Old Timers – Maxing to the Max

Last weekend (10-13 Sept 2026) was the FAC Outdoor Champs followed by the Roscoe Turner Memorial contest, four days of FAC flying at the AMA national flying site in Muncie, Indiana. It’s always a great time with great people on a great field. Sometimes – well practically every time – we do get rain, but we don’t let that “dampen” our spirits – haha!

This article is about my Old Timer experiences over the weekend. I like flying Old Timers (Stick, Fuselage, and 2-Bit) – they fly great because they were designed to fly. After years of flying them, I’ve found good models that fly great – or maybe I’ve just become pretty good at trimming. My current list of “favorites” for these events are as follows: the massive Ace of Diamonds for 2-Bit, the Hep Cat for Fuselage, and the Miss Production for Stick. I also have a rather small stick model, the High Performance Sportster. It only has a 20″ span, but it can fly as good as the others. Still photos of model at the end of the article.

Now, while these are great flyers, sometimes they can’t help it if the owner/pilot/flyer doesn’t take care. I broke my Hep Cat last year and didn’t get it repaired, so I’ve missed flying it this season. And one of the other three models will also fight against me and my failure to work in my own best interests. The models are not to be blamed for my failures – the models are quite reliable. Me? I take mental breaks at the most inopportune times.

We’ll just get the failure of this weekend out of the way first. On the last day of the contest(s), I was flying the Ace of Diamonds in 2-Bit and it was doing great. I had posted two maxes – the plane ROG’s beautifully and climbs right on up on about 1300 turns, giving me about 1 minute of motor run. The nice flat glide makes maxing easy, with the DT popping while the model is still high up. After the second flight, was prepping for the third and found I had a broken motor. I make motors on the field all the time (and never bring pre-made motors). I referred to my notes and found them to be lacking in one major detail – the length of the motor (George Mistake #1). I pulled the old motor out and did a TLAR (That Looks About Right) and made up a motor. Winding it up, I know right away that I made another mistake (#2). New rubber doesn’t take as many turns as older rubber, but when your turn count is 75% of your old turn count, you can believe the motors are not the same length. The resulting flight could have used those extra 300-400 turns as it never got the altitude and fell quite short of a max. Of course, the winner of 2-Bit maxed out and I came in second.

Now that we’ve got the “bad” story out of the way we can move on to the good and fun part of the Old Timers and my fun in Old Time Stick.

For OT Stick at the FAC Outdoor Champs, I started out with my small High Performance Sportster. I can put in 2,000 turns in the motor (2 loops of 1/8″) and the thing cruises forever and glides great. It put up three consecutive maxes. The problem with the HPS is that it didn’t climb super high and the times were just over 2 minutes. This would not be good enough to do any good in the flyoff (there is almost always a flyoff in OT Stick).

So I got out my Miss Production. It is a high climbing model; it goes up well for about one circuit and then settles – and gradually climbs in cruise. Bang, bang, bang – three flights three maxes – and all DT’ed high up. Now I had two models that triple-maxed and I waited for other to triple-max to see who might be in a flyoff.

There were three of us: Tom Hallman, DJ Ruhland, and me. I set my DT for 4 minutes, wound up, and headed to the line to launch. For some reason, when it came time to launch, my DT wouldn’t start – oh well, let’s go! We launched and DJ and I went up together and Tom was slightly off to the left. Tom and DJ were climbing higher than me, but I was still in the same air as DJ; I was just a little lower. As we chased, I was glad that my DT hadn’t worked; those other two guys weren’t quitting! But finally, I could tell they were slowly coming down – but not as slowly as I was coming down. Tom came down and then DJ and I was still gliding with a little altitude. After 5:21, I came down deep in the beans – I had won the flyoff against two very strong competitors!

So, in OT Stick, I had done seven official flights and had seven maxes. I’d say that’s pretty good!

Another moment of inattention cost me the chance to fly the Miss Production again. I was winding for a test flight and didn’t notice that my rear bobbin wasn’t fully latched in place. I’ve been winding externally and loading the fully wound motor into the model. This practically eliminates a blown motor taking out the fuselage and ruining your day. That is, until you don’t properly seat the rear bobbin and the motor comes flying forward, taking out several fuselage crosspieces. I couldn’t fly the Miss P in the Dawn Unlimited Mass Launch for Old Timers. I would have to fly the High Performance Sportster if I wanted to play along.

(This part has been told on Facebook already.) As we prepped for the 7:45am launch, I snapped a photo of our little group. Mike Smith, Clete Schenkel, and I all stay on the field in Pat’s RV.

L-R: Pat Murray, Mike Smith, Clete Schenkel preparing for the 7:45 Dawn Unlimited Mass Launch

Eight of us walked out into the field that was heavily-laden with dew and we launched.

The Dawn Unlimited Mass Launch. L-R: Mike Smith (Sticker), Tom Hallman (Gollywock), Tim Kraus (Thermal Bagger), Mike Kelly (Sportsman 30), Clete Schenkel (Wanderer), Pat Murray (Smith Mulvihill), George Bredehoft (High Performance Sportster), DJ Ruhland (Miss Canada). John Jackson photo

I came down in the middle of the pack, just like I expected since the duration on this little model is not the best and thermals aren’t available this early in the morning.

When we got back and checked the scores, we realized something amazing. Refer to my pre-flight prep photo – that is the winning order, left-to-right! Pat 1st, Mike 2nd, Clete 3rd – and me (photographer) 4th!

Here’s some flight pics I took.