Wow! I had no idea that any video of the Red, White and Blue Saturn even existed! That was a very short lived airplane.
Here's the story:
The week of the control line portion of the 1996 Nats at Muncie was the week before I was scheduled to leave for Sweden as a member of the 1996 FAI team. I had pretty much decided to forego the Nats and just go to the worlds with my new R.W & B Saturn, but was informed that I'd been inducted into the PAMPA Hall of Fame and that they wanted to present me with the plaque that comes with that honor at the PAMPA banquet after the Nats.
Well, I figured that if I was going to be there anyway, I might as well enter and fly. Hey, it would be a great warm-up for the Worlds! So, that's what I did. The R.W & B. Saturn was not anywhere near as good a model as was the old "Bronze Dog" Saturn, but it was starting to show promise and I wanted to use it at the Worlds if I could.
Everything went well for the first qualifying round and I was in a close second on my circle after a so-so flight. I was sure I could improve on that and so my son, Robby and I went out after lunch that day and started really working on the new ship to get it into better trim. And, we were succeeding! I flew several flights that afternoon in a fairly stiff wind, trimming a bit after each. The ship was really starting to respond and I felt as though I had a real chance to make some noise at that meet.
Well, I didn't make any noise, but my airplane sure did... On its last flight (Which was also going to be my last flight of that day) the ship was going up in the inside portion of a Vertical Eight. Just before the transition point the "up" leadout broke! The ship started doing very tight outside loops and with each one it was heading down a bit towards the ground. I tried (as explained before in this thread) to run towards the model as it came through the bottom of each loop in hopes of getting it to hit the ground in a glancing blow. It did, but it hit just a bit too hard and the wing spar was broken.
I was disappointed, sure, but I was also a bit relieved. What if this had happened just after I had arrived in Sweden? No biggie, I thought, I’d just get the trusty and well proven “Bronze Dog” off the wall, practice up a bit and go to Sweden and kick butt!
As all well laid plans go, this one went kaflooie too. I got home and started flying the bronze Saturn. I put in a few flights and everything seemed to be working extra well. On the last flight I was recovering into Inverted Flight after the Inside Loops, and the plane just kept going down. I gave full down in an effort to save it, but it went in hard and broke to pieces! The post mortem revealed that the pushrod to the elevator had broken just behind the flap horn. It wasn’t a ragged break, but rather a clean one. It looked like someone had used a cutoff disk and cut the wire straight through. It was an occlusion in the wire and it’s a wonder that it lasted all the years that it did!
So, there I was with two wrecked ships and no back-up plane to go to that would be competitive at the world level. The thought to borrow back one of the several ships that I had sold to friends in years past went through my mind, but I quickly dismissed that thought. As a team member it is imperative that you do what is best for the team. Calling the Alternate was what was best for the team on that occasion. And, that’s what I did. I called Billy Werwage and told him that he was going. Remember, this was just two days before I was scheduled to leave!
Billy said that he could be ready with his Geo-XL, and that he already had his passport. The only problem was that his car was in the shop getting repaired and he had no way to get from Berea, Ohio to Kennedy Airport! Team, team, team: I hopped in my trusty Astro Van and drove the seven hours out to Cleveland to get him. I got him back to Stockertown and gave him my uniform (You just had to see him in that… It just hung on him.), and my airline ticket. The next day I drove him to the airport (another 3 hours further east…), and saw him off. Trust me, that’s when it hit me that I had blown a chance to fly again at the World Championships. Losing the two planes was bad enough, but missing that trip was excruciating.
It turns out that .025 solid music wire is just not the ticket for leadouts! I had used them for years, but around that time the most popular wire supplier for modeling (Ahem) was experiencing a bad run of wire. I found out that many others’ planes had experienced the same fate as mine. I now use Mil-Spec braided leadouts exclusively on my competition ships (Thank you Tom Morris…).
Perhaps it’s time for another Saturn… But this time it will be electric powered!
Later – Bob Hunt
Topic: Saturn & Europa, Bob Hunt designs (Read 25750 times)
