When I first started flying in the early 90s. after quite some time being unsuccessful at having more than a 30 second flight without damage, I managed to meet up with a very nice gentleman named Bill Johnson in Endicott New York. Some of you older ESL pilots may remember him. He was VERY nice to me and helped me learn to fly properly. We used to fly from a drainage area near the river surrounded by flood walls. On day I was driving along the top of the floodwall on my way to meet him and saw he was launching fm his histart. It was a beautiful launch, no zoom - just flying off the top. As I approached him leaving my car I asked how it was going, and he muttered something about "could be better". When I asked what was wrong he said that this was the first time in all his years of flying that he launched with the receiver off. DOH. The plane was doing beautiful lazy circles heading downwind over the trees. We jumped in the car and started to follow it. A couple of miles later, the plane came down in a VERY small field with the river on one side, High Tension power lines opposite, and housing developments on the other 2 sides. When we walked out to see the damage, there was none - it was sitting there as though we had set it down. When he picked it up he said some very important words to me with a smile: "Just remember Jim - if ya build it right and trim it right, you don't need no fool behind the sticks..." Words important to me today.
On a more somber note, while recently doing some man-on-man histart competition with my buddy, we got a strong downwind just as we launched. In an effort to get a good downwind launch I tried to throw hard and level. Apparently it was not quite level, as the nose of my daily driver ICON went thru the shroud lines on the parachute. I can attest that this is NOT a good thing... While the result was not pretty, the ICON is a strong bird and after some repairs it is still my daily driver. Jim Jim Monaco -----Original Message----- From: Mark Wales [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, April 17, 2005 9:30 AM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: [RCSE] High Start Stories Back in the summer of 1982 I was teaching a buddy of mine that flew power how to launch and fly sailplanes. After giving him some stick time on my SD-100 that he flew very well. It was time to check out his plane(don't remember what kit it was). We checked everything out to make sure they were moving the right direction and all, and after a few hand tosses it was time to put it up on my high start. I had placed my Airtronics XL 6 channel transmitter in my flight box with the antenna still extended and really didn't pay it any mind. I pulled the high start back and hooked up his ship and all was ready for the big launch. Upon releasing his plane it took a hard right turn (in the direction of my flight box) and the high start line made contact with my upright transmitter antenna and got hooked under the freq. flag and puledl it up and out of my flight box like a model rocket at takeoff. About halfway up the launch the transmitter came loose from the line and fell back to earth like a high flying lawn dart. The transmitter hit the hard field with a load crash and bounced maybe 3 feet in the air. At this point I did not want to see what maybe left of my radio, but once I did get the nerve to go look I was shocked to see that it was all in one piece with only the antenna being bent from the crash. Maybe the aluminum case saved much worse damage from the fall, not really sure. But after taking the radio to a buddies house where he checked it out and replaced the antenna the radio was back at the field the next weekend and I used it for another few years. I never left my antenna up or radio infront of a launch ever again. Mark Soaring Is Life!! RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please note that subscribe and unsubscribe messages must be sent in text only format with MIME turned off. Email sent from web based email such as Hotmail and AOL are generally NOT in text format RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please note that subscribe and unsubscribe messages must be sent in text only format with MIME turned off. Email sent from web based email such as Hotmail and AOL are generally NOT in text format
