converted from standard aileron/elevator, my all moving wing, flying wings and electric and they fly really well.

On Sunday the other bloke with his standard aileron/elevator job asked if I would like to try the difference between my all moving wing and his. He has a flash Taranis transmitter with a buddy box facility on it and as he flied mode 1 and me mode 2 he set it up on the buddy box for me to fly from the second tx on my mode 2. It was good fun and if I had got in to problems I could have said that I thought he had it The standard aileron isn't half as responsive as an all moving wing !

The concept is simple, the actual "doing" is sometimes difficult.