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For me, this was a welcome outing to Muncie – it really felt like it was my first outdoor contest of the year.  It was actually only the second since I missed the May Cloudbusters meet due to attending the AMA Indoor Nats.

I arrived on Thursday evening after going to Cincinnati to take possession of all Jim Miller’s modeling stuff after his passing a few days before.  This gave me a few more hours at the flying field, since I had intended to head down Friday morning.  I arrived to a perfect evening.  Pat Murray had been there all day and Mike Welshans and Ted Allebone had come down from Detroit and spent the late afternoon testing planes.

Ted Allebone testing a new Phantom from EasyBuilt

Friday proved to be equally perfect.  We set up at the south end of the site and we didn’t have to move all weekend.  I got out most of my new planes and we casually tested all day.  I had some great flights but I also found out how poorly prepared I was – virtually all of my planes needed new motors – and I brought enough to register for 21 events!

my Jumbo Stallion in flight

my Yankee IV 1/2 Wake showing its potential

It turned out that event count was a little ambitious on my part – I just couldn’t get every event flown.  I got my Jumbo Stallion up in the air on Friday; it flies low and slow, just like my original, but I think my blade area is too small – I will have to think about making a new prop.  My brand-new-not-completely-finished Jimmie Allen Special went on a 5 minute flight – the fuse burnt down, but didn’t burn the rubber band (I got that fixed)!  And I got some nice test flights on my new Yankee IV 1/2 Wakefield.

the un-burnt DT band on my Jimmie Allen Special!  I’m very lucky it came down!

We just had a nice relaxed day of flying and camaraderie.  Winn Moore arrived in the late afternoon, and he, Pat and I enjoyed some T-bone steaks grilled right on the flying field.  We chatted into the night and I still didn’t make any new motors.

Sunset from the south end of the AMA Flying Site (site 4)

Saturday morning started out as a beautiful day, with no hint that it would become super-hot – we hit about 95 degrees with high humidity on Saturday and I went through over a dozen bottles of water and gatorade.  Still, the wind was nearly nothing and we had some great flying.  I had a very promising flight on my B-52 after adding a loop of  1/16″ rubber to the existing motor – it climbed out well on the first flight and circled to the left.  I should have paid more attention – I knew that it circled to the right last year, but it was flying so nicely, I just went back and put in a couple hundred more turns – nothing too much.  Or so I thought – the extra torque rolled it to the left on launch and broke the prop (and tore up the nose and tissue).  I can get it fixed, but I wish I didn’t have to.

most (but not all) of my Saturday liquids

The air was good most of the day, with light thermals and occasional boomers.  I maxed out in 2 Bit with my King Harry, but had a rough time with my Pepper.  In Jimmie Allen, my Special couldn’t find any air and I settled for three flights under 70 seconds (needs more trimming and duration).  I logged 3 of 6 flights in Phantom Flash and decided to return to that later.  I flew my 24″ Comper Swift in both Golden Age and in the Greve Race, but didn’t win either event – Pat Murray took the Greve with a Mr Smoothie (of course).

Mike Welshans, Dave Niedzielski, and Ted Allebone discussing something rather important.

McCook has two special club events that we enjoy flying – just for fun – they aren’t FAC events:  On Saturday, they have the Watson Challenge and on Sunday, they have the Cloud Tramp Mass Launch.  The Watson Challenge is best 2 of 3 flights (no max) with any model you want – but it must be propelled by a 24″ strand of 1/8″ rubber, provided by the Contest Director.  One year, I won when I stripped the rubber to 1/16″ and flew a Peanut Maule M-5 OOS after 6 minutes.  This year, I decided to use my new Phantom Flash.

my best PF ever. Now lost to the east of the AMA Flying Field.

I knew it would flew (and flew well) on a loop of 3/32″, 1/8″, or even 3/16″!  So a loop of 1/8″ would be no problem.  I wound and launched the first flight and it was something around 55 seconds – not very impressive – I would have to do better on the other two flights.  I wound it up again and found someone to time me.  As I launched, a monster thermal pulled it right out of my hand!  It stood on its tail and looked like a fluttering leaf – in reverse – it was climbing FAST.  It finally settled into its circular flight pattern and just kept riding that elevator.  The black wings showed up great against the white cloud cover and I was able to track it for a long, long time.  I followed on my chase bike, but it didn’t really look like it was coming down.   I followed it to the eastern edge of the site; I made it over to the road that is farther east; and I watched and watched until I lost sight of it.  It might have come down, but I wouldn’t know.  I went back, expecting a 5 minute or so time (I’d been gone 10 minutes for sure), but was told “oh, I lost it at 2:20”.  Well, without binoculars, that sounded reasonable.  I did end up winning the Watson Challenge, but of course, it cost me a great little airplane (I’ll build another).

Mike Welshans returning from a flight with his 1939 Canadian 1/2 Wakefield

Marty Richey showed up (we did have about 15 total contestants over the two days).  He said he had not been flying all year, as his work has been keeping him busy.  He had some significant accomplishments at this meet.  The first:  he won WWI Dogfight with a Fokker D.vii.  Not only did he win this difficult event, but that win earned him his 16th kanone – and a Blue Max (to be awarded at a national event).  The second:  he won WWII Combat with his beautiful P-47N, a model that he lost last year – and found again.  He had re-covered it over the winter and it was ready to go.  And go, it did – as in it flew away – again.  It was in the final round and he had a tracker on it.  However, he returned empty-handed, with a feeling he know what part of the woods it was in, but without hope he would get it back.

I won the Goodyear races.  It was a contest of “old vs. new”  – Dave Livesay and I had 20 year old models and Pat Murray and Winn Moore had models less than two years old.  Dave and I outflew Pat in the last heat and I outlasted Dave by a good margin.

By the end of the day on Saturday, I was exhausted – the heat was really taking a toll on me.  We grilled burgers that night.  We found out that Chuck Markos, who had shared our AMA test during the day, was planning on sleeping in his car (in this heat!).  We volunteered my extra bunk in my trailer and I felt good about providing air-conditioned comfort for Chuck.

Sunrise from the south end of the AMA Flying Site (site 4)

Sunday turned out to feel more humid, but less hot, but was probably nearly the same as Saturday.  Some of my struggles continued, as I couldn’t get some planes to fly and I broke a ton of motors.  Sometimes I would not get a flight in in-between breaking.  I’d break a motor, load a new one, and break that one.  I broke so many on my Embryo, that all of the tissue around the motor peg was gone.  The wood was still intact, but without the tissue providing rigidity, the tail was twisted on launch and the plane would not fly.  So I gave up with 2 out of 6 flights left and with only 2 maxes.  I ended up in 3rd since I couldn’t get that 3rd max.

I came 1 second short of maxing out in OT Stick with my Wanderer – that held up for the win.  Ted Allebone chased that all day; first with his Casano and then with his Wanderer, but he couldn’t catch me.  Winn Moore lost a Wisp old-timer in another boomer, other than that, I don’t think any other models were lost over the weekend.

I couldn’t get my new Yankee IV to ROG on an official flight, event though I had been successful twice before.  I wasted so much time with broken motors and making motors and testing, that I didn’t have time to fly my scale ships.  Preparation is the key to contests and I was unprepared.  I did come away with 5 wins and 3 kanones (I won the Cloud Tramp ML, too).  Pat Murray took 6 kanones, Winn Moore took 3, Marty Richey took 2, and Ted Allebone won OT Fuselage.  Oh!  Dave Niedzielski drove all the way from Alabama – he won two events!

My victories. Each 1st place also received the little pins on the right – “McCookies”!

Here are the Contest Event Winners:

For many years, I have had an Embryo “design” floating around in my head.  Basically, I wanted to create a pod-and-boom-type of model.  I remember years ago drawing up (as in pencil and paper!) something I called “the Green Monster”, somehow associated with baseball and Fenway Park.  These designs are, by nature, pretty ugly aircraft, and I had no thoughts they would be at all competitive.

When I came back to the hobby, I got the opportunity to fly indoors at a great site, the Ultimate Arenas in Pontiac, Michigan.  Imagine a full-size soccer field covered by a 40-70 foot ceiling.  At first, I would go once a year, but then a few years ago, things changed – the Cloudbusters made that their monthly indoor site and I retired.  I was able to go once a month (I could go once a week, but 2 hours each way for 2 hours of flying makes me say “no thanks”.)

There is a bit of a rivalry here in the Cleveland/Detroit area.  Maybe it is one-sided, maybe it is not.  Us Detroit “outdoor” FAC flyers that fly indoors in the winter are dominated by the Cleveland Indoor flyers when they come up to Pontiac for the yearly Indoor Fling.  Don and Chuck Slusarczyk, and Larry Loucka thoroughly beat us in FAC events such as Phantom Flash, NoCal, Peanut, and Embryo.  Winn More and I have made it a personal goal to raise our level of performance to somewhat match theirs.  The most obvious place this happens is in the categories of Phantom Flash and Embryo, where FAC Rules specify 2 minute maxes as official flights.  If more than one person get triple-maxes, this forces a fly-off, generally we choose the mass launch, all-up/last-down tie-breaker fly-off.  But in order to get there, we need to build models that are capable of triple maxes.

In preparation for the 2017 Indoor Fling, I decided to build an Embryo.  I used a mash-up of ideas that I had gathered during my bar-raising experiences.  I had jumped into flying the local event – Blatter 40 – a simple stick ROG with 40 square inches of wing area (I was the Cloudbusters 2017 Champion, averaging about 2:30 a flight) and had successfully built a NoCal that took my Indoor NoCal times from 2:30 on up and over 5 minutes.  Using these, I decided to revisit my goofy pod-and-boom Embryo design – but just for fun.

the Sky-Box completed in 2017 before any successful flying

I used the Blatter 40 wing (with its 6% Simplex airfoil) and increased the chord to achieve the Embryo maximum wing area of 50 square inches.  I also used the Blatter 40’s simple tail surfaces.  For the power, I used a 1/4″ square stick of light balsa, an aluminum prop hanger, and a 7″ diameter can-formed prop – all from my NoCal experiences.  The fuselage of the model was the 1.25″x1.5″x3″ Embryo volume, stood on end, with triangles tapering the “leading edge” and “trailing edge” of the box.  The un-enclosed motor passes through the top of the fuselage.  A simple speader bar was used for the wheel supports and some of my GeeBee Model Z-inspired Embryo wheelpants were employed.

it’s a little chunky for Indoor flying!

I had it ready for the Indoor Fling in 2017.  My plan was to power it with a loop of 3/32″ rubber.  During the event, I could get no more than about 1/2″ circle of flight – and that was from a hand launch.  The silly model was a failure (not a surprise).

a test flight in the spring of 2017

The 2018 Indoor Fling came and went and the Sky-Box stayed at home; not yet relegated to the “failed-plane” pile, but never being brought to any flying event.  As I prepared for the 2018 AMA Indoor Nats, on a whim, I packed it to take with me.  The contest schedule promised a lot of down-time, as FAC events were flown in the morning and us FACers would have all afternoon and evening to test, chit-chat, and watch the endurance flyers.  So the weird little model came with me.

ready for testing at Rantoul in May 2018

One of the first things that I did was up the power.  I installed a loop of 0.110″ rubber (“scrap” from making 0.085″ motors for my NoCal).  I found several things with this motor: a) it flew very well from hand-launch with this power, b) it “might” ROG, if torqued way up, and c) ROGs were not easy, as the torque wanted to lay the model on its left side.  But I was able to log a 1:29 test flight from ROG!  I never expected the model to hit 1 minute, let alone 1.5 minutes!  If I could manage the ROG, I could put in some respectable times in Embryo!

The next afternoon, I decided to up the power again – I went to a loop of 1/8″ (0.125″).  I had to dial in some more right thrust and I even put in a smidge of up.  This helped the model ROG, but it still is an iffy proposition – I have to let the prop spin up before releasing the model.  By the time the evening was done, I had logged a 1:56 flight followed by a 2:05!  I had broken 2 minutes!  This meant that I could force a fly-off in Embryo, if I could string together 3 maxes.  Forcing a fly-off is my only hope against Don and Larry – their Embryos fly 3 and 4 minutes.  But maybe I could come in 3rd (my best hope and considered personally as a “win”).  I hurriedly cut some coffee-stirrer exhaust stacks and glued them on – full bonus points are important for competitive Embryos.

the Sky-Box cruising at about 40 feet (on a 44-foot ceiling) at Rantoul in 2018

On the last morning, I eagerly went out and called for an official – just pulled the model out of the box and wound it up.  The model came off the ground, and climbed for the rafters.  In fact, it climbed too much, bumped, dived, recovered and continued on – for a 1:53.  I had dropped my first official.  My second two were 2:11 and 2:16. I had done the best I could, but there would be no fly-off for me.  It turned out that Larry had dropped a flight, too, and only logged a 1:49.  Don maxed out, and George Nunez also dropped his first flight at 1:12.  That put me in SECOND!  All with a model I built for fun without any real thought of being competitive.  In fact, I had really given up on the model.  Now, the Sky-Box will see more contests at Pontiac, for sure!

I will send the finished plan off to a newsletter or two and I will offer it right here as a free download.  If any of you build it, please send in photos and let me know how it flies.

Here is the file; an 11″x17″ PDF – https://volareproducts.com/files/Sky-Box.pdf