BMatthews

Awright, awright, I KNOW it's not radio control but there's been a few posts here about control line intrest and at least two people that are interested in a combat model.

Here's a low res scan of one of the better ones that came out of my teens. Most of the others were lower aspect ratio and I had more than one person say that the one here was a big step forward. Two or three others built one and then the whole 1/2 A combat thing died out as we got old enough to have jobs and get REAL engines.... .15 diesels for british style models.

Anyway, with no further apoligies here's the low res scan of the plans from 1973. This copy is from the Boeing Balsa Hawks newsletter so it's a good bet that I had my model flying about a year earlier in 1972.

The Vidicator mk10 was a big step forward in that it could fly on our rule imposed lines of 26 feet and actually do a full vertical 8 starting at 3 feet and not crossing the vertical overhead. Nothing else could do that. And with full speed I could pull a 1/2 outside from as little as 8 feet and get away with it while my competition either chickened out or dorked.

With the spruce leading edge and very hard balsa spars and some 4 oz fiberglass around the engine mount the Vindicator could withstand direct in crashes with no damage as long as the ground had any give at all. And speeds were in the 40 mph range. Plenty fast enough to make you really dizzy on those short 26 foot dacron lines. We used to fly these with a 5 foot string leader and 5 feet of 1 inch crepe paper streamer. Great fun...

If you like what you see then PM me with a real email address and I'll send you a high res GIF file at 434Kb. I'll even do up a little bit of a document for instructions and history. If you go to my gallery you can see a slightly larger copy at poor JPG compression but at least it's close to full size. In the meantime here's a teaser.

fastlash

My Feedback: (7)

No problem with it being control line here, but you have to actually move in a cirle while flying!! fly and move at the same time , hey thats to much like walking and chewing gum at the same time,no can do that anymore!!!

BMatthews

I know what you mean. In about 1980 I built two more to relive the old days.... .... and found I'd get terminally dizzy after anything more than 3 laps. Good thing it figure 8's so easily

PS: how can you tell I just got a new scanner.... Here's a pic I dug out of the ol' family album. This is one of the later ones that I added color to as it was for sport flying. The finish is silkspan and dope with red Jap tissue for color.

dennis

My Feedback: (90)

Actually we used 35 foot lines and lots of nitro , strange to hear 1/2A in B.C. as the British consider 1.5cc(09) motors as 1/2A.
Todays motors certainly are much stronger and the planes are large,some having a 40 inch wing and a weight of only 4/5 ounces and a lot faster then you remember, and fly on longer lines.
Funny, I still don't get dizzy and enjoy it , but you won't have time to be dizzy if someone is on your tail.
The downside is that the planes are a lot more complex(high tech) and the motors expensive $69.00 to $150.00, but your fun is where you find it.

DICKEYBIRD

Wow! That's a great looking plane and plans for guy in his teens....or any age for that matter! You should have seen some of my homebuilt stuff from my teen years. They flew OK but were UGLY! The only plans were drawn on the wood itself.

BMatthews

Dennis, you need to remember that we have that "Great Juggernaut" directly to the south of us.... While the British infuence in Canada has always been there thanks to the British modelling mags being fairly popular the main market was always very similar to the US directions. All the Canadian shops get/got their stuff from the US or Japan just like yours. The Oliver Tiger diesels we got came direct from England thanks to a local contact and a couple of others that believed in the wonders of mail order.

Dickey, thanks for the complement. Drawing plans was always a big part of the hobby for me. THese plans were made when I was 17 or 18 for the local newsletter of which I was editor at the time. And the original was probably drawn a year before that.

But competition, like war, is a great influence to develop. And in many cases there was not many kits that would do the job or they were too expensive for a teen with only a part time job.

And even then I loved the challenge of designing my own.

I've never flown this design on 35 foot lines. The line pull was pretty good on the 26 ft dacrons so it should be OK but I'd probably add another penny to the tip weight. I would assume the lines were .008 steel in this case? Perhaps the inner panel would need to be made a 1/2 inch longer for more tension.

Remember, this was a REED engine event for us kids that couldn't afford those fancy hot TeeDee's. So the models reflect the lower power output. I can't imagine what this thing would be like on a TeeDee or one of the new HOT engines. I would think that a Big Mig would be pretty comparable to the Black Widow. The Black Widow and others of the same configuration (remember this model really wants that two port cylinder) benifits from the stunt tank. Just be sure to turn the needle to the run along the leading edge like shown in the pic or you'll go through lots of them.

dennis

My Feedback: (90)

Bruce, believe it or not that was with Cox reed valve motors and Cox racing fuel which at the time was 30%nitro. I used to use Francisco blue Blazer and another of his blends Spitfire. Francisco fuels were made with nitro benzyne which in later years was identifies as a carcinogenic compound. It however had more punch then nitro methane. The hot set up was when Cox came out with the super bee to power their P-40. This had a 2 port cylinder. In the late 50's we used RR1''s who knew that today they would be worth over $200.00 to a collector.
Oh and the lines were dacron, the only time that I used .008 lines was for 1/2A speed, funny I never used monoline on a 1.2A plane, i can't remember why though.
The correct set up was always to turn the jug to the outside of the circle, the motor actually runs better that way. We never turned the needle valve though as seems to be the thing to do today.

BMatthews

Interesting Dennis. I'd have to try the35 foot option. We never did it and the rules we used wouldn't allow it because the idea was to use one spool of Carl Goldberg dacron and run it through the handle in one piece. And since CG's lines came on 52 foot spools....

These combats all used the two port hotter cylinders on a variety of Golden Bee and later Black Widow lowers. Yeah, I know the BW came with the two porter so that made the mod really easy... Rotating the backplate to line the needle valve up with the leading edge just makes too much sense for those inverted crashes so that was an obvious mod too. The only problem is that the air intake "wedge" was then in line with the exhaust. Some tests showed that it wasn't an issue though.

35 foot lines would be cool. I could do a vertical 8 and have enough room for a halo on top of the 8 without going past vertical. Couldn't even do that with the diesel combats we used later. What were they like when the wind came up though. On 26 footers there wasn't much problem short of a hurricane.

matchlessaero

Here is one of the many planes I designed in high school drafting class(14 years ago). It is a half A combat wing designed for a Cox TeeDee .049. I don't think I ever built this one, but I would like to someday. (we gotta get some combat going on around here Dickeybird!)

I was only able to scan part of the plan (I drew it full size), but I ended up getting a "B" for the drawing. My instructor stated that I needed to pay more attention to my line weight and lettering form