Another Pilotless Flight
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Another Pilotless Flight
Post deleted as it was placed in the appropriate thread.
Last edited by pelmet on Sat May 14, 2022 5:02 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Another Pilotless Flight
Back when I was a young adult, radio control gear was expensive, and most of us built free-flight models out of balsa wood frames with tissue paper skin shrunk on with nitrocellulose lacquer. They could be powered by a twisted rubber band, or for the bigger ones, a little one-cylinder engine running on nitromethane and methanol. The routine was to adjust the control surfaces (or on smaller ones, little bendy trim-tabs) to trim the model so that it would glide nice and flat without stalling, in a shallow right-hand turn. If you got the weight and balance and trim right, the torque of the motor would make the plane climb in a left turn, until the gas ran out or the rubber band untwisted all the way, at which point the model would begin to glide back down in a right turn as it was trimmed to do. It took a lot of skill and practice to get a plane to do this reliably, but I got to the point where I could get a model on skis to take off by itself, climb for a minute or two in a shallow left-hand turn, and then return more or less by itself to the same spot it took off from. With skis made from aluminium drink-can metal and wood, it would do a perfect landing too.
This reminds me of that. It must have been really annoying, but on some level kind of cool too.Maybe not for the owner. But for other people.
This reminds me of that. It must have been really annoying, but on some level kind of cool too.Maybe not for the owner. But for other people.
If I'd known I was going to live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself