Phil Cartier here in central PA, just west of Hershey PA and near a big Chocolate Company theme park(eat more chocolate!). Been here since 1976. Our house is now along the Swatara Creek on the north side of Hummelstown- a delightful little independent borough with some 2500 people.
My flying preference is control-line Combat. I've flown combat here since 1979. I started flying C/L about 1958 with a 36in span profile with an Enya 19 on it that I designed.
. It flew better than a Ringmaster but I didn't fly in any contests aroound 67. The Minneapolis Piston Poppers and I had a number of friends there (including Air Classix, aka Dennis Leonardi who posts here). The 1967 contest featured some 40 contestants, including 3 for combat. My Aunte gave me a Johnson Combat 35. I built a very high aspect ratio plane for the time- Rapier- 8 in chord, 44in span with 350 square inches. It flew very well. Flying over pavement was a little dicey for a first combat match. I got up first, didn't hit the pavement or the other plane. The other two pilots flew, and then I flew one of them for first and second. The last match for 1 and 2 was dicey too. I mostly kept away from my opponent. He kept coming in up high and diving down until he smacked the pavement. I stayed up another minute or so and got the match on airtime.
000I got a fantastic job at Hershey Foods in 1976. Chocolate every day and I had learned a lotin 3 years before I got the job at Hershey. Very fortunate the bosses were pretty damn smart. We started making Reeses' Pieces introduced in the first couple of years. After a year I suggested doing the sugar coating without transferring the product into large "trucks" that could take 500 lbs and sat over night before being polished.
With all the time I had a built about7 different planes. Mary and I stopped at the Nationals(Oshkosh, I think) on the way to Hershey that summer. We met up with Gil Reedy and his family. Nice folks and Gil was already and accomplished combat flyer. I brought along a brand new foam plane that weighed barely 16 ounces with the Johnson on the pod. I had the honor of sending Rich Lopez t the showers. It was a great introduction with a panopoly of good flyers. Things just went up the next 20 some years.
We had a fairly active club for years, the Harrisburg Aeromodeling Society. One of the guys was a bit of a cartoonistt and came up with a drawing of a flying ham towing Gil around. The club grew to 30 something members over the years. We did a number of demonstrations and give a number of youngsters enough practice to be competent flyers.
So if we can find anyone interested in CL flying I'm willing to pitch in. This year I got a real surprise. A fellow from Lebanon PA, about 15 miles way, called me out of the blue. His name was Barry Lyter. He was getting started flying combat. It turned out his Dad and I had done quite a bit of combat contest flying around about Pittsburg, Harrisburg, Maryland, New Jersey and up to Rhode Island, Connecticut and Georgia,. North Carolina, and most of the Nationals. After Barry Jr. had found a wonderful wife, they had a very smart daughter starting work at the Hershey medical center. He and his Dad started coming over to a Combat-Ready park just north of Hershey itself. Flying is picking up.