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kokanator | 3 years ago

For those interested, there is still a very active community around Control Line airplanes as well as world championships.

http://flyinglines.org/

https://www.fai.org/page/f2-control-line

I was the president of the Northwest Fireballs for awhile.

http://flyinglines.org/Fireballs.html

If you are in the Portland/Vancouver area visit Delta park on most weekends and there will most likely be a group flying. If you have the chance to catch a competition at Delta park you will most likely see any number of former world champions.

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m4rtink|3 years ago

I still remember those from my airplane model building years! When I joined the airplane modeling club at the local House of Youth here in the Czech Republic, we had a few of them still hanging around under the ceiling - but we never flew them by that point.

People were mostly building analog glow spark or detonation engine powered planes or electric and unpowered gliders.

Interestingly the thing basically all people built at tje start was a throwing balsa plane and then an uncontrolled glider, that you would drag up using a line, kinda how manned gliders are lofted with a winch.

Then every year we would hold a competition where members would compete with the planes they built - IIRC my glider was in the A3 category but I don't think I won any top spots back then. Also one way to assure victory was to build a bigger glider in one of the categories no one else competed. :-)

By doing it this way the club members learned how to use the tools and materials to then build more advanced designs - I managed to also build a RC plan eventually, powered by a 1,5 cm3 glowspark and controlled by a SkySport 4! I think 9 still have it somewhere.

Then high-school started and I had much less time and that was it with airplane building back then. :P