Doug Stout also flew with the handle reversed. Like Frank said, it was a bit unnerving to watch him. In fact it made me scared to watch his hand because I might have become confused
I had the chance to fly many of Gene Schaffer's airplanes, which were set up to fly clockwise. The following is an excerpt from my not-yet-finished book about my Genesis series of models:
The end for my original Caprice model came on a wind swept Mitchell Field on Long Island in the spring of 1969. Gene Schaffer, Bill Simons and I had traveled there to compete in an early contest. It was March as I recall, and the wind was so strong that virtually everyone either declined to even make the trip to the contest site, or those who did promptly turned around and left after they arrived. Gene, Bill and I stayed on for a while, hoping that the wind would die down enough to allow for some practice flights at least.
Instead, the wind just got stronger and we soon realized that there would be no hope for any meaningful flying that day. Gene decided to do some wind-flying. He was quite famous for his skills at that. Bill and I watched in amazement as Gene performed literally dozens of dead-stick lazy eights, loops and square loops with his Blackbird. He could sure put on a show!
I decided that I wanted to try my hand at dead-stick wind-flying, and despite Bill’s objections (He always was the logical and practical one...) I gave it a try. Things actually went pretty well and it was easy to use the power of the wind to push the model up and over the top in maneuvers. So long as I kept things fairly big and kept the proper timing by allowing the model to penetrate into the wind far enough on the sides of the maneuvers to allow the wind to push it back over with force, wind-flying was easy; right up to the point where I tried to do some square loops and lost my timing.
The result was a splattered Caprice, with bits of balsa and foam blowing down the runway seemingly into oblivion. Poignant it was, and just as the parts disappeared I realized that I didn’t have a new ship on the building board. I had been mustered out of the Army in late 1968 and didn’t even try to get a new plane going over that winter. I figured that the Caprice would take me through the 1969 contest season and then I would build a new ship over the next winter for the 1970 season.
Gene offered me one of his models as a practice ship until I could build a new one of my own, but his models were set up to fly clockwise while mine were rigged in the more normal manner to fly counterclockwise.
Gene suggested that I should try attaching the up line from my handle to the down line of one of his models and the down line from the handle to the up line of the model. He said that if I concentrated on the spinner I should be able to fly as if I were doing the pattern from the inverted position and at least get in some practice. I thought it sounded reasonable. Bill Simons was sure that with this plan we were about to plant two models in the same day!
Well, it worked! I was able to fly Gene’s Judge with no problems, just so long as I didn’t think too much. And, in fact, I used that model in some local competitions (Sans appearance points of course). I even placed third flying it in one local meet! I was able to keep my hand in on the flying while I worked on a new model.The model of Gene's that I first flew was his Judge. At first I just took off (as if I were in the inverted position with my own model...), and flipped the model over quickly so that in my mind I was flying upright. After several flights I was able to just fly the pattern from the inverted position in my mind. I never had even a close call flying his ships. I placed third at the Troy, New York contest in 1969 (sans appearance points of course...) flying the Judge!
A few years later I "inherited" the Stunt Machine (the published one) from Gene, and I flew that model a bunch. In fact, I took it to the 1982 Nats in Lincoln, Nebraska, where I was Lanny Short's Assistant Event Director. One of my duties was to train the judges, and I was all set to do that with the Stunt Machine until one of the contestants protested. He claimed that flying that model in the training flights would "confuse the judges..." Well, he may have been right, as throughout Gene's career many judges admitted being disorientated when Gene flew. Bob McDonald had a backup model (a Sagitta if memory serves, or perhaps an Aquila; getting old and some details are escaping me...) that flew extremely well, and I used that to train the judges. The first flights on that plane were daunting, as I wasn't sure if I could just switch back suddenly to counterclockwise flying and get up to the necessary proficiency with which to show the judges a representative good pattern (I would have wowed them flying the Stunt Machine, as I had a lot of practice with it at that point...). In the end it all turned out fine, and I did't damage Bob's beautiful ship.
I also had the opportunity to fly Gene's Hallmark several years earlier. It happened at the 1977 Team Trials in Gillem, Georgia. Again, here's an excerpt from the Genesis book that chronicles that event.
Before we rolled up our lines to get ready to leave, Gene Schaffer asked me to fly his Hallmark. Now, I had flown Gene’s models in the past using that “reverse the lines on the handle” trick he’d shown me. But that was years earlier. I was drained almost senseless by the week’s drama and really only wanted to start for home. But Gene insisted.
Relax, nothing bad happened. I did get a chance, however, to finally feel the power of a good ST 46 in a smaller ship than I was used to. And, I liked it! That Hallmark was among the most steerable, easy-to-fly models I’ve ever flown. It had a very positive feel to it and also a one-speed characteristic that I’d never felt before in a stunt model.
After I landed Gene -- who had been very unsettled throughout the contest -- seemed very serene and he thanked me for flying his plane. He rarely got to see any of his planes fly from outside the circle because so few fliers set their planes up to fly in the clockwise direction. I sensed that my flight on his ship had more of a special meaning to him than he was letting on.The rest of the story -- as Paul Harvey (a modeler himself...) used to say -- was that the flight I took on the Hallmark was the last flight that ship ever made. After that Team Trials, Gene decided to retire from flying, and to my knowledge never picked up a handle again. The Hallmark was destroyed soon after that in a rather bizarre manner, which I won't go into here...
Gene's models all flew extremely well, and they all had amazing vertical tension. I felt that same thing when I first flew an electric model fitted with a reversed rotation (pusher) prop. I loved the pusher props on my Genesis Extreme and on my Crossfire models, and would opt to use one again if Igor offered one of his three blade props in pusher format. I've decided to fly a bit more (not even remotely suggesting that I'll fly at a Nats or Team Trials...), and have decided to try Igor's complete system, which includes a normal rotation prop. I'll report my finding here when that happens...
Bob Hunt
Topic: "Backwards" (Read 5362 times)