60 YEARS IN 60 MINUTES
Photos by Joe Hass; email: joehass@gmail.com
ON MAY 26, 2025, my son, Chris Hass, experienced an aeromodeling whirlwind. Chris did the maiden flight on his 33-pound Skywing Falcon turbine jet. With a wingspan of 80 inches and a length of 82 inches, the Falcon is equipped with a Swiwinn 190 turbine, a JR PROPO radio, Theta servos, and an Advanced Radio Smooth Flite 16 gyro. With a flip of a switch, flaps are mixed with the ailerons for improved roll rate. It also has smoke and thrust-vectoring for advanced aerobatics and hovering.
After flying the jet, Chris made his first flight of a 1965 vintage, 27 MHz, single-channel Galloping Ghost aircraft. He spanned 60 years of model aviation technology in 60 minutes.
The Galloping Ghost aircraft, a Midwest Products Company Astro-Mite (Kit No. 112), is identical to one that I built in 1965. The molded foam wing spans 44 inches with a flying weight of 2 pounds. Control is provided with a Min-X Pulsemite transmitter and a Min-X SH-1 receiver driving a RAND LR actuator. A single-cell LiPo battery powers the airborne radio system.
AMA Hall of Fame inductee and former District VII Vice President Pete Waters, who worked at Min-X in the 1960s, got the radio system working flawlessly. Galloping Ghost was an ingenious mechanical way to get a proportional control system of elevator and rudder from a low-cost (relatively) single-channel system. In flight, the elevator and rudder are moving constantly because they are interconnected in one actuator.
Rather than the original Cox glow engine, the Astro-Mite is equipped with an AXI 2212/26 brushless motor driving a 7 x 7 APC electric propeller with a three-cell 1,300 mAh LiPo. At the suggestion of my great friend, Dennis Adamisin, a Brodak Mfg. BH-1870 Flight Manager and Castle Creations Thunderbird 36 ESC complete the power system. Flight times are ground-adjustable from 105 seconds to 6 minutes.
