Eight and a Half Foot Gas Model (oz14471)

 

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User comments

Please don't take this in a negative way, but I can't understand how people had the courage to throw these albatrosses into the air and hope for the best! Of course, there were circling trims and dethermalisers, but I'd still be frightened. All this balsa, silk, and a whopper of an engine would have been a large investment to be offered as a sacrifice to the gods of the winds, brrrr!
Miguel - 01/04/2023
They wouldn’t have de-thermalizers for a few years
Tomás - 01/04/2023
I have a good friend in his mid-eighties and a free-flight guru from the fifties and sixties. The skill of these modders from back then is borderline witchcraft. He can read the air by the direction of a small gust of wind and by its temperature. He instinctively knows when to launch a model. It's pure witchcraft, (and something to do with chicken bones in his flask of soup!)
John G - 02/04/2023
If you work real hard and focus, you can feel a thermal coming through with the hair on the back of your neck. I've stood alongside accomplished old time free flight rubber modelers while they wait for 15 or 20 minutes to "pick air". You either learn how to do it yourself, or else get consistently beaten by those guys. Of course there are modern aids like mylar streamers and thermisters; or if there are small flying insects around you can watch what they are doing; same for birds thermaling overhead. As Yogi Berra said you can observe a lot just by watching.
Mike Myers - 03/04/2023
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