The Early Years – 1950s
The Middle Years – 1960s – 1980
The Later Years – 1980 – 1983
Silly Things
Sailing – 1966 – 1983
One manifestation of my interest in things aviation has been activities with model airplanes. This began with a collection of plastic model airplanes, gravitated to U-control during my high school years, and later to radio control (RC) years later.
The Early Years
In the early ’50s, WWII was recent history and there was great interest in planes from that era. I was entranced by articles in newspapers and magazines about aviation. I even subscribed to Air Progress magazine, read each monthly edition eagerly. At one time I had every issue covering many years, until it went out of publication. I also had a few issues of Model Airplane News (MAN).
Reading wasn’t enough, so I turned to plastic scale model airplanes. Since there was no source in Hoxie, the small northwest Kansas town where I grew up, I would save my money from delivering the Salina Journal newspaper until the next trip to Topeka to visit the Grandparents Forbes. There I would make a visit to the hobby store and purchase Revel kits of the planes I was interested in at the time. Or I would ask for kits come Christmas or birthdays. I collected a model for nearly every Army Air Corp and Air Force airplane of that era – B-36, P-51, B-47, F-80, etc. I wasn’t into assembling them for show; I would assemble them, apply the decals, maybe paint some details, but mostly see them as replicas of the real thing. My “shop” was formerly the coal bin in the basement, a small enclosed space that was “all mine”; when finished, the models on their stand sat on a table next to the desk that I used for a workbench. (Oh, how I wish I had not succumbed to disposing of the models, and their boxes which I had also saved, years later when Mother thought it was time for me to totally vacate the house. But that was for the best; toting that collection around through the many moves since would not have worked.)
My next endeavors to “fly” were to “put something in the air”. I started with a goal of building an airplane, a U-control model that one would fly in a circle at then end of a pair of strings that controlled the elevator (ascend or descend). The first step – purchase a motor, propeller, fuel, and some balsa. I had picked up a few issues of Model Airplane News (MAN) and found an article for a scratch-built U-control airplane that appeared simple enough to start with. The airplane was easy enough to build. But I struggled with the motor. I just didn’t understand: I thought often that the battery used to get the glow-plug glowing was dead, or ?? I just didn’t know. (Hindsight has led me to the conclusion that my fuel had become stale. The motor started readily for a time after returning from Topeka with a fresh can, but after a few weeks I found myself struggling again. I believe that the ether or whatever was the more volatile component of fresh fuel had evaporated.)
Ultimately I was successful (fresh gas) and made a few flights on the school yard north across from the Grade School. But the airplane, constructed entirely of balsa, didn’t have enough power from the .049 engine. I’d seen examples of JATO (Jet Assisted TakeOff, but actually RocketATO), so I acquired two small Jetex rocket motors, affixed them to the rear of the fuselage, and voila, that gave me two or three minutes of ‘real’ flying (even if on the end of the U-control strings).
I had two more experiences with flying models in those early years, before leaving home for the Academy.
- I purchased a kit for a larger U-control model, and a .35 motor. I built the kit, got the motor running well, took it to the High School parking lot for its first flight(s?). Dad accompanied me: I got the motor running, passed the airplane to Dad, went to the center of the circle and retrieved the control handle, Dad launched the plane. Wow, it flew fast around that 30′ circle. I’d seen people do maneuvers – loop, overhead, and such. So I attempted an overhead maneuver; the first couple of attempts where high, but I thought I could go higher. Mistake – the plane didn’t have enough speed to keep the control lines taught, which reduced my control of the elevator, so I wasn’t able to pull it out of it’s dive before – CRASH – now a pile of balsa and covering.
- Soaring had intrigued me (it still does). I had watched hawks soar in summer thermals and in the updraft from even low bluffs out here on the Great Plains. I was attracted to plans in Model Airplane News for a scratch-built glider, 5′ wingspan, meant for slope soaring. (This was long before radio control systems were available.) I acquired the balsa (like that first U-control plane, it was constructed completely with sheets of balsa – another visit to Topeka) and built it. It was beautiful to me, a manifestation of a “real airplane” (no control lines). But it didn’t fly too well – Dad drove me out to a pasture with a nice, long, gentle slope, I carefully launched the glider into the slight breeze and down the slope, and got a few flights out of it. But hindsight, again – it was really too heavy to be a glider and without some means of control, it was mostly a matter of trying to set it off -down- the slope, with any breeze coming -up- the slope, then running after it, only to try again. But I kept the plane for many years, simply to admire it (and my handiwork).
During these years I had — motors >>>>
The Middle Years
I didn’t do much with model airplanes until many years later, but I did make one attempt while at the Academy. An upper classman had a radio control (RC) airplane he was selling. Ok, that looks like fun. But before I go further, I need to explain a bit about how a radio control system worked back then. First of all, control was rudder-only, not even elevator let alone aileron. And the system wasn’t like the “proportional” control systems today, where one can command a small or large amount of movement. These were “escapement” systems: a twisted rubber band provided torque for a rotating lever arm; a signal from the radio released the arm to make a 1/4 turn; the this would move the rudder to the next position – neutral, left, neutral, right. Each signal moved the control surface to its maximum position: center, then full left, then center, then full right, and back to center. And commands were transmitted as pulses, so one had to be ‘in sequence’ with the escapement control system, something that I didn’t master.
Well, there was a lot that I didn’t understand about center of gravity vs pitch trim, managing climb or dive via banking, and most important how to give commands to achieve the desired “maneuver”. The result: the plane would climb until the wing stalled, pitch nose down to regain flying speed and go back into a climb, repeating this cycle while becoming more violent. Meanwhile, I was trying desperately to command a bank during the ascent, attempting to get it to level out. After 4 or 5 such cycles .. a wing broke during the pullout at the bottom. That was the end of this “flying” experience.
The Later Years
In Albuquerque >>>
More to come (Mar 18, 2019)
Silly Things that I’ve Done
Rocketry? In high school, taking a chemistry course, I learned what one mixes together to make a solid rocket propellant. So I said, cool, I’m going to make myself a rocket.
The first challenge was to select a tube for the rocket. Growing up in a small Western Kansas town, there wasn’t anybody I could talk to about this, nor were there many sources of exotic materials. But I found some aluminum tubing which I thought might well make the rocket.
I had studied rocket in popular mechanics probably, and I knew that I should have some kind of nozzle to improve the efficiency of The Rock is propulsion. We did have a machine shop in town, so I approached them and they agreed to machine a nozzle for me that would fit snugly into the tube, and provide nice curved outlet for the rockets gases.
Adding a nose cone and some fins at the base of the rocket, I then fillef the tube with the propellant. Not knowing any better I tamped it down a bit just so that it wouldn’t fall out the bottom of the rocket.
Next, with a friend (hardly an accomplice), we went to a pasture out of town, set up the rocket, and lit the fuse. In hindsight, there are lots of silly things in this story, but it reached a peak when the aluminum tube melted right there on the ground. So much for my career in rocketry.
Sailing
You may wonder, why would I bring ‘sailing’ into these stories. It is because I was curious and then found that I enjoyed being on the water, in control of a boat – without the noise etc. of a motor. And, I suppose, well you know a sail is just another airfoil (like a wing), and … the centerboard/keel and rudder are also ‘foils’, just under water.