Why Didn’t They Just   Have Comet or Megow   or Cleveland Build It?

Could Spring actually be arriving? I know; an Oregon Spring is nothing to write home about, but a few good days do sneak in from time to time.

We’ve seen plenty of helicopters on the weekdays lately.      Pat Willis had two out one day - both T-Rexes, a 600 nitro and a 450 electric. I think the 450 is sort of a guinea pig on which Pat tries out things he’s not yet rash enough to attempt on the larger, more expensive 600. On this day, the 600 was undergoing some revision and was not flyable. Pat brought it out as an example for Jacob Blewett who has acquired one. Jacob’s didn’t fly that day either, because it transpired that the clutch was set up far too tight, a problem correctable only in the shop. Pat’s 450 hit the dust during the morning, an apparent case of zigging when he should have zagged.

Scott Fellman has something different - Hirobo Skidoo 50s - and he has progressed to flying circuits with them. Yes, it is certainly possible to distinguish an Hirobo Skidoo 50 from a T-Rex 600. Well, there are the name decals on the canopies for one thing.

No shortage of models with their wings screwed on firm­ly, either. (Note that I didn’t say, “as they should be”- restraint is my middle name) In fact Pat had his Yak 54 with the 3-W 70 engine and he thinks that this is the best model he has ever flown. Jacob was flying a cowl-less Extra 300S, which I think is ex-Frank Blain. Do you know that 0.S. 50s run just fine with the cylinder-head fins running crosswise? Jacob was satisfying his curiosity about what was inside the cylinder and put the head back on 90 deg out of whack. Some engines won’t even let you put the head on that way, let alone run well!

Frank Blain himself was on the field with yet another Yak 54, his with a Fuji 43 gas-burner for power. All was well until Frank essayed a takeoff from north of the runway centerline and hit a long strip of very mushy ground. It grabbed the wheels and their pants and flipped the big Yak right on its back without a pause for breath. Some small damage to the cowl and its fastenings and the thorough de­struction of one of those large, expensive props that make flying the big birds so much fun.

Joe Kizer has had a year-and-a-half layoff, but was on the field one day with a Pizzazz, powered by a Magnum 52 sporting a vivid purple cylinder head. His intent was to scrape some of the rust off his flying technique. It ap­peared (to your columnist at any rate) that the rust was indeed flaking off and that the Pizzazz would go home in the same shape as that in which it had arrived.

The Bellanca Decathlon is a version of the Citabria, tuned even further than that plane for aerobatics. Chick Foster’s model Decathlon was flying very well and had him well-pleased. He doesn’t have it anymore, because a guy came along and threw so much money at him that Chick was more than pleased to sell the model.

Doug Deveraux made the long trek from Florence with a rebuilt and somewhat modified Funtana whose power is one of those Evolution 46s. Doug is quite happy with the engine and it seems to me that other Evolution owners feel the same way. Rich Richardson was flying a couple of electrics (What else?), but these were from a commercial line, not from his stable of own-designs. My notes are inadequate, but I seem to remember that they were a Pico Stick and a Big Stick (Stik?). Rich had improved them with the ample turned-up tips he has on the wings of his own ships.

Chuck Jenkins has a goodly supply of old model stuff around his place and one day he turned up with a Fledgling. This is an old. old, even ancient, trainer, from Topflite, if memory serves. (Was Harding President then, or was it Coolidge?) The kit was put out with a tricycle gear, but Chuck’s is set up on two mains and a tailwheel. He had brought it out to let Morris Ostrovsky fly it while his model was under repair.

Speaking of Mr. Jenkins, I was informed that he was in the hospital over in Springfield. I set out to see how he was getting along since he does provide so much grist for this column to mill over. I’d never even seen the Spring­field hospital before, but I did find it and, eventually, a parking space. Then I had to find a way in, but the most promising door said, “Emergencies Only” and another sign said, “The Ambulance Will Get You, If You Don’t Watch Out”, or words to that effect. Indeed, there was an ambulance right there, just waiting for me to put a foot wrong. I got in via a back door behind some bushes and later discovered the front desk. Asking for “Chuck Jenkins” produced blank looks until a few computer operations revealed that he had been renamed “39-Window”. I even found Room 39 and, yes, there was a window - and a bed and a young girl mopping the floor, but nothing resembling Chuck Jenkins. I mean, he would have stood out, right? Another desk and more compu­ter-punching brought forth the news that “39-Window” had scampered a mere 45 minutes before. Now it seems to me that that’s good news, but, the next time I see “39-W”, I intend to take him to task for not sticking around at least long enough for me to say, “hello”. (N.B. If his view of hospitals is the same as mine, he’d not have stayed an extra two seconds, even on the promise of a visit from Raquel Welch, so I’d be wasting my breath, wouldn’t I?)

I think we’ll all agree that your Editor, Jim Corbett, has made this newsletter into a classy publication, but one problem has arisen. Jim runs everything through a computer program which weeds out words it doesn’t recognize and re­places them with ones it does. In my account of going to see Chuck Jenkins in the hospital last month, you read that, when I got there, he had “scampered”. Now we all know that Chuck Jenkins is far too dignified a fellow to “scamper” and indeed I had actually typed a fine old Irish verb which has an “r” in place of that “rn”. Aroo, aroo, the Editor’s pro­gram doesn’t recognize fine old Irish verbs, even one used by Himself, the Behan, in the title of a novel, thus we got “scamper’ instead of “scarper’. What ever would have hap­pened if I’d used “absquatulate”? Well, we’re going to find out, aren’t we? (N.B. I did warn Jim that I was planting a bomb in this column, so he may well catch it.)

Speaking of Mr. Jenkins, he is not only out of the hospital but he’s back on the field with an oxygen tank slung over one shoulder and a new student under his wing. Wayne Wahrmund is newly retired and probably discovering, as I did, that it’s what he should have been doing all his life. Wayne’s got a Sig Kadet LT-40 with an 0.S. .46AX up front. 2.4 gig radio, too — is anybody buying anything else these days? They’ve already modified the LT-40 by replacing the wire main gear with a bent aluminum one. “Lands better’ is the verdict.

And while we are on the subject of the Sig Kadet series, Chick Foster has turned up with the little Seniorita which he built from a kit. I asked Chick how he had managed to find a kit to build and he told me he had to call Sig and get them to send one to Trump’s for him. He wasn’t quite sure they were still made. Power is a modest 0.S. .25, i.e. an engine appropriate to the model rather than the .52 people around here are prone to put in such machines. It is set up with a tailwheel landing gear and is flying just fine, thank you.

Frank Blain has been out with his Obsession which is pulled along by a Saito 1.80 four-stroke. Pulled along very well, according to Frank, who quite likes the aeroplane. He has his Yak 54 flying again after a crash necessitated some repairs. The engine was a Fuji 46, but that has been re­placed by a DL50, a Chinese copy (literally) of the DA50. Frank is very modern, by the way. He is “outsourcing” his crashes. He let somebody else fly the Yak and that someone got it into a nice flat spin from which it could not be extricated.

Vern Wells has not yet joined the modern age; he’s still crashing them himself. Actually, it wasn’t anything Vern did. When the wing comes off your EasySport in flight, you don’t have a whole lot of options. Vern got no help from the mud; the nose was pretty bashed up.

There have been a lot of the usual people flying the usual models: Doug McWha with his Dual Ace and EasySport, Larry Nelson and his Tribute, about which he is only lukewarm, Pat Willis and his veteran Giles 202. (or is it 404? or am I getting it confused with old Martin airliners?) (Note: One of the engineers who worked on the design of those two Martins was Maxwell Bassett, the first guy to fly a gas model in competition.)

You knew that Scott Fellman was flying one T-Rex 600 helicopter and preparing another one to receive a scale Hughes 500 body once the T-Rex is flight-tested. (You knew that because you read it in this column.) Herewith an update: Everything’s set except the gyro. This gyro seems to have ideas of what a gyro should do that differ markedly from Scott’s ideas of what a gyro should do. There the matter stands with the possibility that the offending gyro may just find itself out of a job, replaced by a more cooperative unit.

Your Editor has been flying small electrics when he’s not helping Doug mow the grass or get the sprinkler system set. up. One of them was a foam creation called a Park Shark which comes complete with fins and teeth. Jim says it is a bit underpowered, but adequate for boring holes in the sky on calmish days. It, quite literally, bit the dust on an awkward landing, but the light damage was entirely to the teeth. The slightly-larger Stinger has been flying as well as the biplane Wildfire. Jim also has a fairly large plane, built out of slabs of foam, and this one resembles, a bit, the old ukie Ringmaster. He makes a flight or two with one, then pulls out another and so on until you have seen his whole stable. The Wildfire’s landing gear seems to hate this runway, no matter how closely Doug has it mowed.

You know your President is working on a new model and a scratch-built one at that. He’s been keeping its identity a deep, dark secret, but he did let slip that it is a common aeroplane, though not in the version he is building. My guess is that it is a Piper J-3, but the one with the Lenape Papoose engine instead of the Continental A65. Or the Spitfire on floats. Or the Bf 109T with the longer wing for carrier operations. I’ll check the spy satellites. One is bound to make passes over his neighborhood.

    And we are beginning to get nice days, even strings of three or four in a row! You knew that Vern Wells’s EasySport met a sad end last month when it shed its wing in the air. Vern has replaced it with a Hangar 9 Super Stik in which he has a Magnum .46 for power. The Super Stik looks to me like a modern incarnation of the old Midwest Sweet Stik, the 40-size version of the classic Das Ugly Stik. Maybe very slightly larger? Twenty years ago, I had a Sweet Stik with an 0.S. .4OFSR up front and it was a very nice sport ship. Chuck Jenkins test-flew and trimmed Vern’s new plane, then turned it over to Vern. He got in a couple of flights before over-banking and losing a lot of altitude close to the ground. He managed to level out, but not pull up before the air underneath him turned into grass. I’m not sure whether the praise goes to the toughness of Hangar 9’s construction or the forgiving qualities of our grass, but the engine, mount, and firewall came out cleanly, leaving the rest of the model intact.

    Jim Corbett, your editor, doesn’t spend all his time up in the palatial suite of offices this newsletter maintains. He has been flying a pair of Lanier Stingers, one electric, the other glow. The larger glow bird settles down to a nice, smooth landing, but the small electric habitually pro­gresses in series of hops. Jim hasn’t solved that one yet. He and Doug Mcwha spent a good portion of one nice morning attending to the blades on the mowers. That’s the rest of the story about keeping the strip in as good a shape as it is. Besides the mowing, there’s the maintenance on the mowers -  a few hours for every hour spent moving. Not nearly as bad as military aircraft, but something you have to consider. 

   Anybody got an empty kit box? At least 3’ long, 8” or 9” wide, and 4” deep. I have all my strip wood, wire, tubing, plastic strip, motor-mount wood, and the like in two boxes and I’d like to categorize it a little better. You know, keep the 1/16 sq. and 1/16x1/8 out of the same box with the ½” sq and the same for the fine wire and tubing.

   I doubt that this column will appear next month - you get a break. During the time when I should be gathering material, I’ll be 5,000-odd miles away and I won’t be back until the night before the meeting. Weather permitting, I’ll see two air shows at Old Warden, one on the first Sunday and the other on Saturday evening two weeks later. The June and August shows are each labeled “Military Air Pageant”, but the July show is simply “Summer Air Display”, so I hope to see a lot of the good, old civil machines. Nothing against the military birds, but there are a ton of beautiful civil ships, many of them eminently modelable. You don’t have to be military to go fast. The Chilton DW.1 had the modest 32 h.p. of a 4-cylinder British Ford auto engine, complete with radiator, but it cruised at 100 mph. Only four DW.ls were built before WWII interfered. As they were single-seaters, the RAF wasn’t interested in impressing them, so they were dismantled and stored. Remarkably, all survive today. Two are airworthy and the other two are under restoration. That’s the sort of thing I hope to see. On the weekend in the middle, there’s an airshow at Duxford. That will be mostly WWII stuff and they always have some exotic birds flown in from foreign countries. Further, there is a good chance of seeing two Gladiators (the RAF’s last biplane fighter) in the air together. Wonder how many Spitfires/Seafires they’ll be able to muster? I’ll bring back pictures.

Ugh!  It looks like it is becoming The Gray Pathetic North - left again. Fog, drizzle, sprinkles, showers - that other nine months of the year is now upon us. Soon there won’t be enough flying weather for me to find anything to warrant a column.

Oct. 4 & 5 saw the last contest in this year’s Free - flight Season, so your columnist was free to qualify for an appearance in his own column by flying R/C on a weekday. I had the old Aquila sailplane out on an overcast Columbus Day and the results weren’t really newsworthy: Three flights, good launches, no lift. Jim Corbett, your Editor, was flying his light, electric, Stinger and he did find the tiniest bump of lift, but that’s all it was  - a tiny bump. Before too long, that field in front of us will be too muddy to lay out the high-start, so I’m flying the sailplane while I still can.

Vern Wells flew three flights with his Avistar and flew them all on his own. Chuck Jenkins was not even present for moral support. All three landings were, at least, respectable and one was very smooth. Wayne Wahrmund was up at the field on the same day, flying his regular LT-40, and I asked him how his U -Can -Do was coming along. “Oh”, he said, “The second one? It’s almost ready to fly.” Whoops, wait a minute! Second one? Here I go away for a couple of weeks and all sorts of things take place behind my back. It seems that Wayne’s first U-C-D had a short life, ending in trage-dy. Wayne had mounted all the radio gear just right  - with only one small exception: He neglected to uncoil the receiver antenna and stretch it out through the fuselage. Now you know what happens in that case. The radio signal enters one end of that coil and goes whirling around. By the time it reaches the receiver, it is so dizzy and con-fused that it can’t remember what to tell it or, worse, tells it wrong. If I’m understanding correctly, the poor plane didn’t make it past the initial 180 deg turn after takeoff. Wayne says the wing came out with hardly a scratch, so there’s at least a little good news. Mr. Wahrmund says, by the way, that he’s hanging on to the LT-40 just because it’s such a comfortable aeroplane to fly.

Don Delamore has been flying a Funtana 100X with an O.S. 160 2 -stroke. Don admits that it is “a bit more engine” than the plane needs, “But, if I build a bigger plane, I’ll have an engine for it”. The “X” version of the Funtana has a higher -aspect-ratio vertical fin and tip fins on the wing which attach with two screws each. Don has tried it with and without the fins and is not ready to brand either way as best. The fins seem to make the plane more stable, but slow the rate of roll.

The other half of the team, Brian Ropchan, also had a Funtana, but an older-model 40-size machine. He’d shown remarkable restraint In powering it with a mere .46, an 0.S. FX model. Very strange to relate, this one lost its prop in flight, not an uncommon occurrence with 4-strokes, I’ll grant you, but this was a 2-stroke. Brian had to put down the Funtana in the rough field and tore out the landing gear - the only damage. Even the spinner and prop were visible out in the dust and easily recovered. Then it was noticed that the drive washer was also missing. “Washer” is a bit of a misnomer as it is a pretty thick piece of machined metal. Brian says he has another .46 with a bent shaft which can donate its drive washer to the Euntana’s engine. I still have a few more freeflight tests to do, even with the season over, and, who knows, I may find Brian’s engine part. I am told, by the way, that the battery pack I found under those circumstances was, indeed, Dave Simmington’s. Brian wasn’t through for the day. He hauled out an Ultimate 120 bipe (another 0.S. 160) and flew that for the rest of the day.

President Willis gets out to fly with the weekday crowd. When you are President of such a prestigious organization, even employers (Pat’s is the City of Eugene) see the Greater Good for the Community in turning you loose on the flying field. Pat is, of course, getting all his time in on that vast Yak 54 and it now has a new engine. The new one is a 3-W 85xi. I do not know what the “xi” stands for (xtremely impassioned?), but it does indicate that this engine is not your Aunt Clara’s 3-W 85. It is meant only for those who wish to point the noses of their Yak 54s vertical and contact space stations. You will see Pat making beautiful, perfect 3 -point landings with the Yak from here on. He has to. The 85xi swings a bigger prop and ground clearance is now measured in nano-cat’swhiskers.

I mentioned having been away. I took a trip back to the Auld Sod (Sussex County, N.J.) and looked in upon the flying fields of the Top O’ N.J. R/C Club of which I was a member before it was even that club. I even attended one of their meetings which was no worse than ours usually are. I had some pictures I had taken on our field and the one that most impressed them was one of Pat starting his Yak with Alan Wellintin holding. It wasn’t the plane nor Pat, nor Alan that impressed them, though they admitted it was a fine plane and two obviously handsome fellows. What opened their eyes wide was the vast expanse of flat, treeless, ground visible beyond them. In Sussex County, there would be a couple of forest preserves, a town or two, and a swamp in that space.

Even with rotten weather preventing us from flying on many days, the grass isn’t troubled at all. It still grows. So Doug McWha and Jim Corbett are still out there mowing between showers. Doug was startled one day when he turned into the road to the field and saw that the strip was white from end to end. No rain and nowhere near cold enough for snow or frost. Spider webs. Those little flying spiders were staging a major convention on our field. Don’t anyone tell the Buggies’-Rights people, but Doug just mowed it all off anyhow.

There have been a few new models showing up at the field on the few decent days we’ve had in the last four weeks. Marty Whittman brought out a Twist 150 in which he’s using a Zenoah 26 for power. He’s used a number of Zenoahs of various sizes and swears by them. Does that “26” mean 26cc? If so, it would be a 1.59 in real measurements.

Chick Foster’s new one is a 4-Star 60 he’s powering with an ASP .61. Needed a little carb-fiddling on the day I saw it, but I seem to remember that all was well in the end. The ASPs were copies of the equivalent O.S.s and this one is like the FSR series with the separate frontplate. Separate frontplates are nice, if you build a pusher. You can get the engine to run clockwise, and thus use regular props, by rotating the frontplate 90 deg. Pusher props can be hard to find, especially if you need a particular diameter/pitch.

Lewayne Thompson brought out a high-wing trainer (Avis-tar?) with a Spectrum 2.4 gig radio. Lacking a buddy box compatible with a Spectrum, he and Jim Corbett made do with the old method of passing the transmitter back and forth -sometimes rather hurriedly. The plane got out pretty far a few times and may have been the UFO sighted over Corvallis that day, but all seemed to be well at the end of the inning. After that, The Brain Trust, Jim and Doug, got out the instructions (extraordinary idea!) and discovered that there is a way to make Spectrum and Futaba transmitters cozy up to each other. It involves taking the RF module (or crystal) out of the Futaba you’re using for a buddy box.

Don Desimone’s still flying his Funtana 100X. Don hasn’t done anything remarkable with it, hut I had to get him in this column to make up for the absolute dog’s breakfast I made of his name in last month’s.

Jim Corbett made an incidence change in his electric Lanier Stinger and it seems to have helped. The thing still bounces something awful on almost any landing and Jim has concluded that the landing gear is just too stiff. Yes, Doug McWha’s EasySport still graces the field regularly. Or is that “disgraces”? It’s starting to assume its pre-repair rattiness. Mr. McW brought out his Tango on one very calm day. This is a high-winger with a low-aspect-ratio, constant-chord wing married to a short-coupled fuselage and tail surfaces which are fairly gracefully curved. The engine is an O.S. .46LA, one of the blue ones, but Doug’s is so ancient that most of the blue is worn off. He had the F-22 Raptor out today (11/17) with the cuffs back on the outer wing panels (with masking tape!) and it seemed to fly well after a change of prop size. The nosewheel cable has a wee bit too much unsupported length and this let the horn flip over to the right. This left the Raptor up at the far end of the runway with the nosewheel at 90 deg to the model and Doug with a long walk to retrieve it.

That huge Yak 54 Pat Willis flies so much has undergone some adjustment to the balance to make it fly even better. It did land on the Monday with fuel sloshing around in the bilges because the stopper had come out of the fuel tank. No harm done and more flights ensued that day. The next day, things took a nasty turn. Pat took off and, in his usual fashion, put the Yak’s nose straight up - at which point the engine quit. The subsequent arrival was somewhere between a hard landing and a crash. Damage was done to the cowl, firewall, and landing gear as well as one of the big horn balances on the elevator which dug in and was almost torn off. Broke a prop - which was probably worth more than the total I had in the two Rubber ships I had with me that day. Cause? Ouch. Even powerful, reliable engines like 3W 85XIs really, honest-to-gosh need fuel to run and Pat had forgotten to refuel. I’m told the Yak is back in the air already.

Farrell Bird now has a Hangar 9 Ultra Stik like Dave Simmington’s and Farrell has a Saito 100 4-stroke in his. He and Pat did a fair old amount of engine fiddling before the latter made the test flight. Flew fine, but all the foam rubber padding the tank and battery pack were fuel-soaked upon landing. Tank plug out. It seems to be epidemic - watch yourself.

Mel Graham’s tank plug didn’t come out, hut the glassfibre landing gear on his Extra has started to delaminate. How many times have you seen that? Your columnist has had his Aquila sailplane up and the best he can say for his flying is that he never beat the launch-line to the ground. And one of those days was pretty sunny and I should have found some lift. The field to the north of us is not yet too muddy to lay out the high-start, so there’s hope for at least one more thermal before it does.