Steve's R/C Page

                                                           

I built my first R/C plane (shown at left) during the winter of 1972. Since then, I've flown (and crashed) many, many radio-controlled airplanes, with varying degrees of success..the flights, not the crashes...I was 100% successful in every one of my crashes!!

The first two or three years of my R/C career were mostly spent building, rebuilding or replacing damaged (or destroyed) airplanes.  Some of those planes had very colorful and eventful histories.  When I got involved in racing, the attrition rate again went up...a midair racing collision is a most AWESOME thing!! After the noise and/or sudden silence, it rains down balsa splinters, fiberglass shards, plastic chunks and hot metal in a most amazing fashion!

The fastest plane I've ever had was a Formula I Li'l Toni racer that would fly at well over 150 MPH in level flight, burning 40% nitromethane fuel and turning nearly 20,000 RPM.  It was very fun for the three flights that it lasted, finally embedding itself into a dirt embankment in Caldwell, Idaho during a race.  Another spectacular crash!!

For the past ten years or so, I've tried to focus on competition Aerobatics, working to fly the airplane where I wanted it and  how I wanted it.   That has proved to be much more difficult than it sounds. Everything conspires against the poor, striving pilot...wind, engine torque, aircraft misalignment, dumb thumbs, and other factors too numerous to count. Occasionally, however, the gods smile and a maneuver is flown perfectly. When that happens, the hundreds of failed attempts at perfection fade into the background, and peace invades my soul.

I plan to use this page as an entry point into my evolution from airplane-crazy four-year-old to airplane-crazy 65-year old. Please come along if you share my fatal attraction to model airplanes.

My modeling evolution

Mr. Propellerhead









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Before R/C

I began building model airplanes at the age of 8 or 9. Those first models were stick-and-tissue, rubber-powered kits from Guillow's, Testor's and Comet. They probably cost between fifty cents and a dollar. I still bear a nice scar on my left thumb from the slice of a single-edge razor blade following a slip in trimming out a "die cut" part.  (More correctly called "die-crushed").  Almost without fail, I had to cut out every single piece, despite having been "pre-cut" by the manufacturer. By contrast, todays' stick and tissue kits cost $10-$30 and the parts are cleanly cut by computer-guided lasers.

The early planes I built were always high-winged monoplanes, because they were the easiest to build. Not having anyone to help me in my construction techniques and having no knowledge of how full-scale airplanes were built and covered, I did the best I could, given the constraint of ignorance under which I labored. In those days, before the instant-hardening cyanoacrylate (CA) adhesives we now use, we used Ambroid airplane glue. In later years, it would become very popular for sniffing purposes and be restricted and then modified. The smell of that glue drying still brings back good memories of my early building days. I would pin the structure to the wax paper-covered plan, glue a couple of pieces together, then go away for a day while the glue dried. Building was an exercise in patience. Finally, after many days, I would have the structure built and was ready to cover it.

The instructions that came with the kit, told about shrinking the tissue with water. I would cut the tissue so that it fit over the structure and glue it on with Ambroid. After the glue had dried, I sprayed it with water and, eventually, the tissue would shrink tight. No one had told me about dope (no, not THAT kind of dope, you DOPE, this was the early 50's remember?). Dope is nitrocellulose-based lacquer that is used on full-sized airplanes to shrink the fabric used for covering..  Anyway, nobody had told me about it, so I would spread glue over my finger and rub it on the tissue to shrink it tighter and make it stronger. Only one SMALL problem . . . WEIGHT! Glue is MUCH heavier than dope. As a result, my planes were quite strong, but wouldn't fly very far. They were built to survive crashes, not to fly well.

Despite my lack of knowledge about correct model building techniques, I had a lot of fun. I remember building several Piper Cubs, including one on floats. They were all rubber-powered and flew . . . if only briefly.

During my teenage years, I continued to build and fly rubber-powered airplanes, but still worked alone, without a mentor.  The results were not good.  I still enjoyed the building and dreaming, though.  I hung around hobby shops, with nose pressed firmly against the display cases containing engines and accessories that I had no hope of ever owning.  The little money that I was able to earn didn't go very far toward buying good equipment

Eventually I was able to buy a used McCoy .19 engine.  After much lawn-mowing, snow-shoveling, baby-sitting and panhandling, I gathered enough money to buy a control-line Sterling models Ringmaster, Jr.  It had a profile fuselage (meaning the fuselage was just a 1/2" thick piece of balsa cut into an airplane-like profile), 30" built-up wing and was advertised as a Stunt/Combat airplane.  Having attended several, if not many, airplane contests, I had an idea what the plane would fly like.  I put it together as best I could, painted a not-very fancy paint job on it.  Worked some more to buy fuel, a 1.5-volt starting battery, glow plug connector, and control handle with lines and was ready for the big flight.  

One beautiful summer day, I carried all my stuff the four blocks to Alameda Park.  I had no ground crew, which is a BIG no-no...who's going to hold the plane, roaring at full throttle, while you run out to the control handle and have it launched??  After filling the tank with fuel, attaching the battery and flipping like crazy...it didn't start.  I re-primed the engine and started flipping again.  This act was repeated hundreds (well, it felt like hundreds!) more times and still no fire!  Dejected, I loaded all the stuff back onto my bike and slunk home, an abject failure!  Despite trying many more times to start that @$^@%^& engine, I don't think it ever started.  Unbeknownst to me, I'd bought an engine that was infamous for refusing to start.  One would think that starting a 2-cycle engine would be a piece of cake, wouldn't one??  Much later, I would learn how to start engines.. the key ingredients are a reliable engine, a hot battery, and good fuel!!  

One sound has always made me stop, look around, mostly skyward, scanning with eyes and ears to locate the source...the sound of an airplane engine, pitch rising and falling as it flies round and round in a circle.  About 9 years later, as I returned from college classes to the apartment where my wife, Pat, and I lived, I heard that magical sound coming from the quad in front of Reid Gym at Idaho State University.  Walking up East Terry about a block, I could see a man flying control-line aerobatics...inside loops, outside loops, half-loops, Immelmans, wingovers, flying inverted.  He was doing things I hadn't seen very much of before, but it looked like magic!.  I waited patiently by his starting box until he landed...which I had NEVER done yet!!  I had taken off several times, but my flights always ended up with me picking up the scattered remains of my now-defunct flying machine!  This man, whose name was Milt Bauermeister, had put the whole thing together....takeoff, flying, and landing safely...what a revolutionary idea!

After telling Milt of some of my experiences (travails!) with trying to learn to fly, he volunteered to mentor me into the flying fraternity.  It was a wonderful moment to finally have someone who had ACTUAL KNOWLEDGE and EXPERIENCE be willing to share it with me!  Being, however, an impoverished newly-wed college student, I couldn't just pull out my wallet and get what I needed.  As fate would have it, Milt was a physician, a Radiologist, and had plenty of money for his hobby.  He had an old, tired airplane and engine that he sold me for a very cheap price and I was in the game!  

Even with the proper equipment AND proper instruction, flying was still to be a LEARNED skill!  I must have crashed that poor airplane seven or eight times trying to learn inverted flight.  Eventually, however, I could perform the same maneuvers that Milt was showing me.  It was really fun to go out flying and have an intact airplane to haul home!! 

I built many more control-line planes, including a Combat Wing.  WOW!!  That thing was pretty scary!!  I only flew it once, then sold it!  It turned so sharply that it would just about cut its' own tail off!  With most planes, the launcher would crouch behind the plane and just release it for a takeoff.  With the wing, he'd stand on the OUTSIDE wing, holding the plane by the wingtip.  With a smooth movement forward, he'd release it and jump back!  The reason for that move was to avoid being hit by the plane in case I had a little up-elevator dialed in.  The plane would literally execute a maneuver if you just THOUGHT about it!  It was fun, though, trying to cut feather on some barn swallows that came up to play.  Fortunately I didn't hit them.  When the fuel ran out and I'd safely glided to a landing, I unhooked it and sold it at the next club swap meet.  It was just too much plane for me!

Soon afterward, I received my draft notice and spent three years in the Army, including a stint in Vietnam as a medic.  While there I built several planes, but couldn't get any good flights on them.  I also learned about some of the new radio-control equipment that was coming out. 

I'd seen "remote-control" planes since the early '50s, but they were quite pitiful.  Generally the equipment was so heavy and unreliable that the plane wouldn't do much more than take off and land...no aerobatics or much elevation.  I remember one airplane contest, probably in the early '50's out at the old Pocatello Airport by the Pilot House Cafe across from Simplots' fertilizer plant.  A flier from Salt Lake City had a HUGE (at the time) nine-foot, radio-controlled Piper Cub.  When it was his time to fly, he and his ground crew got the engine running and tuned, throttled it back, got his radio working, checked out the controls, etc. and finally opened the throttle and started his takeoff.  The plane rolled quite a way and lifted off, but only got about three feet off the ground with the engine running at about one-third throttle.  The pilot was pushing buttons and flipping switches like crazy, but the plane wasn't responding!  I began to run after the plane in the excitement, noticing that it was headed straight for a barbed-wire fence about fifty yards away.  I thought that maybe I could grab the plane before it got to the fence and push it up enough to clear it...but NO...just as I caught up with it, the landing gear hooked the top wire and that big plane flipped over the wire, landing on its' top.  I don't remember how badly it was damaged, but I remember how disappointed I was in that radio setup.  It was probably some type of tube radio with rubber-band escapements for control movements.  Radios in the early fifties were a very IFFY proposition at best!

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