XB-35 Flying Wing RC Model

[jjr2001]

C-Bag, that is quite a flight with your Falcon 56. I have built at least two of them and a Senior Falcon. The Senior Falcon was first and it came with all the tools to build with plus a Super Tigre 60. It was 1966 and I was in the Air Force at Keesler AFB in school. Being married I lived off base and built the thing in a one room apartment. (very understanding wife). Never got it off the ground, the Kraft 12 channel reed set would operate the controls just by running up the engine. Ran out of time and transfered out, and sold it without without ever flying it.

Now, bouncing it off the ground to get it running again must be a first. Usually when I bounce mine into the ground it ends badly!.
Over the years I had the Kraft reed set, a Galloping Ghost set, and several proportional sets but the state of the art today in TX/RX with spread spectrum is so reliable that I know when I auger in it was my fault..(not always but almost).

The simulator with my "heavy" F-4 is harder to fly in most respects than the original sim model. You need full down elevator to fly inverted and if you even think of making a turn you best be going fast. Flys a lot like my own Phantom. High speed drops from 120 unmodified to 100 mph with my heavy. Quite a performance hit but still flyable if I am careful.

As we say at the field, "fly low but not too low".
Cheers, JR

[Frank S]

I've not done much of anything with RC other than that 1 time with my mate in Au when I was younger though I d do quite a bit of tethered control flying but that got old just walking around in circles or making the plane do lazy figure 8s while trying not to trip over things on the ground while your eyes were glued to the plane up in the air. After a while it was more like flying a kite that was constantly trying to go another direction from where you wanted it to.

[jjr2001]

I understand that Frank. I did some control line work in the 60's and 70's but then that evolved into RC. I think the thing I like the best is building the planes. It was a challenge to learn to fly without breaking something at first but that is pretty easy now but I still enjoy the build. I was out of the hobby from about 1982 until 2006 when I started to build and fly electric instead of glow. They are so much better than glow in many ways it brought the hobby back to fun for me. My son was flying quite well at that time and he got me interested again. If I would not be building the planes I don't think I would just fly the RTF or Ready To Fly stuff that is widely sold today. ( I would most likely spend more time in the shop).

Cheers, JR

[C-Bag]

Man this stuff is taking me down memory lane that I'd not thought of in forever. You mention reeds JR. I had to LOL when you wrote that because somebody gave me a reed set and I had EXACTLY the same thing happen. I built some kind of low wing, like a Cherokee and had some cheap motor on it. My first throttle control. And I started the motor and all the surfaces started twitching every which way. That's when the guy who gave to me told me he could never get it to work right. Doh! Sure was pretty though.

That first flight with the 56 was the longest death spiral in history. Everybody on the field just froze waiting for the inevitable, and then to see it bounce on the gear and him set it down was kinda like that stunt guy who pretends he's drunk. Everybody just shook their head and started back up again.

I tell ya Frank, if you thought control line was boring, you just weren't having as fun as we had. Fly combat,two guys in the same circle with streamers tied to their planes going anywhere from 80 or 90 real mph to 120. The hot ticket was a Sneaker flying wing(all combat planes were just a wing with an elevator and an engine) that weighed nothing with a K&B 35. 120mph and would literally spin on its axis with a flick of the wrist. Way too much for me. But my brother ate guys for lunch with it. But when it went it, it was a cloud of balsa dust with engine several inches in the dirt. That K&B was a wicked engine. Felt like it had no compression. But nobody in his right mind flipped one of those things over without a "Chicken Stick". We didn't have electric starters.

The other insane thing was the guy who was the head of the club would periodically pull out his pulse jet. It looked like a. Buzz bomb, and sounded like it, because it was the same kind of engine. It took a 3 man crew to pit. One guy straddled it and held on to the wings, and next to him a guy had a battery with a buzzer on a model T coil. One lead to the spark plug and one to ground. The last guy had a bicycle pump that had the end cut off and the rubber hose was pushed on to a fitting on the front of the intake. The pump forced air into a spray bar and the spark started it. Once the thing lit off you had something like 20'seconds to get it going because the tube would be cherry hot in seconds. It relied on moving through the air to keep the combustion tube from melting. So everybody had to know their stuff. I never held, but I did spark and pump several times. You had to be smooth and the spark guy had to switch off the box before he pulled his leads or he'd knock the holder into next week when he pulled his leads across the holders arm. And here he is holding this screaming bomb between his legs......it was intense. Most everything we flew took 60' lines,the jet took 70's and if I remember right they were heavier than what we used. That flew at something like 140, or 160mph. You could just shut it off by a quick jerk on the control. Once it started and got off we'd go behind the backstop and watch around the corner. Sheer adrenalin.

[Frank S]

My crazy cousins and I decided we were going to build the plane to end all planes. by this time I had already acquired my lathe I think I was around 15 at the time of the build Don the oldest of us 4 came up with the Idea of constructing a Biplane with a 20 ft wingspan and powering it with a 2 stroke lawnmower engine Dwayne was 17 and made the prop in wood working class at school I modified the 3 1/2 Hp Clinton by stripping everything off that wasn't engine ground out the exhaust ports made a 90° intake manifold and put a carb off of a 6 Hp engine on it Doug the same age as I was was going to hold the twin line tether if the thing ever got off the ground. Anyway here we had this thing that weighed about 100 lbs with about 1/3 the total wing area as the Wright flyer and we guessed to have about 1/3 rd the Horsepower as well and less than 1/6th the weight no one on board so what could go wrong? It had to fly didn't it? Well yes and No. It did get off the ground, in fact it was well on its way to the stratosphere by the time it passed Doug who was running as fast as he could in front and a little to the side of it with the 2 100 ft ropes. By the time he felt a tug on the ropes it was too late it started to yank him off the ground so he lost his grip. with nothing to control it, there it went almost straight up falling over to one side then like a half crazed demon it heads back nearly straight for where we were watching in horror. when it hit the ground there was nothing left but scrap aluminum and fire wood
Don did go on and get his Aeronautic engineering degree then worked for Lockheed-Martin for 20 years
We learned that farm boys really had no business building planes unless they were from a kit

[C-Bag]

I agree JR, the best thing about the hobby was building the planes. Flying was fun but tense. Our club was probably 3/4 airmen from Castle AFB just down the road and a smattering of us kids. When I look back it was the collective that made it work because we traded and sold stuff to each other all the time. That's how I got the reed set and plane and I have a fuzzy memory of taking it in to my hi school electronics class and selling it to somebody there. Most of our engines were used and one guy was working for the hobby store so we'd get deals there too. It was an old store and there were kits that had been sitting in storage forever.

I'd always loved aircraft and my uncle being a real pilot was of course my hero. He had flown models as a kid but his were all from plans because we're talking the 40's and they lived on a farm. Growing up the thing that obsessed me was before my uncle went into the Army Air Corp's his last model was of a P-82 Twin Mustang. It was the night fighter version all black. It had two Ohlsen & Rice 23's on it, the spark plug version, not glow. It hung on my G-pa's wall all my childhood. I'd look at that for hours. I have no idea where he got the clear canopys as I don't think it was a kit. My brother decided he had to fly it and talked my G-pa into it and nothing I said could talk either one of them out it. It turned out to be massively underpowered and once it lumbered off the ground the drag of the control lines pulled it into the circle and it did a sickening wing over and smacked into the asphalt. It was toast. Wish I'd have kept the engines.

[jjr2001]

Wow, 100 lb free flight biplane, wish I could have been there.
There was mention of pulse jet which reminded me of all the Popular Mechanics ads for plans on how to make one and later the RC modeler ads for where to buy one. Always thought they would be neat for RC but control line? That is like having a dragon on 70' wires. Hang on tight.

Found a few youtube vids with some quite fast RC pulse jets..Way above my pay grade:

Pulse jets plus SR-71 with after burner

[PJs]

Ok You guys, I was enjoying all the talk and memory lane stuff until I saw the mention of the Super Tiger 60 in Jr's post. My stuff was all U-Control and hand launch gliders but did it for a decade starting in 58' and long member of the AMA. Dad did A rat race, combat and stunt, and designed and built a custom Rat Racer that broke all the records in Germany (Sembach) using ST 60, a diamond airfoil like the 104's have with a tear drop fuselage. It also used a pressurize fuel bladder for the g's, which was new at the time. On 100' lines it would spin you like a top and pull your arm out of wack with the offset in the rudder to keep it taut and chasing you out of the circle. And with 5 other guys in the circle got pretty crazy at times, same with Combat like C-Bag said. Forgot what we clocked it at but was well over 100mph at the time. I also remember that ST60 bit me a few times through a glove getting it started for Dad.

I did a little B rat (McCoy 35) and Jr stunt & combat, balloon bust and Hand Launch gliders which I loved and won all Germany champ with a Thermic B double dihedral, against adults when we were there.

Then you went and mentioned Pulsed Jet!! Saw a couple in Germany and more when we got back to the states, the most Awesome sound Ever in my book for a model airplane. Saw one running too lean one time, pull the tube anchor loose and bent up like a pretzel. You could see it turn red then yellow then white, Bink, wreechh. Watched a bunch of the YT stuff a while back, but those miniature Jet engines are the bomb of engineering in my other book!

Over all I agree that it's the build I enjoy. Did a club contest one time and built Ryan PT22 with a Super Bee and we got to fly on the front lawn for the Shriner Kids in SF...the look on those kids faces was unforgettable and all those weeks of building it paled in comparison!

Frank, You continually blow me away with some of your crazy builds...Wow!

My only RC experience is recent with one of those baby copters (didn't end well) and my current Quad Copter Car, manageable with better trimming now but flew it into the branches of a tree while back but survived...still practicing but didn't get to build it!!

Thanks Guys, Great Stories and enjoying this immensely!!

[jjr2001]

PJ,

That Super Tigre was the best 60 I ever had. Now you mention the McCoy .35..
My friend gave me a McCoy .35 when I could not even fly control line! He did not want it and it was too big for the little control line plane I was trying to fly with the good ole Cox .049. I wanted to see what this engine could do so I mounted it on a 1' length of 2x4 framing lumber and clamped that to a saw horse in the driveway pointed into the woods. Well after many attempts to start it she finally came alive. No throttle so at full bore she vibrated that C-clamp loose and sounded like a thrashing machine as it "mowed" through the woods cutting poplar, maple and wild cherry leaves and branches. Found it attached to the 2x4 about 150 feed into the woods as it finally ran out of fuel. I learned something about C-clamps that day!
We had a lot of fun growing up!

Fly Low But Not Too Low
JR

[Frank S]

PJs I can't entirely take the blame for the Bi-plane it wasn't my idea and about all I did for the build was take the lawnmower engine, strip it down to almost nothing polish out the exhaust ports, radically rework the intake and the reed valve add a larger carb and a hotter spark plug them machine a hub to mount the prop The plane was made by Don Doug and Dwayne.
Remember this was back in the mid 60s so if any photos still exist Don would be the one who has them