Trisquire

How do escapements differ? Push button once - full right rudder, push button again - neutral, push button a third time - full left rudder?

Tom

jaymen

Escapements came in two varieties: self neutralising and compound.
Self netralizing gave a right, with a push of the button, then when the button was released it went to neutral. Push the button again and it went left. You had to remember which turn was coming up next. If you wanted to make a large open right turn, you bypassed the lefts with a quick bleep on the button, and held the button long enough for the desired banking on the right turns.

A compond escapement, like the self neutralising always returned to neutral, but it differed in that one bleep(push and hold) gave right, a quick blip and hold ( push, release, push and hold) gave left, two quick blips and hold gave either hi or lo throttle, or kick up elevator.
Some compound escpaements triggered a second self neutralizing escapement in the third position just descrided to actuate hi/lo motor or kick-up elevator. Some even had a fourth position activated by 3 quick blips and hold. You could connect several escapements together in a cascaded arrangement to get 5 or more functions using a series of coded quick blips and hold(hard to keep track of what does which!)

So no, it was not like reeds that had a spring loaded toggle switch that could be moved from the middle to any of two positions. Escapements used a push button, and for compounds escapements you had to remember a series of blips to get each function. They made a box called a Code-A-Matic. It attached where the push button switch went, and had a joy stick. When the joy stick was moved, it closed a switch via a mechanism of geared cams that gave the correct ammount of blips for each escapement position, eliminating the need to remember the code and bleep the button.

Prairie Mike

yeah, you haven't lived until you landed in a crosswind with a non symultaneous reed system

My second R/C airplane was a Taurie with a 19 and citizenship reed (3 controls) system.(non suml)
You had to beep in rudder to keep wings level, then beep in elevator to adjust attitude, then back on rudder.....and so forth until you landed or crashed. Could do Cuban 8's with it though.

Years later when training an older flyer you could tell if they flew reeds. Instead of smoothly moving the stick, they "blipped" the control.
A "full house" was motor, elev, rud, aileron. You were the big dog with that system.
Interesting thing was that we could do loops with a rudder only system.
In my area, a 19 was the preffered engine size on a Taurie or Falcon 56 for training.
If you wanted the big stuff you went to a Kwik Fly or Taurus or Senior Falcon with a 45........or if you were REALLY gultsie, you used a 60.

otrcman

It's all fun to reminisce about, but I'll be darned if I'll trade my new Airtronics 2.4 rig for the best of what I had in the 50's or 60's. Remember when they called TTPW, "Too Tiresome to Piddle With" ? Or doing the "PCS Dance" ? (PCS Dance is what you and all the bystanders did because your engine went to full throttle taxiing back toward the pits after a flight.) It was important not to swamp a PCS receiver at close range, so you had to collapse the transmitter antenna as the airplane got close.) Or how about seeing guys running after their airplanes, transmitter held over thier head, because they taxiied too far downwind for takeoff ?

Just thinking about adjusting servo deadband to get pseudo-trim, hogging out motor mount plates at the field to fine tune side thrust, etc gives me the shivers now. I'll just put in a dab of trim, or dial in a bit of Throttle-Rudder mix on my computer radio, and smile all the way to the field and back home again.

Dick

billmod12

My Feedback: (1)

Here is a page from my Citizen Ship TMS Transmitter manual!!

jaymen

Then there was the "Digimite dance" and the "F&M shuffle"; Transmitter held high over head by pilot, who was typically running after the plane as it flew away out of control, and screaming: "I ain't got it!" Conjures up quite a humorouse vision, but it was not funny to the pilot back then as an R/C system cost the equivalent of over $4000.00 in todays money. remember that a pack of gum cost about 5 cents back then, today the same pack of gum is 50 to 75 cents, well over ten times as expensive. Gasoline is 20 times more expensive today.

billmod12

My Feedback: (1)

Jaymen, How right you are! I do not have inflation figures with me but my dad and I raked and scraped to get the 213.00 to buy that ten channel Citizen Ship in 1962/63. If I remember correctly the Citizen Ship was a mid priced unit. Correct me if I am wrong. It served it's purpose and after 40 some years I sold it for 200.00 to get back into the hobby.

mightyhorn

[8D]
Hello:
I remember my dad saying that the pushbutton transmitters required even MORE skill than the reed ones. From what he said, it was almost like a system of morse code.
Also, I think that proportional radios came out in the early-mid 60's. I remember that in 65 he had a Sultan with full boat reed system that was "out of date" because the proportional radios came out and other stuff. My folks couldn't afford a new radio. Between that and the job change/industry change, his flying days were done.
mightyhorn