Both of these "memories have been on SSW and in AMA Museums Cloud 9, but never here"
Slack Lines
Flying season officially opened in Beaver Falls with the spring break. We used to get a spring holiday, one half day off from school for no good reason, sometime around the middle of March. That day constituted the first day of flying season. An all nighter would add the finishing touches to put the winter's project into flying form.
One particular holiday found me with a brand new Sterling Ringmaster powered by a Fox 35. This was the pinnacle of my modeling career to date. The year before I'd graduated from half As using a Sterling ME 109 with a Veco 19. The ME 109 was only 28" span, used a 2 oz. fuel tank, and flew on 52 foot lines. What a toy!
The Ringmaster had a 40" wingspan! It would fly on 60 foot lines. It was covered with silk, not silkspan. It had my first set of AMA numbers on the wing. This plane was definitely a big deal.
It also had a four oz. fuel tank. You needed a tank that big with a .35 to get a nice long (5 minute) flight. With a four oz tank though, you only would get 4 flights from a 16 oz can of fuel or only one flight from a 4 oz can of Testor's 39 glo-fuel (remember them? The old lighter fluid sized cans). I'd be using Fox Superfuel from now on (cause I had a Fox) and it did come in quart cans, although no one around Beaver Falls had ever seen one. A 16 oz can cost 85 cents and a quart cost a buck forty nine. It seemed dumb to buy pints, but that extra sixty four cents seemed awful hard to get.
The day before the big day we checked out the flying field (the ball field behind the high school) and found it to be a sea of mud. This could have been a problem except that in one of the recent Flying Models magazines, Fixit Wright, Tailskid, and Bunny had showed us how to make mud walkers. These were plywood paddles which you strapped to your feet so you wouldn't slip and sink in the mud. Grey Hayes and I made some that night.
The big day arrived sunny, cold and windy. Perfect. We picked a takeoff spot. The only spot without ruts and deep footprints put us on the upwind side of the circle, but what the heck, we could wait between gusts to take off.
The Fox was started once we got enough batteries together. We put my two paralleled #6 Evereadies in parallel with Grey's two and if the engine wasn't badly flooded, we could get it to fire.
With the engine running I tried to run out to the handle. It was near impossible to run in the mud walkers; you couldn't break the things loose from the mud and if you did, you couldn't stop without sliding. I finally got to the handle, checked the controls, signaled Grey to let the Ringmaster go.
It shot forward, then the inside wheel stuck in the mud turning the plane into the center of the circle. About that time it took off. I tried to run back to get the lines tight, but the mud walkers had me stuck. My winter’s work and life savings flew past my head trailing a useless set of brand new incredibly expensive .018 flying lines.
By some miracle the Ringmaster got to the other side of the circle without crashing. I still had hold of the handle. The plane came to the end of the lines with a snap that nearly pulled me off my feet. Somehow the Testor's White tube cement held the bellcrank mount in the wings and the plane kept flying. Once I calmed down the Ringmaster flew pretty nice. I tried a loop and couldn't believe how tight it would turn. The ME 109 flew nearly overhead to do a loop, but the Ringmaster didn't even get up 45 degrees.
When the engine quit, the plane glided down nicely until it hit the mud and flipped over, breaking the needle valve. What a day! And what a good summer it would be with a plane like this!
Fox 35 Needle Valves
I had a really good time while I was modeling and while I can't come up with lots of famous names and contest stories, I bet some UC fliers can relate to my experiences with the Fox .35 needle valve.
Between 1957 and 1961 we (Grey Hayes, Bill Moran, Eddie Staniek, sometimes Bernie Luger, and yours truly) graduated to big models with big engines. This meant a Fox .35 (what is probably now a stunt .35 or a classic .35 or something; back then there was only one Fox .35) and a Sterling Ringmaster or F51, a PDQ Circus King, a J. Roberts Sabre, or something of similar ilk. The common denominator was that the planes were all stuntable (would fly upside down and do inside and outside loops) and were all profile models.
We all had mastered straight and level flight, wingovers, and inside loops. We had been able to do the wingovers on 15 foot long lines in the intersection at 14th street and 2nd avenue in front of my house. Serious stunting though, required longer lines and a big 40" wingspan model; thus the big profile models and the Fox .35s. These would be flown on 60 foot lines down at Moultrup's field (the local little league baseball park).
When a Fox .35 is mounted on a profile model, the exhaust points down at the landing gear. The needle valve is normally positioned up at the sky; to put it on the exhaust side produces badly burned fingers as your hand must be under the exhaust to adjust it.
During normal flying this position is no problem as one normally lands on the wheels. While learning to fly upside down and do outside loops however, we very often would land (crash) upside down and this wipes out the top mounted needle valve. Without a needle valve, the Fox .35 will not run.
In 1989 this probably could not be considered a problem. I don't think most RCers of today have ever broken a needle valve. If they have, the whole plane was probably trashed and they didn't even notice the needle valve was broken.
In 1957, especially in June when the summer vacation had hardly started, a broken Fox .35 needle valve was an immense problem. We only had one hobby shop, McCue's, or Mac's as we called it. Mac just didn't stock handfulls of Fox needle valves. He had no way of knowing that 3 or 4 of us would all attempt inverted flight on the same afternoon and each require a new needle valve the next day.
We thus learned to share needle valves. While we shared we of course tried to invent alternate solutions. One of the Perfect mounting bolts fit the spraybar, but we never seemed to be able to get it filed just right to provide smooth adjustment. A handy hint of the day (Fixit Wright's??) said to file a weak spot in the upper part of the needle valve so it would break there instead of down at the spraybar. This kind of worked, but the soldered repair had a way of disappearing in flight; we 14 year olds weren't NASA solderers. Perfect also made a coil spring needle valve extension, but it tended to wrap up and let go, thus preventing fine adjustment (the proper setting was always + or - one click for where you were). You didn't dare let it stick straight up, it would vibrate right into the prop.
One way or another, we all did learn to fly upside down and do outside loops. Those of us that stuck with it built full fuselage models and didn't have to worry as often about breaking needle valves.
Sometimes now when I think I have a problem, I think back to when it was June and there wasn't a Fox .35 needle valve in Beaver Falls and then I realize I don't really have a problem after all.
Topic: Memories (Read 2147 times)