FlyerInOKC

My Feedback: (6)

I wonder what the lifespan of the tube was in flight? Seems like a hard landing could really mess up a hot element inside the tube? I had a friend that was a ship board radar repairman back in the late 50s early 60s. He told me after a period of rough seas it would take a number of around the clock days to replace all the damaged tubes in the radar array.

GallopingGhostler

Longevity is a good question. Ship radar had higher voltage power transmitting tubes, don't know how sensitive to motion those are. The smaller tubes, some of the clearances between grid and cathode were measured in thousandths of an inch. I imagine it wouldn't take too much to mess those up.

Model planes used a rubber band suspension system, between the Fanstock clips and balsa cabin frame. This provided dampening against engine vibrations, but even if one tightened those bands sufficiently tight, the receiver would conceivably rebound off the cabin walls on a hard landing.

Another concern would be the life of the batteries. Those 22.5V photo-flash / hearing aide batteries were the size of a 9 volt transistor battery (except slightly taller) with the same style terminal clips. I opened up one once, (steel jacketed like the 9V's) and they were basically 15 thin 1.5V flat rectangular zinc carbon oxide battery cells connected in series together. However, those batteries were still available for purchase in the late 1960's, early 1970's when I was in high school. I used them in a portable flash unit for M3B bulbs with my twin lens reflex 120 roll film camera.

Interestingly enough, cars had tube radios with a multivibrator circuit to provide the 90V B+ supply, used 6 or 12 volt filament tubes (depending on car's electrical system). It must have been a sensation then to have such technology on the road.

acdii

I used to have a 1000 watt CB amplifier, it was all tubes, and kept the car nice and warm. The lights would dim when I keyed the mic. I could mess up TV and radio for 2 city blocks. The best part was driving down an alley and opening garage doors. Of course I made sure they closed too. Didn't want them to lose anything.

One day some jerk was giving me crap, he kept grabbing my 102" steel whip and whipping it around, I asked him not to. He kept doing it, I asked please don't, and he gave me the finger, so I gave him a jolt that he probably remembers to this day. I did say please.

FlyerInOKC

My Feedback: (6)

He learned a valuable lesson on the advantages of being civil!

Telemaster Sales UK

!

GallopingGhostler

Yes, I imagine the lad felt like a 110 volt appliance plugged into a 220 volt outlet.

Personally, although it would be kind of neat to see the old technology fly again. Given the reliability issues, not only to mention that replacement valves (tubes) are getting hard to find, one would be better using the radio for a conversation piece, or perhaps in a museum somewhere for the public to enjoy. Just to see something like DeBolt's Kitten fly again as rudder only with throttle control would be sufficiently satisfying. Many nowadays don't understand that rudder only flown by a seasoned veteran can outsmart a lot of 4-channel control folks. I just wished I lived in a place that had weather through most of the week that would permit such flying.

FlyerInOKC

My Feedback: (6)

Getting off topic and starting a new discussion. I have been debating on a new project. I have been pinching pennies like a miser and have a little bit in my hobby fund now. I'm planning on ordering the C-195 Businessliner short kit from Rich Uravitch I have been procrastinating on purchasing forever (i already have plans, plastic, and the back issue with the build article on hand). I have about enough left to order one more small kit. I am debating between the Balsa USA Phaeton II or the Dumas de Havilland Dragon Rapide (42'). I know want a bipe of some sort, I don't have one except for the Triplane in the hanger. The Phaeton II is very reasonable and bigger but the Dragon Rapide has been on my short list forever. I could pull out and start up the Dornier-Zepplin D1 project (Powered by a Enya .46 4C) again but I'm really considering another kit instead. Anyone want to wade in an express an opinion?

So many airplanes so little time!

acdii

I think your last sentence said it all. Still waiting on the Rascal 168 to be issued. Between the B-25, T-Clip, LT-40, Corsair, and P-51, not to mention repairs to the Biper Cub, Twin Otter, and a couple others, I got enough to keep me busy for years. I still have the P-61 unopened sitting on a shelf too.

donnyman

I have been lurking and wasn't going to chime in until ACDII mentioned the P-61. My dad had a thing for that bird and I have the Don Smith plans and a set of Robarts for it, problem is I also have ten or so other projects in the works and have a bad habit of not finishing. those king kobra's is still stareing me in the face! so reading what you guy's say about wanting to built several models makes me feel a little normal.

Look at this.... that's me eyeballing the things pulled out of the Citizenship TRANS. box I didn't know the pic had been taken. looking over the old tube stuff made my day. Though I never had any sucess with the old radio's I am still fascinated by them.

FLYERINOKC
Take a deep breath and try to control your urges..........

acdii

I think I have an idea for making retracts for both planes. The struts will be the most difficult part to make, lots of brazing of parts, makes me wish I had a TIG welder. The mechanism is pretty simple, just leverage is needed. The nose gear I still need to figure out the steering arm so that the servo doesn't bind when flying, I think a half notch joint will be needed so that the strut disconnects from the steering arm. If I can get a working set for the B-25 then I can make a set for the Widow.

GallopingGhostler

Yup, I know the feeling, Donny, been there and done that.

Glad to finally see you in the flesh, Donny, helps to put a face with a name. Yes, these old radios more or less required one to have the skills of an amateur radio operator. Flight pack dry cells were soldered for better reliability. One had to check voltages before flight to make sure there was enough battery to finish the flight, plus tune the receiver and transmitter for best reception prior to the start of every flight. Check output of the tube (valve) to make sure it was still rectifying and amplifying like it should. One didn't charge batteries, so the dry cells had to be replaced.

That is why I was glad my first radio was an Ace single channel Pulse Commander. It was all transistor with a superior Superheterodyne circuit and came with a rechargeable flight pack. Transmitter used a larger 9 Volt battery the size of a small motor scooter 6V lead acid battery, which was good for an annual flying season. I crashed many times and it never lost tune.

FlyerInOKC

My Feedback: (6)

There isn't anything normal about this bunch me included! The owner of the LHS gave me the pros/cons of a 42" Rapide and what wind level it could handle so that gave me pause. I'm think more about the started D1 I have so I may build it instead. I'm still ordering the short kit for the Uravitch Cessna C-195 Businessliner.

GallopingGhostler

And I wanted to add that that Citizen-Ship '27' transmitter, almost the size of a shoe box was considered lightweight for the day. It amazes me that some of the others had a ground based transmitter the size of a microwave oven probably run off a car battery(s) with umbilical cord to a hand held control box. Being lightweight was relative. It still had a little heft due to the filament batteries, probably 'C' or 'D' cells and the two 45V dry cells inside about the weight of a 6V lantern battery each. Plus, that poor Livewire Kitten was sufficiently loaded down with batteries and radio, powered by the likes of say a weaker OK Cub 'A' or 'B' .049 engine. It probably lumbered along to gain altitude.

A successful flight was probably a successful hand launch and short enough flight, with dead stick landing into tall grass to mitigate damage.

TangoBravo

I'm so glad I found this thread.
I'm a dinosaur, like many of you and I'll fit in here nicely. There are some of you who have been flying longer than me, but not many. I started flying R/C in 1970 after a few years with the Air Force. Digital proportional was what most were flying by then but there were a few guys still flying older technology. As for 'tubes', who remembers 7-11 stores and the 'Tube Checker' they always had? It was a metal cabinet with plugs to fit all common tubes and a meter to show if your tube was 'good' or 'bad'. If you needed a tube the cabinet had new tubes stored on shelves under the test stand area. Wow, guess I'm telling my age. huh? And they didn't sell gasoline at those 7-11s either. Kraft was a big name in radios and there were still quite a few guys flying Heathkit rigs too. Royal kits were called Murataka and Goldberg, Sig, Ambroid, Veco and Rhom-Air were popular names we all knew.

Tom

FlyerInOKC

My Feedback: (6)

Out here it was the Drug store where you found the tube checker. We didn't have 7-11s at the time.

donnyman

TangoBravo
Before the tube checker we had a store down the street where a repair man could fix almost anything and if he couldn't he knew someone that could. Tube checkers was part of the beginning of the throw away society and craftman started to fade away.

Welcome aboard!

GallopingGhostler

In Hawaii in the mid 1960's, there were still a good number of local TV repair shops with tube checkers. Cornet department stores also had them, along with Sears, J.C. Penney, Montgomery Wards. I remember a couple of ham radio electronic stores with just about every part one would need. I even remember purchasing RK-61 tubes (valves) in the early 1970's. Even purchased escapements. I was planning on building my own tube radio system, until Uncle Sam got my attention out of high school, joined his scouting troop.

You got me thinking, a walk down memory lane. 50 years ago, there were many small businesses dotting the landscape. I even remember the snow cone shops in front of some residences, operated by the family children. A nickel bought one a large shaved ice cone. Sadly, many small businesses, mercantiles, shops, machine shops, even shoe repair shops are gone now, replaced by store chains. As an adolescent in Biloxi, MS, I never heard of recreational drugs. One could break out a .049 CL job at a local park, no one would complain about the noise.

One neighbor complained about us kids tying partially inflated long balloons to our bike fender bracket. Rotating spokes would rub against the ballons, causing a much louder than playing cards, "thump, thump, thump". Tying more than one balloon would amplify the noise. A half dozen of us did that. We went roaring through the neighborhood in our "biker gang". This one lady stepped out of her house, and threatened to call the police on us for making so much noise. May be this is why I became a motorcyclist.

GallopingGhostler

Welcome aboard, Tom. I started flying RC 2 years after you. Bought an Ace R/C Pulse Commander system with Adams Baby Twin actuator on 26.995 MHz (brown freq.) for all of $70 ($404 in 2016 dollars). It cost me a month's salary ($88 = $508 in 2016 dollars) in Uncle Sam's scouting outfit. Heathkit's 5 channel RC system kit cost $209 ($1,207 in 2016 dollars) then, several month's salary, which was more than I could afford. Nowadays we take advantage of the relatively inexpensive RC gear.

FlyerInOKC

My Feedback: (6)

We still have a few TV/Electronics repair shops but I don't know how busy they are. One told me once after the set reaches 5 years old parts are impossible to get and you have to have the manufacturer's board most of the components aren't replaceable.

RCKen

My Feedback: (9)

As we are talking about dads and plans let me throw something out here. I've been totally wracking my brains lately searching for plans for a certain plane and I've come up with zilch. So I'm hoping that maybe somebody in here can help me out. As a tribute to my dad I want to build the plane that he flew in while he was in the Navy. I want to build a P2-V Neptune. I was an anti-submarine hunter that the Navy used until the mid-60's and then when it was retired it has a lot of uses after that in the civilian world one of which was slurry bombing doing firefighting duties. The plane originally was built with just 2 prop engines on it, but in the later models when they added more electronic gear inside and more crew members and the weight went up the added two turbine engines as well. The turbines weren't normally used for normal flight but rather they were used for take off and then shut down in flight to save fuel. I want to find a set of plans that would be good enough to let me blow them up the the 150"+ wingspan size. I would like to make it as scale as possible with the engines going with two gas and two turbines on it just the the full scale. But I need to find a good set of plans to start with.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Ken

FlyerInOKC

My Feedback: (6)

The closest I could come was this from AeroFred.com and Outerzone ws the same plan and a 3-view.
http://aerofred.com/details.php?imag...21&mode=search
http://www.outerzone.co.uk/plan_details.asp?ID=1553

Mike.

Mike

Joe Fisher

My Feedback: (4)

Back near the end of the space shuttle NASA was begging for old computers and games to salvage components. They could not repair the 1980's electronics that the space shuttle and changing equipment would require a complete redesign on the shuttle it self.

init4fun

Wow that's an ambitious project ! Please let us know when you start as I for one will certainly enjoy following the build thread on it .

Something I'm curious about here ; I know that with a lot of full scale aircraft when their proportions are scaled down to the reduced model airplane size/speed , the tail surfaces have to be a bit larger proportionally to the rest of the plane to have good flying characteristics at the lower speeds we fly (VS the full scale) . Now the vertical stabilizer/rudder already look huge on the full scale version so that won't likely be of issue but the horizontal stabilizer/elevator do look small enough for me to ask if it will need to be slightly larger than "true scale" ?

I first saw this on the Spitfire , if scaled down exactly the tail surfaces were too small to effectively fly the plane and I have also seen model Spitfires that were built as "fun scale" rather than "true scale" and noticed the designed specifically for RC version to have a larger tail , proportion wise to the rest of the model .

Is there a software that you could feed the full scale's measurements into that would return the best proportions for flying a reduced size/speed version ?

donnyman

[QUOTE=RCKen;12277749]As we are talking about dads and plans let me throw something out here. I've been totally wracking my brains lately searching for plans for a certain plane and I've come up with zilch. So I'm hoping that maybe somebody in here can help me out. As a tribute to my dad I want to build the plane that he flew in while he was in the Navy. I want to build a P2-V Neptune. I was an anti-submarine hunter that the Navy used until the mid-60's and then when it was retired it has a lot of uses after that in the civilian world one of which was slurry bombing doing firefighting duties. The plane originally was built with just 2 prop engines on it, but in the later models when they added more electronic gear inside and more crew members and the weight went up the added two turbine engines as well. The turbines weren't normally used for normal flight but rather they were used for take off and then shut down in flight to save fuel. I want to find a set of plans that would be good enough to let me blow them up the the 150"+ wingspan size. I would like to make it as scale as possible with the engines going with two gas and two turbines on it just the the full scale. But I need to find a good set of plans to start with.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Ken[/QUOTE
Hope this helps I want one too! I have more data but having trouble downloading.

donnyman

Let's try this! I was going to enlarge this and convert to rc but........... That black box will download to a text file. .....I think!