DICKEYBIRD

I was doing a little shop cleaning this morning and came across this little gem. I've been looking for it for a while.

Shows you how good the pioneers in our hobby really were. Electronically, aerodynamically - you name it - they were awesome! This article was from 45 years ago.[X(]

BobHH

My Feedback: (18)

Yep, I built one of those a few years ago and flew it with a Ace pulser. I think I still have the plans somewhere. Fun to fly but the glide was not too good!!

Bob Harris

BMatthews

Heh, heh.... I also built one years ago using an Albin reciever, a home made actuator and a borrowed .010. It was actually not a bad plane to fly while under power but when the engine quite it had the glide of a greased manhole cover. It survived these "arrivals" for around 6 flights before finding some pavement and that was all she wrote. Dinged up the prop screw and spinner on the engine and the plane behind the engine shattered like cheap stemware. Didn't try it anymore.

hfenn

I built one 3 years ago and powered it (sacrilige I know) with a Feigao 12mm motor on 2S250 LiPo, so I had rudder and throttle. I flew it at SMALL 3 years ago and up at Mammoth Spring with Tom Anderson and George Smith. I might spray some butyrate on it and hang an .010 on the nose.

combatpigg

My Feedback: (3)

Back then it was a marvelous acheivement. It still is now if you can duplicate how it was done.
Too bad [in some ways] that the technology has made RC seem routine.

MJD

My Feedback: (1)

It's funny, but only last night I was having similar thoughts - looking around my workshop and focusing on two Jr Falcons in the midst of recovering and minor repairs, I realize the "problems" I have today are not by any means the same as those of yesteryear: today I have all this stuff lying around and deciding what to do with what is the big issue. I was vaguely wondering where all the mystery went! You know, all those dreamy thoughts you have as a geeky kid in the hobby, and poring over magazines ogling all the cool stuff that maybe one day I'd have too. Yet I still have those thoughts, and I think I still get the same pleasure - but they just cost more and take a lot more work! But the good, simple fun of "getting something to fly" that you scrounged for is definitely something I miss with a passion. It was a whole pile of fun taking my new sheet ukie .049 Cub to the ball diamond a couple of months ago for test flights, and I know I was laughing during the test flight. That's the real deal.

MJD

MJD

My Feedback: (1)

Thinking of mystery and resourcefulness, all my first memories of modelling are from my big brother, who was brilliant at electronics and studying engineering in university in the late '60's - early '70's when I was a kid progressing into my teens. He built several radio systems from scratch in the early-mid '60's including a reed multi system, though all I am old enough to recall seeing on RC were Tomboys he flew at our cottage (hence my soft spot for that model). Thinking about how much I grumble at installing a flight pack, I should humble myself a little and think of people who were only a few steps from digging for ore to cast pistons. It was actually his free flight antics, with myriad sheet balse this-n-thats that I recall best - and I was excited to find the Early RC website, where I spotted the Page Boy and realized that this was the little red model I remember vividly as a kid of 6-7, that he flew FF on an .010. I clearly remember the loop over our heads into the grass on the first launch.. but eventually he got it trimmed out to spiral up madly on a part tank of fuel - the image of holding a whining .010-.049 on something ready for launch in the right hand while tracking the run time on a wrist watch on the left is burned into my retina - good kid memories. Or hastily cobbling together a boxy sheet foam cabin high wing thing on proportional R/O and an .049 model - while I was building my first RC, a Falcon 56, so that I could get a taste of this RC thing (1974 as I recall, I was 13 then, first summer job).. and the darn thing flew just fine! Ugly as sin, it should have been shot on sight, but it had the right stuff to get the blood boiling.

Sleepy eyed morning rambles.. [sm=redface.gif]

MJD

BMatthews

Hmmm..... I'm tempted to try one again for electric. Just so I can land it without the arrival being cryptically vertical ! ! ! ! ! After all it would take like 2hours and $2 of wood to build?

MJD

My Feedback: (1)

With modern micro gear, there may be hope for the wing loading yet!

MJD

hfenn

Hard to see in my pic above, but mine came in at 3.2 oz. GWS Rx, Phoenix 10, one HS50, 2S250 lipo Feigao 12mm motor, GWS 3-2 prop. A little nitrate dope to ward off moisture.