Free Flight: Duration
TA-DAHHH! Ordinarily, I am not given to bragging. The reason is that I seldom have anything to brag about. But now a shiny new AMA National Record certificate adorns my workshop wall, for the first time in eight years. Last weekend I set a new record of 13 min. 56.2 sec. for Category III Pennyplane. That doesn't quite have the stature of a C-Gas record, or an FAI Indoor record. But it will do. For starters, anyhow. It wasn't a fluke; I worked up to it gradually, by getting increasingly better matches between the motor and the prop, starting off with a 101/2-min. first flight, which isn't too bad in itself. The model is clearly superior to my previous one, which also has a 6-in, chord.
Free Flight: Duration
40th Anniversary Meet: The Brooklyn Sky-Scrapers, oldest continuously active model club on the East Coast, has planned a big meet to celebrate its fortieth anniversary. To take place at Galeville, NY on July 3 and 4, the contest will be held under Category I (5-min. max) rules and will include 12 events: H.L. Glider, all AMA Power events, A/1 Towline Glider, Unlimited Rubber, Coupe d'Hiver, and a free-for-all in which any kind of model may be flown. Unique custom-made trophies are being made for the occasion by Kevork Fags, Sky-Scrapers' secretary, using photo-engraving techniques. For more information, write to him at 236 Thayer St., River Vale, NJ 07675.
What You Should Know About Balsa
BALSA....how different our beloved hobby-sport would be without it! Can you imagine cutting wing ribs from pine? We tend to think of balsa and model aircraft as natural companions. But it wasn't always that way. In sport model aviation's earliest days-around 1910-balsa was not used. Models were build of pine, spruce, cane, and bamboo, and were covered with varnished silk and even thin leather. By 1923, about half of the structure of a typical contest model had become balsa. As late as the mid-thirties, rounded wing tips and tail surfaces were made of bamboo as often as balsa, but by then balsa had become the predominant modeling structural material. Balsa's dominance in model aircraft structures is not surprising; it has the lowest density of any commercial structural wood in the world. But, it might surprise you to know that balsa is classified by botanists and the lumbering industry as a hardwood! The botanical classification of woods as either hardwoods or softwoods had nothing to do with the actual hardness or softness of the wood.
Free Flight: Duration
Electronic Timer, At Last!: The Seelig Multi-Function Timer has established itself as the way to control the complex timing functions associated with gas-power models used in international competition: auto-rudder actuation, auto-stabilizer actuation, engine cut-off, and dethermalizer actuation. Still, anything less than 100% reliability means at least the destruction of a model that took a 100 hours to build and tune, and perhaps a shot at the World Championship. With every kid in the block owning a digital electronic wristwatch, and with four-function calculators now selling for under $10, the question naturally arises: "Isn't there some way we could replace all this clockwork with an all-electronic thingamajig?"
The Fourth National Paper Airplane Championships
HELD IN FEBRUARY in the gymnasium of the San Jose City College in California, the pretentiously titled Fourth National Paper Airplane Championships attracted kids from five to 54 from a 100-mile wide area, and mail-in entrees from as far as Saudi Arabia! Sponsored by the J. C. Paper Company and the Milpitas City-School Recreation Department, this was the most recent of the three or four meets held each year that are given sufficient publicity to attract contestants from several cities. Interest in paper plane meets in the San Francisco Bay Area is increasing; other meets in the area may soon top this one in size, but they'll have to go some to think up a fancier name for their meet.
