A future for Control Line ?

[Terrence Durrill]

               Here is an interesting article on Control Line Flying.  I have been involved in Control Line since 1954 and cannot imagine a world without it.  I really believe it will survive most of us.  Check it out.              

                                      https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10216510930340648&set=gm.2684578198279854&type=3&theater&ifg=1

[john e. holliday]

Yes there will be CL flying some where no matter how many people say it is dead.  Look at the other modeling events that are still being done in different parts of this big space rock.  Model boats, cars and trains.

[Glen Peterson]

I was in Peterborough in 1998. I brought my PAMPA membership guide and made a few calls. I ended up meeting Mick Taylor, one of the founders of the Cabbage Patch Celebration. He was quite the collector of old Diesel  model airplane engines and quite a cordial fellow. The Cabbage Patch Celebration, which was held on the lawn of the  Peterborough cathedral, was once the largest Control Line event in Europe.

[Dave_Trible]

I believe it will be around a good while yet however the center of gravity may move out of the U.S. as the majority of our competitors age out.  In Other places CL is holding its own and perhaps starting more youngsters than we are.
Yes that will be mostly FAI.

Dave

[Lauri Malila]

I was in Peterborough in 1998. I brought my PAMPA membership guide and made a few calls. I ended up meeting Mick Taylor, one of the founders of the Cabbage Patch Celebration. He was quite the collector of old Diesel  model airplane engines and quite a cordial fellow. The Cabbage Patch Celebration, which was held on the lawn of the  Peterborough cathedral, was once the largest Control Line event in Europe.

That brings funny memories. I was there when they had it the last time, I think. That was about 2005.
Not by the cathedral, but at the playgrounds by river Nene. I used to live there for some years. L.

[M Spencer]

Those stupid little foamy things , scale . with a light cheap E lectric set uop , could do a Cox - ready to fly bit .
Just get one in a movie , and everyone'd want one . 

[Shorts,David]

Many of the pilots I've befriended at contests are relatively new to CL competition, myself included. It is something they've seen, or done as a kid, but then after some years or nearing retirement age they devote the time necessary to CL. Not entirely, but to a certain degree, the new blood is not young people replacing the old, but the new blood are old replace the older. This always makes the future look bleak, even though it is not necessarily so.

There are also major modes of promotion that could be explored, yet each has a $$$.

David

[Tom Vieira]

hey!  i'm only 35!

maybe we should start embracing *shudder* foam rtf's?

[Brett Buck]

Control line has been around since 1939, really took off after WW2 and probably peaked in the late 50's early 70's. Same for RC, been around since 1939 or so. Amazing growth especially with proportional controls and modern electronics, etc., also is easier than CL for the most part.

    RC wasn't possible to pursue as a casual avocation until the early 70's, for the most part. Before that, it was about tinkering with radios and very marginal controllability (although the experts could work miracles with even just rudder-only), and slightly-guided free-flight.

   From Sputnik (where airplanes and aviation suddenly became completely passe') to the early 70's, CL sustained the entire hobby and was the only place to go for sport flying and casual participants. As soon as RC became a practical proposition where you could buy a 5-channel pre-packaged and reliable proportional system, almost all the casual participants switched to CL, which is quite obviously superior in terms of realism and replication of full-scale aviation.

    Brett

[dennis lipsett]

No one has mentioned the point that a lot of the specialty items that are needed in the hobby are slowly disappearing.
i'm not saying the glow plug is going to disappear soon but even the spark plug disappeared in a few years after the glow plug appeared in 1948. Parts for engines and replacement engines might still be available but with scarcity comes increased pricing. Electric will definitely take over where the glow engine sources disappear.
For now the control line community has a wide choice of kits to choose from but I do not see it lasting for another 10 years.
As to increase participation it is true that the only growth that I have seen is older former  participants in the hobby trying to recapture a little of the enjoyment they had in their younger days. None that I have met and they are few have any interest in contests only sport flying.

[Stuntflyn]

    RC wasn't possible to pursue as a casual avocation until the early 70's, for the most part. Before that, it was about tinkering with radios and very marginal controllability (although the experts could work miracles with even just rudder-only), and slightly-guided free-flight.

   From Sputnik (where airplanes and aviation suddenly became completely passe') to the early 70's, CL sustained the entire hobby and was the only place to go for sport flying and casual participants. As soon as RC became a practical proposition where you could buy a 5-channel pre-packaged and reliable proportional system, almost all the casual participants switched to CL, which is quite obviously superior in terms of realism and replication of full-scale aviation
    Brett

Brett - I am sure you meant to say as soon as RC became a practical proposition where you could buy a 5-channel reliable proportional system, almost all the casual participants switched to RC, not C/L as you stated. I certainly would concur wholeheartedly with that viewpoint. While I would also agree that RC looks from the outside a more realistic replication of full-scale aviation, I don’t think that really tells the whole story about which is more realistic to the pilot. While certainly an RC aircraft is more realistic when viewed from the outside flying, which certainly is most important to some people, but I think CL is far superior in realism from the pilots perspective.

RC flying is really no different than playing a video game, there is NO feedback from the aircraft to the pilot. Having been an RC flight instructor for many years, I know one of the very best ways to train a new RC pilot is with a video game (Real Flight RC Flight Trainer, etc.). Crash to your hearts content and just push the red button to restore your RC plane to new and go crash some more. Learning to fly RC and pushing the envelope to increase your skill set will result in many crashes (you don’t even have to ask me how I know this to be true). RC flight simulators were a great invention to save you from many of these costly crashes with your real RC aircraft.

Flying a CL aircraft on the other hand allows you to feel many of the same sensations as a pilot feels flying a full scale aircraft. You can feel the power of the motor, feel the air rushing by your aircraft, feel the aircraft stresses as it maneuvers through the sky. For this southern boy, that is a much more realistic simulation to flying a full scale aircraft. Of course, much like Brett, CL Stunt has always been my favorite aspect of modeling.

One should not fool themselves thinking things are so rosy with RC. They face many of the same issues as CL when it comes to attracting and keeping pilots and club members. Some of this is self inflicted with the current craze of giant scale aircraft dominating most RC fields. The price difference between the old .40 to .60 size models and the giant scale behemoths is astronomical, to say nothing of the added safety concerns. It is no wonder there are fewer and fewer people getting in to RC.

While I personally don’t understand why there is such angst among some about CL suddenly going away, everyone is entitled to their opinion. Same can be said for those who like to bash RC as being only for lower class modelers, I have certainly met many RC pilots who are obviously brilliant folks. There are even those who like to bash their fellow CL Stunt brethren because they fly electric or they fly glow. Why is that necessary? Wayne’s and my father was a great all around modeler - he built his first radio for his RC ship, was a great builder and flew many CL events. Stunt was his first love and I never saw him ever lose a stunt contest. Guess he passed the love for CL Stunt on to Wayne and I. Our Mother also passed along some great advice - if you don’t have something nice to say about something or someone, don’t say anything at all. That is a hard one to follow sometimes, but one can only be diligent in making an honest effort to try your best to follow that rule. If you’re passionate about a certain area of modeling, stick to espousing what you love about that area. It serves no useful purpose to bash other areas of modeling. Personally, you will never hear me bash any aspect of modeling, it only serves to alienate your fellow modelers and besides, I love all aspects of modeling.

Those who turn their nose up at the current foamy craze have undoubtedly never flown a 3D foamy inside a large gymnasium. That is a unique and special area of modeling. One thing is sure, change is inevitable. It is the very essence of our sport, it’s why we have Old Time, Classic, Nostalgia 30 and other unique events to keep the spirit of bygone days in our hearts. One can either embrace change and profit from the experience of learning something new or one can live in the past and blast the present while learning nothing new. It is good to remember bygone days, but it is also good to learn something new.

It has been my experience in life there are doers and talkers. In most clubs, whether RC or CL, about 15% of the folks are doers while the remaining 85% are the talkers. If you want CL Stunt to flourish well into the future, be a doer, not a talker. I can assure you the doers are already out there working on it.

[Jim Kraft]

I do not know about the rest of the country, but as a young lad in the middle 40's after the war, there would be seemingly endless numbers of modelers flying ignition planes in Swope Park in KC Ks. every week end. This all ended some time after. That will probably never happen again. I had flown a little control line in 1950. I started flying control line again in the middle 60's. All of my flying friends went to R/C, so I followed to have people to fly with.

I flew R/C pattern competition from 70 to 94. I had started flying control line again in 93. That is when I rekindled my love for old ignition engines that I fell in love with as a kid. Sparkers and models go together like ham and cheese. Just an old school motor head and will probably never change. I just can not wrap my head around the new stuff. I did enjoy my time flying R/C competition, and made a lot of friends. But when I started flying R/c pattern, everyone built their own models, and we had to fly the plane as computer radios were not available yet.

We use to fly control line in ball parks and city parks back in the early days, and no one complained. They came out to watch. Times have changed. I love the new technology in some ways, and hate it in others. Does that make sense? No one knows the future, but when big name hobby distributers are going out of business, modeling as a whole must be losing to other activities.  R/C has in some ways killed itself. Most have no time invested in hours of building planes, and so can jump in and out just as fast without a thought. I have seen that happen over the years as they come and go. Not very many lifers left.

That is what I always loved about VSC. Many, if not most, are life long modelers who love the early days of our hobby and can somewhat relive them. But 1200 miles on this old bod is just to far to drive anymore. But I miss it terribly.