Maybe I should try to give a less frivolous reply. I do fly towline to the left. Circle tow sometimes helps me and sometimes hurts. Lots of towing practice in a high site would help me considerably. How much line to start towing with is a question that I have not answered with any confidence.
Remember that the AMA glider site at
http://hosted.schnable.net/amaglider/ has plans and comments from Kurt Krempetz and me on indoor towline gliders. Kurt's ToFu plan started most of the interest in indoor towline gliders. Thanks to Ken Krempetz for doing a lot of the work for this site.
There is also a lot of information on cat gliders and tip launch gliders by many skilled people for both indoors and outdoors at this AMA glider site.
I'm also trying to get more people to build and fly Electric Duration (AMA Event 221) at the USIC. Ray Harlan's new rules took effect on 1/1/2009 and require 10 g max AUW including one 10 mAh LiPo cell. Mine is a repowered F1M. Larger and lighter would be better. You will want at least one stage of gearing, maybe two.
Fred Rash
From: Kurt Krempetz
Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2009 5:52 PM
To: Indoor_Construction_at_yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Indoor_Construction] Re: indoor towline glider release
Hi Mark,
What I remember at JC last year was most people just ran out 116 ft of line and pulled the model up. A couple might have let some line out as they towed up but probably started with at least 75 ft of line. Basically there was a line of models at the end of the dome and people just ran out line heading towards the center of the dome. A person release the model and people walked to the center or just past center of the building. Now Fred and I were the only ones that were really not straight towing and we did it a little differently.
I started at the end of the building just as most of the others but to the scoreboard side. I towed the model up on the short side of the scoreboard, then after it got around the scoreboard I was starting to head back toward the end where my model was launched so I was doing about a 3/4 of a lap to get my model up. I started out with about 80 ft of line out and let more line out as I walked.
Now others were able to get higher than I, so you might be listening to the wrong person. I would estimate I was getting about 80 to 90 feet up before the release. I saw some whose flights release higher, like 100 to 110 ft. I think Fred got pretty high up, he should comment.
Cheers,
Kurt
--- On Tue, 1/20/09, Mark <f1diddler_at_yahoo.com> wrote:
From: Mark <f1diddler_at_yahoo.com>
Subject: [Indoor_Construction] Re: indoor towline glider release
To: Indoor_Construction_at_yahoogroups.com
Date: Tuesday, January 20, 2009, 9:49 PM
Kurt,
For those of us who have never seen one of these fly right, how much
line do you (or should you) start off with upon ground release? At
say, a site like Johnson City, how much walking (laps?) is needed to
reach the ceiling? (I am presuming you don't get to ceiling in one
pull, but pay out line as you walk, correct?) And is there a convention
yet that everyone trim or walk the same direction? (ie, "line of
dance" for those who know ballroom.)
thanks,
Mark F1diddler
Received on Wed Jan 21 2009 - 05:46:23 CET