zbird

Please excuse my ignorance, but what is control line flying? If it is any thing like my dad did when I was a kid, flying a plane in circles with a string that would make you dizzy.

JohnBuckner

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This is controlline flying:

firstplaceaviator

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Zbird,
Your description of "flying a plane in circles with a string that would make you dizzy" is a little insulting to most control line fliers. Yes, the plane is flown in a circle. Most control line aircraft use stainless cables, not a string. I have seen 200+ MPH control line speed planes. I have flown a 100MPH Mig 15 pulse jet, competed in precision aerobatics and combat. When you really get into it, you would be amazed at how serious the competitors are. There planes are built to a standard that most modelers can only dream of!
Doug

aerowoof

Well said

firstplaceaviator

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Thank you [8D]

Sweet Magician John! Hmmmm.... maybe instead of R/C this weekend, I'll get out the old CG Buster![8D]

Gray Beard

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John, that's just wrong!!!! I did it for years and really sucked at it even standing. I think my flying skills were the reason that combat kits came two in a box!! How you can do it sitting in that chair is beyond anything I can even think about being able to do.
I did get a little better at it when I got older but I still left stench in the circle!!!
In a circle with a string?? Yep, that's how it's done!!

zbird

I'm sorry if i insulted anyone, but I remember my dad standing in the middle and going spinng round and round with the plane, I see its very diffrent now.

JohnBuckner

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Zbird thank you and don.t feel to bad as it is the conception most of the younger guys have. Actually I am and sure most of the others love to have the springboard such as this thread to speak of something that is so dear to the earliar modelers. Many of the generation from the fiftys and sixties were reared on controlline but in the middle sixties with the advent of simpler single channel systems RC bloomed with many changing over and in some cases never looking back.

There is something missing in that simple statement though and something that is indeed almost intangeble and very difficult to convey to someone who has never experianced it. It is something that one can only experiance in controlline flying and could never ever be duplicated in RC.

You see when you fly a 'Good' controlline airplane (not the old common plastic sleds that are fixed in most folks collective memorys) You become very much a part of the airplane with it pulling hard in your hand and you can feel a rough running engine and imediately sense the airspeed and become a part of the airplane that RC could never duplicate. This even though we can only operate in a sixty foot hemisphere or so and to most peoples surprise we are virtually unlimited in aerobatics within that little hemisphere.

So Zbird thanks for the opportunity to ramble on and do some research and you will find that controlline is actually making a bit of a comeback with more avaliable now than for many years in the past. You just may want to give it a go some time[8D]

Yes indeed Firstplace it is a Magician. Almost stock with the exception of the Bill Young three channel throttle system. It also has high idle kick up and throttle trim just like RC. Am using a throttled OS 40FP and its a beatiful combination for me.

Thanks Gray Beard its been an interesting road since I first needed the chair seven years ago. I never completely abandoned controlline since starting in 54 but as with most of use it tended to be on the back burner in more recent years. Since I have the good use of one leg and control the chair and propel myself backwards just getting around I decided to give it a go and connected with Bill Young who fixed me up with one of his marvelous systems back in 02. This turned out to be the key for success at that time with a Sig 35 Skyray. This was all done in the hard packed dirt. I did thourghtly enjoy traveling to the basin though in LA to use their paved circles and Speedworld near PHX.

That lasted about two years and my medical problems grew worse and was no longer able to control the chair in the dirt, so having no convienent place to fly I thought it was over. Well just this year some folks in the club (many of which I have worked with and helped in RC) Started pushing for a twenty foot concrete pad for me to fly on and it came to pass with a lot of help from a lot RC'ers. So now I continue to fly RC almost every day but do some Ukie every couple of weeks or so.

A Special thanks to the Kingman RC Modelers AMA 969

It has truly been wonderful and I have been able to get back to controlline once agine after five years

da Rock

You really didn't insult anyone, honest. Almost everyone who has never seen it makes assumptions that seem sensible to them, and that's all you did. Matter of fact, thousands of 1/2A models are flown on strings. Strings made out of string. And the airplanes do go around in circles.

But you owe it to yourself to see if you can find some experienced C/L'ers in your area and check out what they do. You will be freakin' AMAZED.

Control line is the basis of some of the most awesome racing you'll ever see models do. There can be 4 planes at a time running appreciably over 100mph all on the same circle. Pilots in a little wad, pit crews at 90degree spots out on the circumference. Pit crews???? You betcha', because the races have pit stops where the models refuel. And that's just the racing planes.

Ever seen a square loop done by a model? With the bottom line at about 5' (yeah, 5 FEET). That a loop with each side a little more than 30' long, give or take. A square in the sky with at least one corner made with the airplane doing around 60mph HEADED STRAIGHT AT THE GROUND, and turning a VERY TIGHT radius, so tight lots of spectators flinch and scream.

And C/L combat fliers are pulling streamers at 100mph plus and cut each others streamers with skill, not blind luck.

Lots of things C/L fliers do that's amazing. And most of 'em will just grin if you ask about the string deal. Stick around and watch, and you'll know why their self esteem ain't hurt a bit. It takes special people to do most of it. And you'll be better of for finding some of them.

firstplaceaviator

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Zbird,
If you want to see some great C/L flying, I would like to invite you up here sometime. About 35 north of me, at the [link=http:////www.control-line.net/wc/index.htm]Berea fairgrounds[/link], they have a club and several circles. We can meet at my place, [link=http://skyparkaviatorsclub.com/skypark%2009/main/indexnew2.php]Skypark[/link] and drive up from here. They are out there nearly every weekend. Come see what it's about. I would like to get back into ukies myself...[8D]
Doug

Ram Jet

It won't make you as dizzy as a woman and will be a-lot less expensive. Not to metion the radio equipment. I actually love RC and CL. See attachments.

Regards,
Bill

green river rc

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Lots of CL flying on www.youtube.com

Gray Beard

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A side note, younger folks will never know this but COX used to have a flight circle set up at Disney Land and put on demos all day long to show off there products. Once in a while they would have some of us kids that knew how to fly come into the circle to test out there new planes and give them some feed back. Ithink Ieven bought one of those P-40s at the big D when it first came out. There best plane was the Lil Stinker .010 powered. Most of my CL planes Ibuilt, some of them Idesigned too but i did have a few of the COX plastic monsters. My first plane was the Fire Baby, perhaps the first know ARF. The hardware store carried all parts needed for the rebuilds, wing was a dime, fuse was a quarter and they came with a way cool canopy, had to have a place to put the balloon tank!! Those were the fun years when you didn't need to break the bank to fly a plane, you just had to mow a lot of lawns and walk a lot of dogs to come up with the money, mom and dad didn't just hand it out.

w8ye

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Ready to take off

JohnBuckner

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For those that may think all this high alpha, prop hanging and harrier stuff is new and the latest greatest then you may want to think again. Press Sabre Dance at this site and enjoy thelate great Jim Walker in 1949.

http://www.americanjuniorclassics.co...sabredance.htm

Garf

And that was done with a 2 speed spark ignition engine. But this was done by a man that could fly 3 planes at the same time.

Gray Beard

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And we did use nylon line so it really was flying on a string.

dhal22

in all the years i've been a rc'er from watching it as a kid in the late 70's and early 80's to my 1st flight in '82 to 2010 i have been fortunate enough to have not ever seen a cl plane flying around (pun intended). i'm sure there are 10's of thousands of people who enjoy it immensely but i personally have zero interest. just my opinion of course.

JohnBuckner

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dhal I am not sure why you would consider yourself fortunate for having never seen controlline flights. The tens of thousands of controlline flyers are obviously silly numbers and I cannot imagine where you come up with that. If I did not know better it seems you are being sarcastic.

In the sixties controlline flyers far outnumbered RC flyers but from that point on the numbers were reversed with a rapidly widening gap to the a low around 94 or so when the first controlline ARf's started showing up. This stopped the slide and a very slow rise in activity has been occuring ever since.

It of course will never ever agine be more active than RC and that would be a silly expectation but for those who wish to relive the joy or like me who never completely abandoned the joy this is and has been wonderful news.

As I mentioned in my earlier posts a year ago in this thread, You will never experiance the joy without actually trying it and there is no way to adaquately describe the joy. So I am afraid even if you watched it you could still not understand. This has never been about RC versus Controlline thats ridiculous and I would never abandon RC any more than I would Controlline.

Here are two of my flights if you care to spend a few moments:

John

http://www.youtube.com/user/JohnBuck...37/0ISQfwgFFqI

http://www.youtube.com/user/JohnBuck...30/T3b8ndVIhII

Tall Paul

.
Here's mine...
Built in 1972, still a flier!
Flight shots by me, flying.
.
Chip Hyde flying Tony Frackowiak's Flite Streak..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJjvbM3bMXg

w8ye

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Here's one of mine

JohnBuckner

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Very Cool guys ya gotta love the old Midwest Magician!

Also interesting diversity on fuel tanks in the pictures Tall Pauls with a rectangular wedgie, W8's with a full wedgie and mine with a bubblesss bladder type.

John

TLH101

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Yeah, it's just guys going around in circles. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e10bGw-ilpE Takes about 45 or so seconds to get started.

Gray Beard

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And when I was about 8 years old I had to learn to solder so I could do some tank mods myself. Then we used to make our own to custom tanks to fit a fuse. The fire baby had a balloon tank sitting in the bubble cockpit. When I moved to Calif. I switched over to free flight but every few years went back for U-Control. Been a long time sense I tried to get in a circle but it's what gave me the skill to build planes, no kits required and for sure no ARFs in my hanger. I still have my big powerful VECO and McCoy 19s. Fun on a string and skills that are lost to most people today.

w8ye

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I flew R/C from Late '58 through most of '61 and then went back to Control line until in the '70's