Radio Control: Giant Scale
TENNIS anyone? There is an enormous loss we all suffer, growing up-we stop playing. The things adults call play very seldom are. With hardly an exception they're competitions, even hunting or fishing, even golf, all alone. Rarely ever again do most of us experience pure play, doing something for its own sake completely, utterly absorbed and lost in it, nothing else mattering. Not that there is anything wrong with competition, per se. It's just that most of us get so much competition in our everyday lives that some real play can be very valuable. Could this be the real reason why the majority of RC modelers are "Fun Fliers?"
It's a Hold-Up
WHETHER you call them Quarter Scale, Mammoth Scale, or Monster Scale, the popular new breed of big models is just that: BIG. And big has to mean heavy. Not necessarily heavy in relation to their size, but heavy in terms of actual pounds. Fifteen to 30 pounds is roughly the range for the big birds, as compared to three to 10 pounds for current sport and pattern models. The quarter-scalers often have lower wing and power loadings which help their performance in the air, but when the wings stop supporting that weight the landing gear has to pull off the hold-up job. Just sitting on the ground, that gear has three to five times the load we've been used to, and in a rough landing the forces really climb. The model industry is already starting to react to the situation by offering beefed-up retract units and larger sizes of music wire. However,
Radio Control: Giant Scale
GIANT Growing Pains. Big Birds have been around for a long time, but really widespread awareness of them and interest in them developed in only the last four or five years. The Quarter Scale Association of America (QSAA) was organized in 1977 by a group of Nevada and California RCers, and their annual fly-in has become an outstanding affair. QSAA membership has grown from the original dozen or two to over a thousand enthusiasts all over the world. This growth is an indication of the tremendous interest in large models, but QSAA members are only a small part of the total movement.
Radio Control: Giant Scale
LET'S share the wealth. For a column like this to be of any real value it has to contain a lot of how-to information, not just who flew what, where, and when. We'll try to pass on all the where-to-get-it and how-to-do-it data we can lay our hands on, but we've got to get most of that data from you. Even long-time, very experienced modelers are finding that they have to come up with new materials and new methods when building the big birds. Personally, I think that is Giant Scale's greatest appeal at this time. New techniques and variations on old standbys are being generated at a great rate. MA wants to help spread that wealth around.
Radio Control: Giant Scale
THIS is the first in a monthly series on big airplanes. "Oh great," you say, "another Monster Man. What are his qualifications to tell me anything about my hobby?" A reasonable question that deserves a reasonable answer. I have been building models for over 40 years, starting with pine and balsa solid models when I was about six. Soon it was builtup rubber-powered scale models. Remember those beautiful Comet and Megow kits? And most of them only a dime! When I was really flush I laid out a buck or more for a Cleveland kit. After WW II I was pretty heavily into control-line. I did a little free flight, but what was really needed was an outlet for a frustrated hot-shot pilot. It was inevitable that radio control would be next.
