GM 2011 Report
This year’s total was only just short of 2010, thanks again to great efforts by the groups based at Epsom Downs and Chesapeake and good turnouts at Beaulieu, Ornen and Nykoping. It was good to see some Australians rejoining the event and special mention must be made of the indefatigable New Zealanders for once again braving the Winter weather in the dark.
Pete Money and I would like to thank the local organisers for their efforts. I would also like to thank Colin Hutchinson for producing the excellent picture page. As is now customary, I will let the participants tell their stories in their own words:
Well we did it again, flew the great little Cloud Tramp in your mass launch. Saturday gave great weather in Ohio and we flew at Jackass Flats, our usual flying field we share with Pee Wee football. Fliers in the launch photo, left to right, are Stu Cummins, Jo Campbell, Dottie Bair, Val Dahlem, and Jim Bair. Also present was Eric Specht who helped with the photos. We had a good time flying and we all thank you both for sponsoring this nice event. McCook Field
Squadron-- Flying Aces Club, Dayton, Ohio, USA
Another marvellous day here in northern California for the international simultaneous Cloud Tramp launch at the nearby school athletic field. Our son Ken and granddaughter Caitlin participated, under ideal weather conditions, with zero wind and moderate temperatures. Two concerns, however when we began test-flying: Two dogs suddenly appeared, and proceeded
to chase our models! Thankfully, the lady owner was friendly, understood our situation, and took her mascots elsewhere.
Another concern arose though, when the automatic lawn-watering system began spraying. Luckily, the programmed pattern progression stayed away from our models until after our official flying, and then, the only model which did get wet was an all-foam Japanese sport flyer, which was essentially waterproof...
Ken has access to a laser where he works, and thus made his full-size "Tramp" in a very short time. My "Old Faithful" Peanut-size "Tramp" soldiered-on, however this was sort of an age milestone for me personally, having turned 80 in July.
We have not seen Caitlin's photos yet, but hope that she may have captured our models in mid-flight...
All best wishes, and thank you for the many years of fun you have provided.
Cordially,
Usually I'm asleep at 9 AM. Go to sleep at 4 AM, wake at noon.
Got everything ready last night. Set the clock for 8:15 AM. Drove to the nearby double soccer field with tall trees all around. Cool, overcast, slight breath of wind. Same plane as last year, but with balsa prop. 1/16" right rudder, no aileron. CG at high point of camber, 40%. 33 1/2" loop of 1/8" Tan Super Sport, braided. O-ring around motor to keep it on the prop hook. No freewheel, prop per plan. Trial flight with 2,600 turns went well, circled right within field without climbing, about 100 feet diameter. 2,700 climbed slightly, 1 1/2 circuits, came down near downwind fence, 24.56 seconds. Official flight at 9 AM with 2,800 turns, launched next to upwind trees, climbed slightly, 2 1/2 circuits, 33.07 seconds, skimmed tree line as it came down. I said "Thank you, Charley." No pictures. Soccer players moving onto the field, so I went home.
The motor will take maybe 800 more turns and it would climb higher on the spike, but I have lost too many planes flying in small parks. It was already coming down close to the trees. It looks like a slightly thicker motor would be required for best flights. My notebook shows four strands of 0.076" recommended.
Gary Hinze
Since our first mass launch in 1996, we have always flown from the
forecourt at the front of the War Memorial Museum. However, this year
there was a strong wind blowing and we were forced to take shelter
behind the building. From this Eastern side, model recovery was not
great, so it was just a case of putting on 50 or so turns, and
launching at the magic hour of 4.00 a.m.
Due to winter chills and ills, our numbers were down on last year’s
record of 11, but we did have 8 starters. Those who flew were, Mike
Fairgray, Paul Evans, Stephen Wade, Peter Levet, Martin Evans, Skyla
Evans, Paul Cosbrook, and Trevor Martin. All from Auckland. John
Crawford, who has flown with us several times in the past, slept
through his alarm and didn't wake until 3.45 a.m. With no hope of
getting to the Domain on time, he launched his model in his backyard!!
I guess that still counts and if it does, that would make a total of 9.
Approx.380 kms South of Auckland, at New Plymouth, Ross Giddy also
flew, as he has done for the past 3 years. He and his partner follow
the model with a torch.
Now the photo. Thanks to Mike Fairgray, who under difficult conditions
did manage to get some photos. As it was very windy and spitting with
rain, combined with poor light and frozen fingers, Mike was unable to
set the self timer on his camera, to enable him to get into the group
photo. Of course it worked perfectly just minutes after we disbanded!
I flew my Cloud Tramp (thickened motor stick, heavier wing,
original type propeller hanger and hand carved 8/10 propeller) promptly at
noon EDT today. With 300 hand turns, I got a couple power stalls, a
ground touch, and then recovery into what seemed normal flight just before
it collided with the back of my van. No damage, but I clearly need more
work on trimming without ability to adjust thrust line before submitting
times for the postal contest.
I have video, but it needs editing before I'll make it available
online...
If, through hard work and perseverance, you finally get what you
want, it's probably a sign you weren't dreaming big enough.
Donald Qualls
Here are two links to the You Tube videos of today's mass launch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWf8YT22fyo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLPFHgCK4y8
John Tate
Got in my flight in, Willow, Alaska at 08:00AM Saturday, August 6th.
33.33 Seconds. It was my 1st flight of the Cloud Tramp. Hand wound,
(no winder) about 100 turns. SIG 1/8th inch Sport rubber, 6 strands 18
inches long, wheels light ply with hard wood hubs 1/2 inch square, hand
carved prop, 1/4 inch cotter key prop shaft mount, aluminum tubing
bearings in the prop shaft mount and the wheels. Armorall lube.
Flight was low level, 1 1/2 turns around the field, light breeze. It
didn't seem to like the down wind side of it.
Many more flights later in the day at Wasilla's flying field. I'm now
addicted and will build and fly them more.
Gotta get more education in the rubber fields and some better
equipment. Winder, Stooge, etc and work out the technicalities of
rubber stuff. More turns and the rubber wads up on the prop shaft
hook.
Luke Napier from Oxnard, CA and I launched our Cloud Tramps in Oxnard on a cool, overcast
morning in a field bounded on two sides by houses and the other two sides by a hotel and the Dallas Cowboys summer training camp. This field is used mostly by electric RCers because of the tight space. On several occasions we've gone over or under a high chain-link fence to retrieve models from the Cowboys field. However, Saturday we had no wind and no thermals
so we cranked in a few more turns and had several good flights. Great Fun!
Gary Acord
Three of us of the Darwin MAC built cloud tramps and flew them at the appointed hour in a mass launch (3 is mass?), 1.30am Sunday 7th August, photo attached per kind favour of Isabelle Lys, who took the snap then borrowed a model for a delayed mass launch of her own.
Conditions: no breeze, very mild about 20C (it is the tropics, after all) but of course very dark. My CT indeed circled upwards, passing directly overhead twice on the way up, once on the way down and then landed at my feet. Chaps at the club cant even do that with RC........
Field: Charles Darwin University sports field
All of this lunacy was spurred on by Maris Dislers, who I understand also participated with a mass launch of 1 in Adelaide, South Aus - oh, the power of 1. - I hope he sends you his snap. It may have been taken between bouts of freezing rain......
It beats the previous mass launches in which I participated while
living in Wagga, NSW - the temp then was around zero, it was generally windy and wet as well as dark...........
BTW - these are probably the only FF model planes to have flown here since the nationals were held here - in 1996......
Another year, and I was again the sole Free-flighter in the area to take part in this great activity.
I got to the field at 17:00 in threatening conditions. A couple of RC'ers were hurriedly packing up as the first raindrops were just starting to fall. As I got under the shelter, it started raining and
thunderbumping in earnest.
The winds got to blowing so hard (est ~30 knots) that the rain was coming horizontally THRU the protective hedge, soaking me from head to foot and everything else. Didn't let up till just before launch time (suddenly!). I was able to get the soaked (except for the wing) CT
ready to go in time, and even though breaking a strand, was able to crank in 250 turns, slog thru the water hiding just under the tips of the grass, and STILL get a decent "flight" in.
Check out the stab in the vid.
>http://s304.photobucket.com/albums/nn194/staubkorb/SoFiA%20and%20Cloud%20Tramp/?action=view¤t=MIMLOCT-2011.mp4
My 'solo mass launch' did little to honour Charles HG this year. Since last September I have been suffering from a bad beating up I took from the hospital operating room staff when I had a hernia Op. last September so wasn’t able to do much flying. Did manage two maxes and
a 2:50 odd at the Northern Gala in the spring (8th). But didn’t manage even a trim flight with the Cloud Tramp.
Came the 6 Aug with heavy rain and thunder and lightening just after lunch for 21/2 hours. Just stopped at 4 pm. I had prepared for flying in the rain by winding a motor in my house
winding jig (a bathroom tap) so I didn’t have to wind in the rain. Only scattered raindrops when 5 approached and I managed to launch within seconds of 5pm. But disaster! I had forgotten that my little plane needs to be launched at 30 to 40 degrees, and I put it in the air level so only did 10 or 15 seconds. Terribly ashamed as I've had flights of 1min30 to 40 (In lift).
Still next year as long as I don’t meet those guys in a dark alley.
You can add two more to the total. My wife Jill and I launched our tramps at the allotted time - 01:30 on Sunday morning; Australian Central Standard Time (UTC +9:30 hrs). Then took this rather grainy photo for the record.
I can also report my experiments with a derivative of this design, which I called Super Tramp. It ran the rubber under the fuselage (easier with a commercial plastic prop & nose piece) and had a wing with slightly more chord & Jedelsky wing construction (to add tortional rigidity to the
wing).
That one was good for two minutes duration & was eventually lost in the upper branches of an enormous Moreton Bay fig tree at the edge of the sports fields. Just another demonstration of that oft-observed phenomenon where a model constructed from balsa wood is somehow drawn to the nearest/tallest tree in its vicinity.
Maris Dislers
Got my CT off at precisely 8:00 yesterday, 3 loops of 3/32 @ 16". Lone plane in the ball field. The local Air Museum had its Open House and I had agreed to help a couple of weeks ago, before I remembered CH Grant's day! Weather was perfect, 23 degrees C, no wind and a high
cloud that burned off by noon. The Museum had Hawk I fly in, a Canadair Sabre do a fly by and stay on exhibition. It's painted up as a Golden Hawk, the RCAF Aerobatic Team before the Snow Birds. The second flyby was a Vickers built Canso on its ferry trip down to the Evergreen Museum just out of Portland. It's a Canso (PBY 5A) that was ex RCAF, then a water bomber, but purchased by a group planning to use it to fly guests into a South Seas luxury resort that just never got off the ground. It has been sitting on the strip at Cassidy looking forlorn until Evergreen bought it this spring. A local pilot, ex Canso driver (he flew New Zealand's Canso out to them across the Pacific) has just bought one of Buffalo Airways Canso Water bombers, so he loaned his engines and other missing parts to Evergreen and flew it down to Oregon for them. Victoria Air Maintenance (they are the ones rebuilding the DeH Mosquito here in Victoria) did the engine swap and are going down this week to bring Bob's engines back for his plane.
Evergreen says it's plan is to clean up the old Canso and put it on static display along with it's other planes which include the Spruce Goose.
Keith MacDonald
Five of us put Cloud Tramps up at 0900 PDT at the Grassy Knoll. Mike Myers, Don Butman, Don Martin, Don Smith and Bud Matthews. Weather was good although a bit cool and overcast.
All five of us have been faithful "Trampers" since at least 2005. Some of the guys who used to fly with us have, sadly taken their last thermal. We expect to have more next year. We've had as many as 12 in some years.
Again this year, Paul McIlrath and I put Iowa on the MIMLOCT stage. This year we had excellent weather and were able to put in a number of flights. I built a new wing and got good performance with only minimal trimming. Paul had his 'Tramp tuned very nicely and had a 50 sec plus flight; mine - 30 plus seconds. Paul is up in years but is devoted to rubber powered models and joins us during the winter months for indoor flying. His knowledge, workmanship and flights never cease to amaze everyone. Attached is a picture of us two in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, USA.
"Long Live the Cloud Tramp".
Six Bournemouth MAS members with a total of 10 models assembled at Beaulieu Old Airfield for the 2011 Cloud Tramp Mass Launch. A passing cyclist from Canada, we do not think that he cycled all the way, was co-opted to launch one model. It was a dry day but rather windy in spite of which all ten models successfully flew. Attached is the BMAS group photo and a photo of our passing Canadian but no one was left with a free hand for a photo of the launch.
BMAS Members at the launch:- Ken Brown, Bev Brown, Maurice Hardy, John
Taylor, Roy Tiller, Barbara Tiller and our visiting Canadian Mike
Rudberg.
We had 3 flyers here at 1-00 pm in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada, myself &
grandsons Vincent & Pierce. My wife Joan launched after she had taken the pic of the boys launching so I suppose we can include her flight too? Not quite as spectacular a field as last year at Elgin, however it was a gorgeous sunny CALM day with the temperature in the 30s(C!) we flew from the Evergreen School field which is near where the boys live. I had a mad
dash from the original site nearly 25 miles away near the Bay of Fundy as the wind there was blowing really hard, the streamer at the field was horizontal!
Joan & the boys flew Peanut size CTs which I finished building last evening then test flew in the front street after dark. I just made flat wings to see how they performed compared to a cambered wing - they fly very well indeed, the boys were impressed, had a great time especially Pierce who made the longest flight later in the day (after Granddad wound for him).
Lots of fun & looking forward to next year.
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