My experience with "wind Flying" goes back into the late 1960s who I used to watch Gene Schaffer do it often. He was a master at it. As has been written in responses above it is always good to have some "Wind" in order to "Wind Fly." Gene could do it with amazing light amounts of wind, and on one occasion I saw him "Wind Fly" in a dead calm.
Gene, Bill Simons, and I had traveled to a contest in Plymouth, Massachusetts. We went up the evening before the contest and stayed as guests of Dave and Kitty Chapman in their huge and beautiful Victorian home. During the dinner conversation Dave commented on how he had enjoyed watching Gene wind fly at a recent New York City contest. Kitty had not attended that contest with Dave and she asked what he meant by "Wind Flying." Dave explained how Gene would finish the pattern and start doing big Lazy Eights just before the engine quit, and then continue to do the eights after the prop stopped by using the wind at each outward extreme of the eights to power the model up and over. Kitty was intrigued. She asked Gene if he would put on a "Wind Flying" exhibition the next day at the contest. After all, Plymouth is on the coast and it is always very windy there. Well, the next day dawned bright and clear, and dead calm!
As expected, Gene easily won the contest flying his Oosa Amma (Which was never actually named that by Gene. Billy Simons once asked Gene what the name Oosa Amma meant, and Gene said there was no name for the plane. Billy pointed to the big "USA" on the inboard wing and the equally large "AMA" on the right wing panel and said, "There sure is, USA and AMA; Oosa Amma!" The name stuck, but Gene never liked it. He did eventually start calling it the Oosa Amma himself in resignation...). He had not forgotten his promise to Kitty, however. And after the contest he put a dab of fuel in the ship, fitted it with a smaller prop and took off. He began immediately doing big lazy eights and when the motor quit he ran from side to side vigorously hand whipping the big Oosa Amma through several dead stick eights. The ship just seemed to crawl across the top of the half loops at either side of the eights, and we were all sure it was going to stall and fall in at Gene. Nope, he put on a masterful show that day and all who were there to see it will never forget the dead calm wind flying exhibition by Gene.
A few years later I had the opportunity to try Wind Flying for the first time. I've written about that day in my new book about the Genesis series of airplanes that is nearing completion. Here's an excerpt from that book that chronicles that day...
The end for my original Caprice model came on a wind swept Mitchell Field on Long Island in the spring of 1969. Gene Schaffer, Bill Simons and I had traveled there to compete in an early contest. It was March as I recall, and the wind was so strong that virtually everyone either declined to even make the trip to the contest site, or those who did promptly turned around and left after they arrived. Gene, Bill and I stayed on for a while, hoping that the wind would die down enough to allow for some practice flights at least.
Instead, the wind just got stronger and we soon realized that there would be no hope for any meaningful flying that day. Gene decided to do some wind-flying. He was quite famous for his skills at that. Bill and I watched in amazement as Gene performed literally dozens of dead-stick lazy eights, loops and square loops with his Blackbird. He could sure put on a show!
I decided that I wanted to try my hand at dead-stick wind-flying, and despite Bill’s objections (He always was the logical and practical one…) I gave it a try. Things actually went pretty well and it was easy to use the power of the wind to push the model up and over the top in maneuvers. So long as I kept things fairly big and kept the proper timing by allowing the model to penetrate into the wind far enough on the sides of the maneuvers to allow the wind to push it back over with force, wind-flying was easy; right up to the point where I tried to do some square loops and lost my timing.
The result was a splattered Caprice, with bits of balsa and foam blowing down the runway seemingly into oblivion. Poignant it was, and just as the parts disappeared I realized that I didn’t have a new ship on the building board. I had been mustered out of the Army in late 1968 and didn’t even try to get a new plane going over that winter. I figured that the Caprice would take me through the 1969 contest season and then I would build a new ship over the next winter for the 1970 season.
Gene offered me one of his models as a practice ship until I could build a new one of my own, but his models were set up to fly clockwise while mine were rigged in the more normal manner to fly counterclockwise.
Gene suggested that I should try attaching the up line from my handle to the down line of one of his models and the down line from the handle to the up line of the model. He said that if I concentrated on the spinner I should be able to fly as if I were doing the pattern from the inverted position and at least get in some practice. I thought it sounded reasonable. Bill Simons was sure that with this plan we were about to plant two models in the same day!
Well, it worked! I was able to fly Gene’s Judge with no problems, just so long as I didn’t think too much. And, in fact, I used that model in some local competitions (Sans appearance points of course). I even placed third flying it in one local meet! I was able to keep my hand in on the flying while I worked on a new model.
That was a memorable day for me!
As a side note, somewhere in the early 1970s I had traveled to Flushing Meadows in Queens, New York to fly a bit with my good friend, Vic Macaluso. As was often the case in Flushing, it was windy. But, on this occasion it was very windy! I'd say it was a steady 15 to 20 that day, and any practice was out of the question. Vic pulled out of his car a powder blue, Ed Southwick-designed Skylark. That ship weighed a ton (or at least 65 ounces...). Vic put a small diameter prop on it, put about a half ounce of fuel in the tank, and when it was running he had me launch it directly into the heavy wind. He immediately started doing big lazy eights and the engine soon quit. Vic continued to fly those big eights for more than an hour! We stopped counting the eights at somewhere near 180 as I recall, but there were many more than that flown I'm sure. The wind was so strong and steady that vic was able to sit down in the center of the circle and fly those big eights. That ship penetrated very well due to its weight and also due to the very small prop Vic had put on it, and it even picked up speed after the engine had quit!
Over the years - and when it was safe to do so - I have done a lot of wind flying. It is fun, but it can cost you an airplane if you are not careful.
Memories, memories...
Bob Hunt