Extreme speed 1966 style
 

I had to post this. On the back of the Nov '66 RCM.

RE: Extreme speed 1966 style
 

MJD, is that you holding that F.F. rocket? It is a beautiful picture captured in a beautiful time.

I wish like heck that I could have been one of your compadres back then.

-But- back then I had no choice in matters... I was small.


Happy birthday whenever it comes Sir,
Charles Russell Roundy

RE: Extreme speed 1966 style
 

No, I wish. In 1966, I was a tender 5 yrs of age. That man is none other than Maynard Hill. I am not sure if this bit refers to the closed course record or straight line. Think of the state of radio gear at the time.

Later in 1984 (see attached) he set the closed course record of about 151mph using an OPS .60 powered model. On the first page he describes the 200m square course - imagine what a bee-itch it would be to fly that course with consistency or precision. I wonder if FPV is permitted.. :)

In 1966 you didn't need an all composite model made in CNC cut billet molds to be a contender. Then again, at the time the 10cc straight line record wasn't 243 mph either..

RE: Extreme speed 1966 style
 

Cool! Thanks for posting that MJD!

RE: Extreme speed 1966 style
 

Reminds me of a guy in our club who used to build his own radios, back in the days when radios were: "push a button to go full left, and then push a button to go full up"...and all of a sudden he was there with a "fully proportional" two channel radio set...home made! Nothing like that existed on the market.

I loved the stories of those guys! Too bad he passed away about 10 years ago...

RE: Extreme speed 1966 style
 

Rudeboy, If you ever get a chance to read the book "Tales of an ancient modeler" You would really like it. He tells his life story starting with FF in the 30s.

RE: Extreme speed 1966 style
 

You know what's awesome? When you look at the picture in post #1: the plane looks almost the same as the planes that were doing 240mph in the Speed Cup last year...and it's nearly 50 years old!

Maynard knew what he was doing, that's for sure! His trans-atlantic flight was EPIC!

RE: Extreme speed 1966 style
 

Oh, and the new Super Tigre TWIN BALL BEARING 0.60 engine advertised for 34,99 is also awsome... ;-)

RE: Extreme speed 1966 style
 

My brother built several radio sets in the '60's, as an electronic eng student and general radio buff. Push button escapement, reed sets, forget what else. It was his constant experimenting and fiddling with airplanes and other things that got me hooked on models as a kid - things like .010 free flights, single channel Tomboys, a lot of Jetex (I was an addict for years), and a "free flight" glassed foam airboat with an ST .56 open exhaust up top. FF boats go in large circles.. which tends to bring them right back to the launch point. I recall several times dodging madly looping overpowered Babe Bee powered FF sheet balsa models. When I moved back into this area in about '93, I was lucky enough to meet a veteran FF modeler and get to know him for a couple of years. He flew competitively in the '50's and '60's, and his stick and tissue work was absolutely primo. A real enthusiast, anything that flew was interesting to him. He passed away in '95, I have a few mementos.

RE: Extreme speed 1966 style
 

You should look up "flying shop rags" on youtube...I get a kick out of it every time I look at it...
I wish I was born in the 20's or 30's...

"it is what we used to do after we broke everything and ran out of airplanes...." cracks me up everytime I watch it... :D

RE: Extreme speed 1966 style
 

Maynard Hill desribed his efforts with the Tortoise in the April 1967 issue of Flying Models. The first one was built in 1965, with two different wings. The first wing was 6% thick, but it was determined that it would flutter so it was never flown. The second wing was 7/8" thick at the center, down to 1/2" at the tips with a span of 45". Unfortunately the airplane was lost on a flight when they broke an aileron horn on a landing, and then pinned the aileron in place to continue test flights. But they missed getting it centered and lost control after launch, so it was crashed with a touch of down elevator.

The next Tortoise was built that winter, pretty much the same as the first. The following June 26, they got in one flight and it was good enough to set the world record at 140.28 mph. The record used a more or less stock TF 9-12 prop and was run on 50% nitro, 25% methanol, 25% castor oil for the ST .60 engine. In the air recordings of the engine determined that they were running at about 15,000 rpm.

The radio was a DeeBee Quadruplex 21 which at the time was considered a pretty reliable radio, though the servo performance was anemic, slow with low torque. I actually had met the guy that designed that radio system several years ago, and found out that we both graduated from the same university, some 28 years apart with degrees in Electrical Engineering.

Hill wrote a number of articles for FM back then. He also described a method to determine speed from recordings of Doppler Shift, as well as other parts of his record attempts for altitude, distance, and speed. He did attempt another speed attempt with another version of the Tortoise with a rear rotor engine, achieving around 160 mph, but not low enough for an attempt.

One of the more interesting things he developed was a system that would automaticly level the wings and hold a climbing angle for his altitude attempts, since he knew that watching an model and controlling it above 10,000 feet would be impossible. Hill had a PhD in Physics, and knew that there is a very weak electric field that extends from the Earth upwards tens of thousands of feet. This electric field is roughly 100 Volts per meter, so the problem is how to take a reading since it has almost no current sourcing ability. The way he did it was to use small radioactive devices to ionize the air right at each of three (or four) probes. The leads from these probes went to very high impedance amplifiers to sense the voltage, and differences in the voltages from each wingtip were nulled out with a circuit that drove the servo. For pitch control a small offset was selected to set the climb.

World Engines (it's their ad in the first post) was going to sell Hill's circuit to modelers shortly afterward, but it was only advertised once and then pulled from the magazines. Word eventually got out that the government decided that it would not allow the sale of that technology, since it would make building a small cheap cruise missle too easy. They envisioned someone taking out a dam by having a cruise missle that would self center up a canyon. Of course, since the concept had been published a year earlier, this only kept the general public from using one, any engineer would be able to do what Hill had done. Of course you need a radioactive source which most people might think is hard to come by, but for about $10 you can buy a smoke detector that has one inside of most of the cheap detectors on the market. $100 would easily build such a devise today, but GPS and MEMS technology has passed it by. But such an achievement in the mid-60's was a huge step forward by a one of a kind modeler. No wonder we made it to the moon.

45 years later, very few know or remember about this phase of modeling history. I hope you found it interesting.

RE: Extreme speed 1966 style
 

Now that reminds me of the "radioactive boy scout"... also an interesting story (and frightening)

Like I said: Mr Hill was awesome: a true pioneer! Nice to read about it.

RE: Extreme speed 1966 style
 

It's great. I posted a link to it in the 1/2A thread a while ago. Might have to do it myself this season for laughs!

The simple fun of having very little at hand and making do with what you have, is - at the tender age of 51 and having a job - something I realize I miss very much.


High Plains - thanks for the extra detail on the Tortoise. Very interesting.