On a previous post I mentioned my boyhood attempt at control line (C/L) flight in the 60s. Suffice to say those early flights did not go well. Complete failure is more like it.
Before detailing those endeavors I would like to give some background on myself and those long ago times.
Aircraft and boats have always held a special fascination to me. My early years were spent in Seattle WA. which at that time was a major hub for the aviation industry. The Boeing company was located there as were numerous airfields for commercial, private and military aircraft. The Bremerton Naval Base was also nearby. Lots of airplanes were in the skies at all times. Sonic booms were not a rare occurrence. Seattle is also surrounded by water. Puget Sound leads out to the Pacific Ocean and there are many freshwater rivers and lakes in the area that were always full of boat traffic. Wonderful place for a kid that likes airplanes and watercraft!
It was also a very tense time in the U.S.A. The Cold War was in full swing and everyone, even little kids, were worried about "the Bomb". Air raid and bomb drills at school were common. Watch this movie (try not to laugh too much) and then think how frightened it would make an elementary school child.
Of course after watching that movie it was a popular topic around school for the rest of that day but being a kid it was quickly put out of mind and you got back to being a kid. My family lived across the street from a large vacant lot that had been cleared of most of the trees but had large piles of tree stumps. For a kid it made for a great place to play. The piles of tree stumps we made into forts and the trees had very crude tree houses but the cleared area was perfect for flying balsa wood airplanes and kites. Paper diamond kites were used most of the time as they were very cheap but the new delta kites (which were plastic and much more expensive) were what everyone wanted. We didn't just fly those kites. We would use multiple rolls of string (10+) and while it would allow your kite to go a bit higher mostly it just got farther away. So far away that it would get dark and instead of rolling up all that string we would leave them up overnight! Sometimes they were still flying the next morning and sometimes the string was on the ground and you would follow it to recover your kite. Many times after walking a long time there was you kite, UP in a tree! So you would start to roll up the string and begin that long walk home.
Upon relocating to Santa Ana, California I got my first control line airplane. Santa Ana also happened to be the home of L.M. Cox Manufacturing Co, Inc. which was very well known for its planes, engines, cars and fuel. I got a Cox Stuka dive bomber with lawn mowing money and probably birthday and Christmas money too. This was a major purchase as the plane and fuel kit was about $15.00!!! Remember this is 1966 and minimum wage was only about $1.30 and a kid got paid much less for working around the neighborhood. So I get the plane home and read the instructions. Seems easy enough. I take plane out to front yard, run out the control lines, fuel it up, hook up the battery, and prepare to start the engine. Those little Cox engines came with an attached spring starter that you hooked around the propeller and then wound up. After winding it up I let go of the propeller and that little engine was running. The instructions explained how to adjust the needle valve for best performance so I went about doing that until the engine was screaming. I watched that engine run until it ran out of fuel and sputtered to a stop. Dad then comes out of the house to "Show me how it's done". OK, so I refuel and restart the engine and Dad takes off. Things are Looking Good for about 4 seconds. In my haste to set up I had not noticed that the length of the control lines far exceeded the space available! So after about 1/2 of a circle the control lines wrapped around a telephone pole,. The plane continued to fly several circuits around the pole until it augered in and the plastic plane was broken into a couple of pieces. There were no survivors,,,So ended my (Dads) first attempt at C/L
My second attempt went a little better. This is the incident with the janitor I mentioned in a earlier post. This time I bought a Testors C/L plane (I think it was a Hellcat), Dad took me to a schoolyard so we had plenty of space (Dad was letting me go first) and got ready to fly. Fired up the engine, took off, started to fly, got around one time and then it all went to hell!! Since I had no idea what I was doing and really didn't understand how to control the plane, when it started to porpoise I did not know how to make it stop. The plane was going up and down, higher and lower, until on the start of the third time around it went straight up and straight down. This time the plane exploded and the field was covered in plastic shrapnel! That's when the janitor came out and told us to leave, which of course, after picking up all that was left of my plane, we did as there was no reason to stay. Success didn't come until I got a Cox PT Trainer with throttle control but that was several years down the road and several more planes destroyed in between!
Before detailing those endeavors I would like to give some background on myself and those long ago times.
Aircraft and boats have always held a special fascination to me. My early years were spent in Seattle WA. which at that time was a major hub for the aviation industry. The Boeing company was located there as were numerous airfields for commercial, private and military aircraft. The Bremerton Naval Base was also nearby. Lots of airplanes were in the skies at all times. Sonic booms were not a rare occurrence. Seattle is also surrounded by water. Puget Sound leads out to the Pacific Ocean and there are many freshwater rivers and lakes in the area that were always full of boat traffic. Wonderful place for a kid that likes airplanes and watercraft!
It was also a very tense time in the U.S.A. The Cold War was in full swing and everyone, even little kids, were worried about "the Bomb". Air raid and bomb drills at school were common. Watch this movie (try not to laugh too much) and then think how frightened it would make an elementary school child.
Of course after watching that movie it was a popular topic around school for the rest of that day but being a kid it was quickly put out of mind and you got back to being a kid. My family lived across the street from a large vacant lot that had been cleared of most of the trees but had large piles of tree stumps. For a kid it made for a great place to play. The piles of tree stumps we made into forts and the trees had very crude tree houses but the cleared area was perfect for flying balsa wood airplanes and kites. Paper diamond kites were used most of the time as they were very cheap but the new delta kites (which were plastic and much more expensive) were what everyone wanted. We didn't just fly those kites. We would use multiple rolls of string (10+) and while it would allow your kite to go a bit higher mostly it just got farther away. So far away that it would get dark and instead of rolling up all that string we would leave them up overnight! Sometimes they were still flying the next morning and sometimes the string was on the ground and you would follow it to recover your kite. Many times after walking a long time there was you kite, UP in a tree! So you would start to roll up the string and begin that long walk home.
Upon relocating to Santa Ana, California I got my first control line airplane. Santa Ana also happened to be the home of L.M. Cox Manufacturing Co, Inc. which was very well known for its planes, engines, cars and fuel. I got a Cox Stuka dive bomber with lawn mowing money and probably birthday and Christmas money too. This was a major purchase as the plane and fuel kit was about $15.00!!! Remember this is 1966 and minimum wage was only about $1.30 and a kid got paid much less for working around the neighborhood. So I get the plane home and read the instructions. Seems easy enough. I take plane out to front yard, run out the control lines, fuel it up, hook up the battery, and prepare to start the engine. Those little Cox engines came with an attached spring starter that you hooked around the propeller and then wound up. After winding it up I let go of the propeller and that little engine was running. The instructions explained how to adjust the needle valve for best performance so I went about doing that until the engine was screaming. I watched that engine run until it ran out of fuel and sputtered to a stop. Dad then comes out of the house to "Show me how it's done". OK, so I refuel and restart the engine and Dad takes off. Things are Looking Good for about 4 seconds. In my haste to set up I had not noticed that the length of the control lines far exceeded the space available! So after about 1/2 of a circle the control lines wrapped around a telephone pole,. The plane continued to fly several circuits around the pole until it augered in and the plastic plane was broken into a couple of pieces. There were no survivors,,,So ended my (Dads) first attempt at C/L
My second attempt went a little better. This is the incident with the janitor I mentioned in a earlier post. This time I bought a Testors C/L plane (I think it was a Hellcat), Dad took me to a schoolyard so we had plenty of space (Dad was letting me go first) and got ready to fly. Fired up the engine, took off, started to fly, got around one time and then it all went to hell!! Since I had no idea what I was doing and really didn't understand how to control the plane, when it started to porpoise I did not know how to make it stop. The plane was going up and down, higher and lower, until on the start of the third time around it went straight up and straight down. This time the plane exploded and the field was covered in plastic shrapnel! That's when the janitor came out and told us to leave, which of course, after picking up all that was left of my plane, we did as there was no reason to stay. Success didn't come until I got a Cox PT Trainer with throttle control but that was several years down the road and several more planes destroyed in between!
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