You know I have been flying model airplanes for nearly 60 years and I thought I had seen it all, that is, until this morning. Larry Renger and I went flying today and when I was setting up the Madman the control lines did the strangest thing I have ever seen. I unrolled a fairly new set of .015x60 lines and as normal when they were rolled out I ran them out to remove any twists. As usual I then tried to wiggle the elevator up and down, but the controls acted as if something was bound up in the plane. No movement at all! I went to the plane and the controls were smooth as silk, again I ran the lines out (no twist this time) and again the control system acted as if something was jammed solid in the plane.
I called Stan Tyler over and he ran the lines out and held them apart and the controls were smooth as glass, but as soon as he let the line touch each other, they bound up like a knot. They looked and acted like they were twisted together, but they were not! So thinking there was something coating the lines that was the source of the problem I took a paper towel and drenched it in alcohol and wiped the lines down, no help at all. As long as the lines were kept separate everything worked as expected, but let the lines come in contact with each other they acted as if they were twisted tight. We took each line and ran them back from the handle to the plane to see if they were twisted, but they were not. At this point I replaced the lines and everything was fine. After giving this some thought I think I might know what the problem is. The lines may have been sitting on starter in my box and became magnetized. I thought that stainless steel could not be magnetized, but Stan Tyler seemed to think that some can. I really have no other explanation. Larry Renger has a device that demagnetizes old real-to-real audio tapes; we are going to give it a try. Has anybody ever seen this problem before?
Andy Borgogna
Topic: So help me this is the truth! (Read 1802 times)