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General control line discussion => Open Forum => Topic started by: Paul Taylor on February 12, 2013, 08:59:54 AM
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Kind of a David Letterman top 10 or how ever many post we have.
#10
You and your flying buddy go two up with Bi-Slobs. As you are back to back he YELLS over his shoulder ..."I'm going inverted!"
Lets see where this goes.... ;D
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On the way up to do the third loop of a clover, your IC motor starts to sound like and electric :o
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This is going to be fun. Who gets to decide on the top 10 and the appropriate order? My input, but may be more:
After hitting your own turbulence in calm air at the bottom of the second triangle, seeing the front view of your airplane.
KT
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Catching Ted Fancher, out of the corner of your eye, marking up your score sheet as you do an official on the L-pad.
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As you are coming in for a landing in the Navy Carrier event and every one is running for cover.
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Dirty Dan chasing you with a knife right after take off.
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This is going to be fun. Who gets to decide on the top 10 and the appropriate order? My input, but may be more:
After hitting your own turbulence in calm air at the bottom of the second triangle, seeing the front view of your airplane.
KT
I'm sure after all the post you guys will have to pick out your own top 10.
Keith yours should make everyone list. Yours post cracked me up!
I seen a few of my planes from the front. LL~
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(This just happened to me yesterday). In the middle of a maneuver, feeling a thrum and hearing a "twang" at the handle, followed by a marked trim change to the aircraft.
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You notice that the more you bend your wrist up, the faster the model goes down. And vice versa.
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I said that I would have more.
At a contest, you have completed your second flight and you are 3 points in the lead, but Bob Whitely has not yet flown his second flight.
Keith
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30 laps after nailing your best pattern, you notice one judge has dozed off and the other is still staring at his stopwatch and your fp40 is still going strong!
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You notice that the more you bend your wrist up, the faster the model goes down. And vice versa.
At least the scare part of that is usually brief. Of course, the dismay afterwards can be pretty severe...
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You just flew a maneuver and the judges are no longer paying any attention to your flight. "Did I skip a manuver?"
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This probably only happened to me but,
getting a third of the way through the pattern and you are starting your second level flight lap after the last maneuver and you cannot remember the maneuver you just did and you are trying to think of what comes next.
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How about:
When you notice that your Father-in-law is driving his farm tractor into the circle with the bucket up. LL~
H^^
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You just finished the square loop in the old time pattern and you look at your watch and realize it only took you 3 minutes. HB~>
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In the middle of a flight, a pretty blond driving an expensive convertable with a child strapped in the car parks beside you in the center of the circle. (This really happened to me when we could still fly at Mile Square in California. She got the message real quick that she should not be there.)
KT
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(Another one from Mile Square where they flew RC on an adjacent runway.)
Watching falling remnants of two RC pattern ship that had an air-to-air collision directly above a circle where a friend was flying, totally oblivious of the canage that was drifting down on his circle and we could not get his attention to the impending problem. The falling debris wiped out his airplane as well.
(Those guys were not supposed to fly over our section of the field, but they did anyway.)
KT
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You're ready to launch for your first official and you notice that one of the judges has a white, red-tipped cane and a seeing-eye dog.
Bob Z.
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(Another one from Mile Square involving our RC neighbors there)
A friend had just landed his CL airplane and just happened to look to one side. A large ducted fan scale RC model had a power failure. These things, even without power are fast and had just landed pointing directly at the center of the circle where our intrepid pilot was still standing. He literally jumped up as the airplane rolled at a high speed beneath him.
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After hitting your own turbulence in calm air at the bottom of the second triangle, seeing the front view of your airplane.
KT
I had an incident about a year ago that resulted seeing the front view of my Magnum Plus stunter with a Stalker .61 flying straight towards me, as a spectator wander out into the circle about 20' or so while I was flying the level laps. The plane made a 90 degree turn around him, and head straight for me in the middle of the circle, :o and crash landed about 3' from where I was standing. %^@
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This is not a real panic situation in a circle, but almost as bad
Just glued (epoxy) the wing to the fuselage taking special care that everything was properly aligned, then notice that the leadouts are coming out the wrong wing tip.
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You and your flying buddy go two up with Bi-Slobs. As you are back to back he comes running by you and yells "DUCK"!
Bob Z
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You've just completed what you consider to be the very best reverse wingover you've ever flown and as you pass the judges on the next lap you notice they're both writing and shaking their heads...
Randy C.
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You are completing what appears to you to be a great pattern and you remember your travel partner (the owner of the stationwagon) stating you will walk home if you place higher than him.
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How about:
When you notice that your Father-in-law is driving his farm tractor into the circle with the bucket up. LL~
H^^
Good one Chris, been there done that... LL~
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You and your flying buddy go two up with Bi-Slobs. As you are back to back he comes running by you and yells "DUCK"!
Bob Z
LL~ LL~ LL~ LL~ LL~ LL~ LL~ LL~ LL~ LL~ LL~ LL~ LL~ LL~ LL~
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How about:
When you notice that your Father-in-law is driving his farm tractor into the circle with the bucket up. LL~
H^^
LL~ LL~ LL~......what am I laughing about, I am the father-in-law....and the grandfather....and my tractor does in fact have a front bucket! ;D
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My # 1 thing......Yes, it could happen to you! It's the summer of 1967 and the Beatles are all the rage. You are flying a Goldberg VooDoo with a Fox .36x, 9/7 Top Flite nylon prop, pacifier tank and Missile Mist fuel.......and its honkin'. You look around and see a Denver, Colorado city cop walking quickly into the circle waving his arms wildly and yelling "bring it down......bring it down".... (I was flying in a city park and a less than friendly neighbor had called in a noise complaint). I finally got the cop calmed down and explained that to "bring it down" before it ran out of fuel would destroy the airplane........he stood with me in the middle of the circle untill the engine quit and I followed his order to "bring it down". What an idiot!!!!! LL~ LL~ LL~ D>K H^^
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I had a combat ship crash into my stunt circle during an official flight. Neither I nor my airplane were touched. The judges yelled at me that I could have a do-over. I thought I was cool and unaffected, and choose to finish the flight. I guess I was more shook than I wanted to admit and discovered after landing that I’d left our several maneuvers.
Jim Hoffman
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I was preparing to launch Phil Nickles at the Nats in very strong winds. The plane in the adjacent circle went slack, crashed vertically, shards of balsa and silkspan blew across Phil's plane as he was cranking it ....then, as the crashed plane's canopy blew between us, never once looking up, Phil remarked quietly, "this doesn't look good....."
dg
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You’re up in three flights. You put your plane in the pull test area and attach your lines and handle. You notify the pit boss that you’re ready for a pull test and he obliges. You wait until the flight ahead of you moves into the circle and you fuel up. Every thing is ready and when it’s time to fly you pick your take off spot, choke your engine and signal your start. One flip, its on and running perfectly. Walk out, slip on the S-thong, find neutral and signal your helper to launch. As you roll out on the take off you nudge the handle ever so slightly up and the plane starts to nose over a bit so you give it more up and that expensive prop starts grind into the asphalt. In you periphery you notice the guy who launched for you is running after your plane as its rolling and you think, that's peculiar. You go about ˝ a lap and the nose is still down and the prop keeps grinding so you figure the line clips are tangled and you give that handle a quick wiggle and you’re finally airborne. As you give it a quick flick of down to level off you find your self doing a tiny inside loop so you give it up to complete the loop and you realize its not turning in an inside direction. As your plane is closing the gap between air and ground, you hear ‘THE SOUND’ Then every thing stops!
As you stand there with the handle in your hand you think…that was an interesting flight.
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Maybe not a panic situation,but if you know about KCK City Park when it gets dark. Getting home and unloading planes and equipment, realize your lines/handle are still at the circle. Had to use headlights of the old ford to see them.
Another that happened only a couple of years ago. Get to the contest and fill out the entry form. Reach for billfold and realize the cash in still in the checkbook at home.
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I said that I would have more.
At a contest, you have completed your second flight and you are 3 points in the lead, but Bob Whitely has not yet flown his second flight.
Keith
LL~ LL~ LL~ LL~ LL~
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Flying someone else's airplane (okay, Lou Crane's beautiful red 'El Conquistador') thru a pretty passable pattern, only to have the engine stop dead at the very top of the Overhead Eights. Fell like the anvil in a Road Runner cartoon.
To this day, I have not flown another's model - and never will.
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You start your horizontal eights and the down line breaks... Eight inside loops and the bottom is getting close.
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My first day of racing practice, learning pit stops and flying 3-up....my Foxberg plane bumps the pitman's leg on takeoff and rolls for one complete lap with slack lines. Luckily it headed to the outside of the circle and I was able to regain control and fly the tank out.
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Its top 20 day at the Nats. As you finish the vertical 8 a huge bumblebee decides he wants to land on your nose. He keeps trying for the rest of the flight...
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It's your second official at the Nat's, and you wave at the judges without really looking at them to confirm and start your engine. First panic in the circle, your helper yells that they didn't see you and you look up to see the judges and some are pointing at their stop watch shaking their head "no" and others are busy posing for a photo.
You kill your engine and wait for the judges, they give you the option to drop back or go for it. You go for it, wave again (while looking this time) then restart. You burn in what may be your best flight ever, but then the second panic in the circle comes when the engine burps in the first loop of the clover because you wasted that fuel on that first aborted engine start... (Yes I gritted my teeth and finished the clover ok, hey, it's the Nat's, no guts no glory!)
EricV
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Listening to the sound of airplanes crashing around you due to the extreme wind during an official flight at the National's.
Mike
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You are pitting a .40-powered rat racer in the days before nitro restrictions ... this is an airplane that will go about 165 mph and the K&B 40S turns about 30,000 RPM. The engine starts, you let go and ... the plane doesn't move because its needle valve is hooked on the hot contact ring on your finger. ~^ ~^ ~^
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Despite my own nomination about the rat racer, this offering from Randy has got to be No. 1. You had to be there to appreciate it. Note that Randy was more panicked by the approach of Dan with the knife than he was by the fact that he was flying a stunt plane with the lines hooked through a button on his coat and had scampered around to the point that he was flying (wildly) right over a very expensive full-scale twin-engine airplane. :o
Dirty Dan chasing you with a knife right after take off.
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Beginner Stunt math - Realizing your three QQQ's is going to = a figure 9. HB~>
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Proving to your Clubmates that heavy Ringmasters really do stall and auger in when full up is applied.
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Here's one- My flying buddy, Tommy Mansur, had been about one minute into his flight when an Army Apache helicopter tries landing in the flight circle, but heli-pilot realizes too late that somebody is flying in "his airspace", so he holds the chopper hovering at about a (7) foot altitude with the cockpit of heli at the edge of the circle and the rotors intruding completely into circle the span of the rotors! Tommy was able to keep his cool and flew all remaining laps over the top of the rotors while we tried to communicte with chopper personnel to keep the chopper where it was at, which they were anyway. When the engine finally quit Tommy dove for the ground immediately to avoid the rotors and made a hot but smooth landing. He thought about walking the plane away from the chopper while he was flying, but was afraid he might trip in the tall grass in the inner circle. When he landed the airman rose out of hovering and landed in the field next to our circle. They said they thought just a man was standing in the middle of their landing area and assumed he would move as they got closer, didn't realize he was flying a plane in a circle until it was too late.
Yawl might ask " What was a real chopper doing landing at our city park C/L flying field?" Well they had taken it over following the Hurricane Katrina disaster. This incident occurred about (1) month after the disaster- we thought the field was back under park control, because of what one official told us. In truth, our circles never were put off limits to fliers, we knew the Air Guard were using the circles so we stayed away for a month and heard from one park person it was ok to use.
Doug
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Like Armstrong in post #2, I was just the opposite. THE STAGE: 1971 Glennview Nats, (last Navy personnel Nats) and I was starting RC but had 3 good years (68-71) in ORD town in stunt. I had opened a Hobby Shop in Mt. Prosect. Testors over by Rockford wanted me to give a try using their new, not yet released McCoy engine. I resisted too long, but the day before the event, I agreed to give it a try . Out comes my G-Ald. ST .40 and in with that ugly gray McCoy 40 with a Dykes ring. In reality that engine was a K&B 40 inside a very ugly case. You already know what happened. y1
I had made several patterns the first day before the event and it was OK. My first official was a barn-burner flight until finishing 3 loops of the 4-leaf and it went Rat Race lean. VD~ Well some 11-12 minutes later I finally got a QUIT and landed. No Pattern No landing points. Had I received both with a mid-range score I would have qualified in my circle. You can guess the rest. I tweaked it a tad rich for the 2nd flight and it went richer after the reverse W-O and wobbled all throught the flight. P-P!
ME qualifying for the top 10. What a treat that would have been. H^^
That was the end of my competition stunt for all practical purposes.
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Its top 20 day at the Nats. As you finish the vertical 8 a huge bumblebee decides he wants to land on your nose. He keeps trying for the rest of the flight...
A peanutbutter and jelly sandwich will tell on you everytime! LL~ LL~ LL~ LL~ LL~
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10. Is that a bird?
9. Is that thunder?
8. Walking out of your sandals on new black asphalt while backing up in dead air and having to finish the patter barefoot. (and it just so happens one of the judges is your friend who ALWAYS gives you hell about wearing sandals to a stunt contests especially the Nats.)
7. Having a jet powered speed plane fire up in the circle next to you while you are in a maneuver.
6. Losing track of where you are in the pattern because for some reason you thought it would be a good idea to have a random thought. Usually something like "will I have light beer or dark beer with dinner tonight?" that is usually followed by "uh, what maneuver did I just do?"
5. "Hey is that Rob Gruber at the edge of the circle?.......BAM......Yep sure was."
4. The engine sounds and feels a little rich. Should I go for it? And I always do.
3. The engine sounds a and feels a little lean. Should I go for it? Yep. always do.
2. Is that judge asleep? Damn, he is asleep! Well this sucks....
1. The wind has been blowing one direction all day long. Just before your flight it starts to change direction. You stall as long as you can before you tell the judges where you want them. You crank the engine and walk out to the handle. You signal for release. Before your first lap is complete you realize that the wind had picked the direction it wants to blow, you simultaneously realize that is opposite of what you want it to be and you fly the entire pattern with the wind blowing you in the face and having to run backwards to prevent the plane from getting blown away.....At the Nats.
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Down line breaks just after leaving the stooge ~^
Last week flying the vintage Juno all flight good except the last flight is all over the place. After the flight nothing seemed wrong with the plane. When I got home and was cleaning it I found the weight box cover and weight was gone n1
Ed
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flying my new Big Job on a grass circle that hasnt been cut for a week, on take off the lines snag a dingleberry about 2/3 of the way out ,B/J swings in and i am watching it heading straight at me , about half way in it turns and heads back out ,i grab the handle with both hands waiting for the big WHAM, Nada B/J gets to the end of the ines and with a barrel role continues on like nothing happened
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2012 VSC i had been helping launch a trike gear Shark most of the afternoon, Jim Rhroades asks me to launch his beautiful new classis ship , i set it down ind i begin lifting the tail waiting for the front wheel to touch only to hear his only 3 blade buzz the ground ,after the flight you could hardly see where the prop had touched but i was crushed knowing i had done such a thing
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You are out flying your new plane and your buddy comes over and asks to fly it. You say sure. Then he says " here, hold my beer and watch this".
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How about this one: You're at your special flying field with a Buddy (Yes, you Carter) and he launches you for what you anticipate is going to be another practice flight only to have the lines snag on a dandly lion in the first 5 feet of the take off roll. The ship does a 90 degree left turn and goes airborn flying past you about 10 feet high and 15 feet from you. You then (me) try to correct the flight path by putting your arm straight out behind yourself so you can plunge it forward to lessen the shock that is going to occur when the plane hits to the end of the lines............. Didn't work. And that is how I got the scar on my right wrist. Yes, the plane (ARF Smoothie/B-40) crashed. ???
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After thumbing through a list of things that happened over the last 40+ years, and even passing up the time I saw an arrow sail right under my P51[young son just learning to shoot a bow], I have settled on the one time I purposefully crash landed my favorite slow combat plane. It happened as a big thunderstorm was rolling up out of the bottoms, and I started felling all tingly. I was using an old red easy just handle on 65' steel lines and I felt a clicking in the palm of my hand. I looked down just in time to see a small blue arc from the loop into my hand :o, and I decided it was about time I learned how to land under power! ;D
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How about having the speed guys in the next circle fire up a Dyna Jet just as you hit the top of a wingover? Been there, done that.
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Tragic to think that most of this stuff has happened to me a one time or another. Gads!
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The flock of big, fat nasty geese that flies through your circle while you're doing overhead eights.
By some minor miracle both birds and plane and pilot survived.
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Tragic to think that most of this stuff has happened to me a one time or another. Gads!
really surprised you have not mentioned anything about oh ,, say flying lines snagging on a coat? or airplanes disintigrating in flight,, or,,,,,,,,
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Signalling your holder for release, starting what may be (of course) your best take-off of the FCM and having the inside wheel lock up, then watching as your ship does the Trostle "I'm looking at you" pose mentioned above while the PA grinds that fifty dollar prop down to a 3 inch diameter before Roger Wildman gets to the ship and shuts it down. (Roger was judging.)
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I'm not a pattern flier yet, more of a sport flier, and I can say with no uncertainty that a properly trimmed magician makes beautiful , big, lazy circles around an airborn handle, while covering a fair amount of acreage, and almost makes it over the tallest tree in the area.
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My biggest panic came at the 1988 CL Scale NATS on Sunday morning.
I was flying my 76 inch WS C-7A Caribou, 14+ Lbs with two HB 40's. I was in second place in FAI F4B and went up trying to move into first place. BUT! The wing spar had apparently been cracked during transporting to the flying site. On the third lap the outboard wing broke. The Caribou made a 90 degree left turn, passed over my head in a shallow dive straight at the judges. When it hit the end of the flying wires (.027 x 2) the whole model exploded. The biggest parts left were the two fiberglass cowls.
Clancy
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I don't know how this one will stack up, but when I first started flying back in the mid 90's, I went to the local high school to fly one saturday with my brand new Sig Twister(my first BIG plane). Got it fired, and in the air and was in the middle of a wing over when my leg was attacked by a VERY amorous Beagle who belonged to a lady who just wanted to play catch with her dog. Needless to say, my concentration was broken, and I lawn darted the twister. The poor lady was very upset and offered to pay for anything that was broken, but al I could do was laugh.
Pat
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Am a sport flyer and at a R/C field doing some C/L flying. It's a hot day and am in shorts. Friend launches plane, Smoothie, and am just doing some basic stuff until, WHAT THE #%^*. Am standing in the middle of a big Fire Ant nest. The guys under the shelter almost fell out of their chairs watching me smacking and dancing. Have to say, it's funny now. Had at least 50 ants on me, and if you know these little critters, they all start to sting after they climb on you at the same time.
DAVE
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Being in the middle of a great practice pattern when a pylon racer crashes hard only ten feet from you. This actually happened at Whittier Narrows in about 1978.
Tempest
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You signal to launch your ARF smoothie and after rolling two feet, it makes a sharp left turn and starts taxiing towards you...and it's getting faster, and faster. Then 25-30ft away from you it noses over.
You ask for a hand launch on the 3rd or 4th flight of your brand new Ares because it can't get off the ground in the tall grass. After launch, it takes a left turn in towards you. You run away from it then realize it's now flying away so you wait for the plane to do it's own pull test.
Sitting next to Windy at Brodak when he says, look he's going to spend 10 minutes fiddling with the needle and he's going to nose it over. Sure enough, there it goes over, then pulls up into a wingover, and then flies 3/4 of a loop and continues on with the pattern.
4 ounces of fuel on an OS 40FP lasts 12 minutes...and you find out on an official flight
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5. "Hey is that Rob Gruber at the edge of the circle?.......BAM......Yep sure was."
LL~ LL~ LL~ LL~ LL~ LL~ LL~ LL~ LL~ LL~ LL~ LL~ LL~ LL~ LL~ LL~ LL~ LL~ LL~
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I have told this story before.
I was flying about half way back in the cemetery entrance, right across the street from my house, when a funeral procession entered the cemetery drive. I would fly a half lap level and then a winover so that I never flew over the cars.
Questions: How much fuel remaining? How many cars in the procession? How do I land this plane if I run out of fuel before I run out of cars?
That was my last flight in the cemetery entrance by order of my dad.
Clancy
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After thumbing through a list of things that happened over the last 40+ years, and even passing up the time I saw an arrow sail right under my P51[young son just learning to shoot a bow], I have settled on the one time I purposefully crash landed my favorite slow combat plane. It happened as a big thunderstorm was rolling up out of the bottoms, and I started felling all tingly. I was using an old red easy just handle on 65' steel lines and I felt a clicking in the palm of my hand. I looked down just in time to see a small blue arc from the loop into my hand :o, and I decided it was about time I learned how to land under power! ;D
That sounds just like what happened to me and my son, JJ, at Pwnee Rock KS contest one year. Flying Slow combat and he was going up to see who would second or third place against Mike Talman. Mike had engine problems. I looked at JJ and could see something was wrong. So I yell at everyone to hold up. I go to the center and he is crying his eyes out saying it is hurting me. Needless to say took the handle and immediately yelled stay down. I put the plane in as smooth as I could. Static electricity with not a cloud in the sky. Was told that happens once in a while out there in western KANSAS>
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Taking your recent Nat's winner for a practice flight before a contest, in front of lots of people, and just after starting into the wingover feel and hear a click. It quickly becones apparent that I no longer have pitch control of the plane. Instant terror trying to figure out what to do, then the realization there is NOTHING I could do. Then I settled in to "enjoy" the straight in impact about to come into the very hard asphalt. Nothing but the wheels were left. Sad day!
I always hated quick links, and fortunately with ball links no longer have to use them in safety critical locations.
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You realize after the 3dr lap your stooge line is wrapped around you ankles and you are about to fall.
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At least one more from me.
You are flying by yourself and using a stooge. This stooge is a simple device with no spring loaded release mechanism. The release, supposedly, happens when you pull on a string and it pulls a pin out of a loop in the tail wheel strut. So, start the engine, set the needle and start walking to the handle with the lines in your left had to make sure you have the lines untwisted, the engine is running satisfactorily, all is going well until about 1/3 of the way to the handle, then you hear behind you a sudden acceleration as the engine unloads and the lines in your left hand have an uncomfortable feel to them. Then you realize that the airplane has taken off and the lines will soon be and then are wrapping around you.
I could go on and complete this story, but it is almost too unbelievable. To make the story short, a recovery was made with no damage to the model. The lines were a total loss.
Keith
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A couple times I've been practicing at my flying site/soccer field, nobody else in site when a school bus pulls up and (1)a whole soccer team unloads and just come straight on to the field and (2)a bus load of what looks to be first graders on a day trip do the same. The tots and eventually the teacher heard my screaming and backed off. The soccer team didn't and I practiced a new type stunt flying.
Dave
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We had a close encounter at our club flying field a couple of years ago. Our club field is a church parking lot that has two entrances, Steve Couch had parked his van blocking one entrance and the pits were right beside the other entrance. All safe until a woman drives across the lawn to get around Steve's van and drove right across the circle going from my left to right. I am flying CCW as I catch a movement in my peripheral vision and give it UP just before it hit her windshield. No contact but no extra clearance. Her excuse was that she was late for a meeting at the church!
Clancy