Radical RC Workbench

Touch – Roll – Touch with an F-104? Impossible!

Discussion under the video:

Thekenemy: According to my old Dutch teacher who was a ground crew member for the Belgian Starfighters, the idea was to do this as close to the ground as possible. He claims to have witnessed a horrible crash where the pilot for some reason ejected during this manoeuvre and got launched into the ground. This must have been Cpt. Susse Jacobs. I don’t know whether these f-104’s ejected upwards or downwards. Some internet research suggest there might be footage of this crash, but I can’t find it.

Allessandro Martens: It was indeed Susse Jacobs, who replaced Ongena after his retirement, who was killed while ejecting after a badly performed roll-touch-roll. The downwards ejecting seats were only installed in the early models of the F-104 and owned by the USAF. The rest, wisely, ejected upwards. I have no idea if there’s a video of Jacobs tragic ending. Ciao Alex

Click the YouTube link in the video to see entire conversation.

1905 Wright Flyer Enters Scale Competition

If anybody had a photo from that event they could let me add to this article, please forward. Thanks Keith for a fun story!

Hi Dave,
I just got back from the big judged scale meet (Central Ohio Scale) in Westerville. They had a great turnout, something like 47 pilots in 6 judged classes. I entered my Yak UT-1 in Designer Scale and got a third place. The first and second place were last year’s NATS winner and the Runner-Up, so not too bad for my first scale meet in about 15 years…
They had a “Fun Scale” class for beginners and experts, minimal static judging, but regular flight judging. I entered the Wright in Fun Scale Expert just for fun. The concept of doing “precision maneuvers” with the Wright in quite a bit of turbulence gave everyone a good dose of Comic Relief. It was like herding a cat around the sky. Surprisingly, I didn’t place last, as I got great marks for Flight Realism and the multi-motor option.
Early Sunday morning it was dead calm and ***very*** foggy. I flew a flight low and slow to the enjoyment of the spectators and contestants while waiting for the ceiling to lift so that the contest flights could resume. I recharged and waited my turn for the first sunday round. When it came time to fly, it was still very calm, and I had high hopes for a really good flight score. However, when I took off the plane pulled REALLY hard to the right, and full left trim on aileron and rudder and half left stick on aileron and rudder were required to barely fly straight. I struggled mightily to do the required maneuvers, and garnished about the same scores as saturday due to the awkward appearance to the flight and turns. Oh well.
I looked it over after a scary, but safe landing. The high humidity and wet grass had made all the joints on the parallelograms lock up solid. Even with the stain on the wood and the candle wax I rubbed on all the mating surfaces. Once it fully dried out in the sun, everything worked great later in the afternoon. Controls were back to normal, but of course, the winds had come up and the flight scores stayed the same as saturday. Can’t win… 🙂
But it got a LOT of attention, and many favorable comments. At the end of the first flight on saturday, it got a large round of applause and cheering from everyone. I think more photos were taken of it than any other plane at the meet. Hope one of them ends up in the contest write-up for the mags.

Take care,

Keith

First Airbus A380 Landing SFO: From the Cockpit

Ken Stuhr’ Newest Scale Creation: Farman Jabiru

Ken reports some of our electronics are in his new Farman Jabiru. Check it out.

Well, maybe. Certainly unique. All great photos by Gary Ritchie of Puget Sound Silent Flyers!!

I chose to model the beautiful version, as opposed to Tim Hooper’s Cyclops versionhttp://static.rcgroups.com/forums/images/smilies/biggrin.gif. Mine used 4 engines in push-pull nacelles.

Model details:
Span: 63 ins
Wt: 90 ozs
Area: 7 sq ft
W/S: ~13 ozs/sq ft
Motors: 4 x Feigao 1308441S w/2.8:1 gbx (don’t think these are available anymore)
Battery: 2 x TP 3S2100
Props: Front 8×4, Rear 8×6

Construction: Wing is balsa built up, spruce spars, functional struts, Ultracote covering
Tails are 1/4 in square balsa frames with Ultracote covering
Body has 1/4 in square balsa frame, covered with 6mm Depron, glassed with 2 layers 1/2 oz cloth, with areas of foam/glass between balsa frame members cut and removed aft of the wing
Finish: Humbrol enamel overall, decal film cut to alphabet and windows needed.
Pilot: Cedric from Pete’s Pilots. Seems happy with the job.

Flying: Perfectly powered for scale flying. Needs a long takeoff run. Also needs to use rudder! Not too sensitive to thrust differences–maiden flight, left rear prop fell off, flight continued as I was unaware of this until after landing.http://static.rcgroups.com/forums/images/smilies/eek.gif I had noticed it was a little harder to turn right, but there was OK power to climb…..
This is just my latest attempt to approach the build/fly genius known as Ivan Pettigrew, and is the closest I’ve yet come. 20-30 more years of stick time might get me there.