DICKEYBIRD

Just got an email from Eric Clutton (Dr. Diesel, the P.A.W. engine man) This year's event is on Sat., Oct 1, again at the Coffee Airfoilers' club field. All you small plane guys need to make plans to attend! We don't get many of these type of fly-ins.

This is a great event, not quite as big as Little Rock but a relaxed affair with lotsa good folks flying up a a storm. Eric said Joe Wagner was supposed to be there this year. The Airfoilers have a great field with a paved runway and the Tullahoma area is very nice. Plenty of good food and hotels. Kathy and I like to get there and set up Fri. afternoon/evening to maximize the available time on Sat.

OK Andrew, (the other one) I checked MapQuest and it's only 195 miles from Murray to Tullahoma, load up all them rooski engines of yours and come on down. You has been notified!

N925WB

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I just wanted to refresh this thread back to the top of the pile!

I'm planning on being at the SMALL fly-in this weekend. I hope to see alot of neat planes and pilots there!!!

-Wayne

ptulmer

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?

N925WB

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What's the question, PT? []

ptulmer

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Did you go? What happened? Any pics? Oct 1st has come and gone, right? Did Dickeybird and Andrew finally have it out? So many questions...

DICKEYBIRD

Yup, I was there...had a great time...didn't see Andrew though. I got back yesterday and had to go back to a hornet's nest at work early this morning. It'll take me a few days to gather my wits & pics and do a decent report.

N925WB

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I went. Picked up my PAW .06 from Eric Clutton for the Cloud Ranger project. It was really windy. Dickeybird seemed to enjoy the wind, but I didn't have anything that could really penetrate it, so I left early to take care of some wedding plans in Chattanooga. Sorry, but I left the camera at home.

-Wayne

DICKEYBIRD

Sorry 'bout the delay but (as John C. Fogerty says) I been "...workin' fo' the man every night and day."

This year's Tullahoma S.M.A.L.L. was a little, uhh, smaller than last year for some reason. The weather was fantastic on Friday (while travelling ) and there were a ton of folks flyin' when we arrived on Fri. afternoon. Kathy & I set up the canopy and left to go check in at the motel, confident that the weather would be great on Sat.

Early Sat. morning I was stuffing my face with freebee motel breakfast goodies when in walks Joe Wagner and his son! We chatted some and headed on out to the field. I heard later that Joe recently lost his dear wife Joan to cancer. What a shame, she was such a nice lady.

At least it didn't rain but the wind blew constantly all day Sat....bummer. 1st thing I noticed about the attendees was the distinct lack of anything noisy. I think the only non-electric powered planes there were mine, Joe's and Dr. Diesel's. The Diesel spirits must've been unhappy with Dr. Diesel's electric powered bombers 'cuz they were both summarily smitten from the skies as soon as he tried to fly them. Pic 1 shows both of them (a Halifax and a Stirling) before meeting their fate and his Russian assymetrical plane. The bombers had little GWS direct drive motors with helicopter tail rotor blade props. I've seen the Halifax fly at Little Rock and it's very impressive. By the way, for some reason my brain kicked out and I got very few pictures of the event but luckily Al Clark came to the rescue and emailed me the ones he took. Thanks Al!!

Pic 2: Al was pitted next to me with his fleet of immaculate planes....all electric powered but we won't hold that against him. Al is a real live NASA rocket-surgeon from Huntsville that is working on the Shuttle replacement vehicle. He could've told me all kinds of secrets but then he would've had to kill me! Al and I have been conversing ever since the first Tullahoma event in back '02. I think he was smitten with some my Cox stuff back then and for awhile was really excited about building up some Tee Dees that would throttle. He has had a lot of 1/2A stuff through the years and I guess the nostalgia bug bit him. Alas, after getting a couple of them running well, he's cooled on that idea and gone back into the electric world. Oh well, he's still a great guy, prolific designer/builder and has some of the cleanest, most immaculately constructed and finished planes you'll ever see. Many of the planes I saw were of all sheet construction....with beautiful dope & tissue trim.

Pic 3: His Astro 010 powered Schoolboy is beautiful...slightly modified here n' there for better flying characteristics. Dope finish with tissue trim.

Pic4: This one's called the Elf, again all sheet and clear dope but has Solite trim. He's a 3 channel fan like myself and his models always have a good balance of dihedral and vert. fin/rudder area for great flying characteristics.

Pic 5: The Gopher has a little GWS direct drive motor, dope & tissue trim. I asked Al where to get the checkerboard tissue and found out that these were all hand cut and applied individually....I kid you not! It flew like it was on rails in the gusty wind. I mentally dubbed in some screaming .010 audio and it was perfect!

Pic 6: This is the Rodent, geared GWS power and has ailerons, imagine that.

Pic 7: The Thermite (clever name eh?) is a geared GWS powered motor glider.

Pic 8: Another pic of the Thermite Al sent me earlier this year.

DICKEYBIRD

Mark Kummerow comes every year with his fleet of unique aircraft and flies ALL DAY LONG. Nobody gets more flights in than Mark. Pic 1 is his Facetmobile....hard to believe but it flies well!

Pic 2: Mark's foam profile Bumblebee. This thing flew well in the wind.

Pic 3: Ready for take off; he had to stand behind it to keep it from blowing off the runway.

Pic 4: Flyby - once in the air it was amazingly stable in the wind....go figure!

Pic 5: Great in the air, not-so-good on the ground (in the wind.)

Pic 6: Mark's Pou D'Ciel (Flying Flea) Beautifully built model that flew well in the wind.

Pic 7: Flying Flea flyby (Say that 5 times real fast)

Pic 8: 'Nother F/Flea shot

DICKEYBIRD

Pic 1: This one's called the Handful, from Andy Clancy's design. Dangit, can't think of the this gentlemans's name. He shows up every year with a pile of immaculate models.

Pic 2: This Handful definitely didn't look like it was a handful to fly.

Pic 3: Ralph Barnette came up from Coldwater, MS with his 5 cyl radial. It runs and runs well! It even throttles well with it's Enya carb. A sound like you've never heard before.

Pic 4: Charles Curry's canards. He flew all of them in the wind and they did great. The blue and yellow one was built using various foam ARF parts. Very clever and it flew great.

Pic 5: Dunno where this junk came from.

Pic 6: Yours truly demonstrating how to run funny so the photographer can catch it. The fast shutter speed on the camera stopped the Gyrator's rotor. Believe me, it wuz a'spinnin' in the wind! I could stand still, tilt it back and the rotor spun into full autorotation immediately. I had to rig a rotor stop because it spun up sitting under the canopy and flopped over all by itself.

Pic 7: Gyrator flyby. Al has been wanting to see it fly for quite a while. I wasn't going to fly it in the gusty wind but decided to try anyway. I'm glad I did because it wasn't fazed much by the wind at all. I guess everyone was so amazed to see it fly they voted it the winner of the "Pilot's Choice Award" and I won a new GWS electric ducted fan B-2 Stealth Bomber!

Pic 8: 'Nuther flyby

DICKEYBIRD

Pic 1: Once I got over the wind butterflies, I started playing around with it and got a couple of almost zero ground speed landings. I ran it out of fuel one time and had to do an emergency auto-rotation landing. Oh, it's always in auto-rotation mode so no sweat! You just point the nose down, turn into the wind and wait 'til about 2 feet before flaring out for a 3 point landing. On the last flight though, I got over-confident. A heavy gust came up while I was doing slow touch & go's and flipped it straight up about 2 feet off the ground. Full throttle and full down elevator did nothing. It flopped down on the tail and fell over on it's side but came out unscathed. I REALLY lucked out!

Pic 2: Sitting on the ground, rotor spinning but the shutter stopped most of the spinning motion.

Pic 3: Joe Wagner and son flying his Sig Seniorita. I got lucky and helped them get the balky engine running. It hadn't been run in a long time and was loaded with afterrun oil. Joe got a finger badly cut by the sharp prop and I went over to help. Kind of an honor I think....helping Joe Wagner start an engine. We finally got it going and they had a great time flying.

Pic 4: Eric Clutton (Dr. Diesel) and his parakeet Wilbur. I'm sure there's a funny caption out there somewhere!

We all had a great time and I hope next year some of youse guys can make it so I won't be so outnumbered! Again, a great big THANK YOU to Al Clark for sharing his great pictures with us.

Late Sat. afternoon I hung around awhile swapping stories with Eric and Charles Schultz. When they started reminiscing about WWII V-1's and V-2's, Bomarc and Regulus missles from the 50's I just listened. The trip was worth it just to hear them!

ptulmer

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Very nice Dickeybird! Maybe next year we can talk Rog into holding his event a little earlier/later! I'd make the drive just to see the "Facetmobile". Man, that thing oughta have nooo problem with rolls!

hotdogx

Howdy folks!

Dickeybird, nice of you to go to all the work of posting the pics of SMALL Tullahoma 2005. I'm a little embarrassed to have so many pics of my junk shown!

Folks, you really ought to make it to Tullahoma next year, it's a great flying field and a nice scenic drive from most places around the country. The best part is that there always seem to be unique and interesting planes each year that have never been seen before.

Being a fan of autogyros, I'd been dying to see DB's Gyrator fly since he first posted it way back, and I'm glad I got to see it go at Tullahoma. It is just a great looking design, and well executed! It didn't seem to mind the wind one bit and I was impressed with it's flying characteristics. DB did a great job on the sticks and it sure looked like fun. In fact, I got the bug and am now gathering plans and info so I can build an autogyro.

DB had a number of his other planes there (see the picture of them above), all with his usual excellent design and craftsmanship. Case in point, the PJ, his little motorglider. What a beauty! It was a shame it was too windy to fly the motorgliders.

Yes, there were many electric planes at Tullahoma this year but it's alway great to have the glow stuff too. Like DB, I ran Cox engines for many years, and even built up a DB special .049 a couple years back which ran and throttled wonderfully. But alas, I'm getting lazy in my old age and I have taken to flying a lot in my local neighborhood, so I've been seduced by electric power. But I still love to hear a good screamin' TD!

Even though I was unable to fly half my planes because of the wind, I still had a great time seeing new stuff, meeting old friends, and flying all day. I highly recommend coming out for the 2006 SMALL Tullahoma event!

DICKEYBIRD

PT that really would be great. Let's make some serious plans to gather as many of us together as possible at next year's event. Tullahoma's a neat little town with plenty of hotel space and restaurants. If folks arrive on Fri. PM, we can fly a while and then meet for supper later on.

Thanks for the kind words Al and thanks again for shooting the Gyrator pics. I had very few clear shots of it flying 'til now.

I look forward to doing it again next year!