Final Outdoor Meet Sunday Nov. 15 in Durham, CT
Event Flyer HERE
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Add Lightness!
Well. Mother Nature pulled a fast one and the October and November meets at Woodsom Farm were cancelled due to rain. So it goes – now it’s time to turn our attention to indoor flying.
Hold on you say?? Oh that’s right, the Pinkham Field Irregulars are hosting their annual Turkey Fly outdoor flying meet Sunday Nov. 15 at White’s Farm in Durham, CT. Don’t miss this one gang. It’s a great way to close the outdoor flying season.
Fred Hall – Indoor Modeler Extraordinaire
The Lawrence Air-Istocrats have a long history of flying stick & tissue models indoors as well as outdoors. Indoor flying is different from outdoors in that model flight duration is dependent on the weight of the model and the length of the rubber motor run. Outdoors, long flights are assisted by rising warm air currents, or thermals. An outdoor high performance model needs to glide well; indoors the model typically lands when the power portion of the flight has ended – e.g. the rubber motor has unwound.
Fifty years ago, Fred Hall, an Air-Istocrat clubster, was one of the finest indoor flyers in the country. He started flying indoor rubber free flight in 1972 at the MIT du Pont Gym in Cambridge, MA. Fred learned from some of the master modelers of the time – folks like Chet Bukowski, Charlie Learoyd and Ray Harlan. He learned to build light, make efficient wooden propellers, and trim his models to fly efficiently within a gymnasium. By the mid-1970’s, Fred was getting rubber powered free flight scale models to fly longer than 2 minutes indoors – a terrific achievement that only a few modelers worldwide can reach even today. In 1976, Fred wrote a book “Indoor Scale Model Flying” that became a key resource for serious indoor scale flyers then and since. This book covered topics such as: model selection, building materials, tools, propellers, motors and flight trimming. If you build and fly indoor scale models, you really should try to get your hands on Fred’s book. You won’t regret it!
Glastonbury Indoor Flying Sessions Underway
The indoor free flight model airplane flying season is underway at the Glastonbury High School gym in Connecticut. This large gymnasium/indoor track is one of the best indoor model airplane flying sites on the east coast and in the U.S. as a whole. The gang there has just finished their second monthly half-day flying session and several “Spirit of Glastonbury” one design models were seen flying well. Check out the Calendar for upcoming dates at this great flying site. Again, you won’t regret it!
See you on the flightline skyster!