We have test flown our Battle Axes and are ready for the first streamer pull flight. I was wondering where you guys get the 1 inch wide sreamers from. All I could find was the 2" wide crepe paper type party steamer. I used scissors to cut it in half but that was pretty painful in general - especially for 30' [&o]. This led me to some other questions:

1) Where can I get 1" wide streamer?
2) Is there an easier way to cut down the wide stuff instead of using scissors?
3) At a contest do the flyers provide their own streamers?

Thanks, Eric

1) Where can I get 1" wide streamer?
http://www.hattrickrc.com/streamer.html

2) Is there an easier way to cut down the wide stuff instead of using scissors?
Put the roll in the freezer for a couple hours, then cut it in half on a band saw. Watch your fingers because it cat catch and grab with course tooth blades.

3) At a contest do the flyers provide their own streamers?
Not usually. By RCCA rules, the CD supplies the streamers.

HTH,
D

Thanks for the answers ! I tried the band saw method and it worked great !

Eric,

For club combat at our field we use the 2" wide party crepe paper streamers from the store. We use about 1 or 3 extended arm lengths of string (6 or 18 feet) and about 3 arm lengths (18 feet) of the 2" streamer.

It gives about the same amount of drag, and makes them easier to see.

Alex

Well, while on the subject of streamers, our club fly’s with a 10 foot leader
of string (or something) and 30 feet of streamer (2 inch wide).

I have noticed that a very large percentage of the cut result in the streamer
breaking within an inch or so of where it is tied to the leader. Now the question,
are you allow to re-enforce the first 6 inches of the streamer (see picture) to
remove the stress riser caused by the knot ???

Next question on streamers . I have noticed some of the more grizzled veterans
(aka: vultures) pre stretching their streamers before they cut it to length. I have kept
my mouth shut to them, as to my way of thinking a stretched streamer is flatter and
may stick to the glue on my wing better and also would have less give in it and therefore
more easy to break/snap ???

Any thoughts, ..................

Martin

At an RCCA/AMA rules contest, putting tape on the streamer like that is going to be frowned upon. I suspect that kind of taping won't help much anyway, the streamer will just break at the end of the tape (even with the tapered down effect), and, frankly, flying around with a visible chunk like that is asking for someone to take a swipe at it, and that's not good. I frankly prefer the string to break and have someone take the whole thing rather than leaving a couple of feet, since I'd really prefer other guys not be taking shots that close to my plane if I can help it.

(of course, going for the scraps is part of the game. I do it, and I expect others to do it. I'm just saying that setting myself up as a target isn't what I want to do)

And again, at most contests, the CD supplies the streamer material, or at least makes sure everyone is using the same stuff, which should mean streached the same as well so it comes out roughly the same length. There isn't any real advantage to pre-streaching, except that it allows you to get more streamers per roll of material (sometimes, quite a lot more), and it streaches less in the air, which makes it less likely that you can get a few feet cut off and still land with over 30' of streamer.

A while back, I'd tie the streamer on to the string, then put a very small bit of tape around the knot, which helped keep the streamer from tearing off in flight or on launch. But I pretty much stopped doing that a while ago, since just using proper technique and taking proper care of your streamers is usually good enough. A lot of guys who have constant problems with streamers falling off just aren't taking care of their streamers.

we fly 1" stramers x 16foot and we cut the 2" by frezzing and then with a band saw (works really well)