Flyers! (not woodie or moldie) We all fly.......!!!
While I am a woody builder, primarily, I do have a few molded ships, I truly appreciate the very even handed recent comments by Phil and John. Newbies are what is needed - whether the put together "number parts" - (I guess the poster meant kits) or un-numbered parts - ARF/moldies; it really doesn't matter. We ALL need to be newbie friendly - not take uncalled for shots at one another, give time and attention to newbies, and sell/give them our no-longer used/outdated molded ships. I built many Citizenship, Heathkit and Ace Silver 7's and I did feel superior to the ARF Tx flyer - but I eventually grew up. If you look at free flight models - they have become almost impossible to buy/build for a typical young free flighter. This happened in the 60's with drag racing and recently in sports car shows. Many winners (Leno) go out and buy a winning car - and with a lot less skill than a ARF woodie or moldie flyer. Designing your ship (woodie/moldie) should not be a novel idea, should it? I think, and my thoughts may be incomplete as well, soaring contests may have the most "non-designer" flyers than many other NATs RC categories?? 3D might be the exception. Food for thought - but the newbie problem has and will continue to be a major area for the "experts" to contribute their WARES and knowledge. One thing else - we used to have a very large amount of free kits, etc at local contests to give to the winners???? Many newbies got updated once or twice a summer by flying well and with lots of luck, placed and won a new state of the art sailplane kit! Just random, incomplete, etc thoughts. Jim On Thu, 26 Jan 2006 12:43:43 +0000, "Phil Barnes" wrote: > John raises an excellent topic in his last post. This is an area where the > woody guys and I agree. I too have wondered; how does a newbie to RC get > into soaring? And especially; how does he get into the kind of soaring > competitions that I participate in? I don't have the answer. > > There are a few guys in our club and nearby clubs who fly woody type > airplanes. At our annual CASA Open contest we have even held an RES class to > entice them to compete. One problem that arises is that the winches we use > now are not well suited for woody type models. A stock Gentle Lady has real > trouble lifting 800' of 220lb test line with a retriever line along for the > ride. It gets worse if you ask that Gentle Lady to do it without the risk of > breaking it's wing. So to even hold an RES class you need to set up a > special winch with light line and probably a low power setting. > > So I guess guys could learn to fly RC with park flyers then transition to > inexpensive woody type soaring models. They could start in competition with > woody contests which is why I am all in favor of seeing this aspect of > competition succeed and grow. A certain percentage of those guys would have > the interest and money to transition to composite soaring models. > > To answer John's question: I think it might be less than 10-20% scratch > builders that enter the NATS. The way things are going, it won't be long > before it will be hard to find guys who can even put together an ARF model. > I don't know what to do about that other than being a resource for that type > of information. Certainly the internet makes it easy for people to get the > information needed to learn how to scratch build. > > So there are some random, unconnected, incomplete thoughts. I need to get > back to the shop now. > > Phil > > > 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 > > Jim Ealy Education by Demonstration 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
