Liquid fueling

[larry cottrill]

Bruce -

You are quite right -- that works, and can be a useful training technique for beginners. The flaw is that a beginner may wrongly assume that every time he picks up the handle, "neutral" control will always be found at the most natural angle of the wrist. Once he learns that neutral may feel slightly down or up on a given day, then all is well. Sooner or later you have to learn to move the handle quickly and surely from the wrist -- sometimes it's all that will save your favorite plane. Of course, sometimes, nothing will ;-)

Up control means pulling the top of the handle back RELATIVE TO the radial direction out to the near wing of the airplane. My friend the late Fred Lock, who taught me to fly U/C stunt, once built an interesting variation of the control handle: the grip was horizontal at the vertical center point, so the upper control handle arm passed up between the 2nd and 3rd fingers while the fist was held horizontal, palm downward in normal flight. You rocked your wrist up and down like a child waving hello. The theory was that when you flipped the model over inverted, you turned your hand palm up so that the basic control handle motion (as seen from a side view) was still in the "normal" direction. This was supposed to be less confusing than having to remember that "up is down and down is up" when your model is in inverted flight. If I remember rightly (it's only been 45 years now) the handle worked fine for him, but I think the question of less problematic inverted flight was inconclusive.

Thanks for the reminder of that simple and useful technique!

L Cottrill

[Mark]

I can remember as a kid flying a little 049 PT Trainer and looping the plane several times getting too many twists in the line and controlling becoming difficult. For some reason I seem to recall on some occasions backing up during wild loops to gain control before the plane would nearly crash. ha
And on some occasions it did. A nice feature of the plastic plane was that it was held together with rubberbands. If you look you can see little nubs on the wings where the rubberbands would go to hold it together.
http://www.airplanesandrockets.com/airplanes/pt-19.htm

A more advanced PT-19. Pilots optional. ha
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AbYzCVtoSQ

An unusually wholesome presentation and some most unusual pilots. ha again.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAgQL0OpUoU&feature=fvw

A very formal presentation, almost too serious. ha
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKAfywY2 ... re=related

Some shakey but austere looking pilots.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4jvMVqmcRM