Hi Ray,
Many thanks for that info.
I had in the back of my mind that it was invented over here - but probably later than I thought. Cardington was the place where all Air Force personnel went to learn to use a parachute and when I first went in 1970, there were several inflated barrage balloons with baskets slung underneath for unfortunate souls to jump or be pushed out of. there were also many thousands of cylinders of gas of various sorts, stacked just outside the hangars.
I was at the the '78 Champs as a young timekeeper and remember the hoo-haa about sharks teeth too.
Nick.
--- In Indoor_Construction_at_yahoogroups.com, "ray_harlan" <rbharlan@...> wrote:
>
> Nick, you have only to look to your fellow countrymen for the origin of steering. Laurie Barr probably knows who was the first, but the Brits did it and the US quickly caught on. The AMA rules for 1976 was our first effort to allow steering. Three fifteen-second periods were allowed. In the next two years, the Europeans pushed for unlimited steering and it was allowed at the 1978 WCh. The big issue was the threat of overwinding a model and then holding it back with the line. For that contest, a special rule was adopted, permitting steering only after, I think, 9 minutes, which was an fairly agressive climb time, but not unreasonable for the average model. I was US TM and remember Ron Green being the first Brit up. He was in the roof in 6 1/2 minutes and readying to steer. I headed for the CD to lodge a protest when we heard an explosion and watched Rons model flitter down in tiny pieces. He had hit a sharp object with the balloon just as he had reached the model. I decided not to make the protest formal, but did ask the CD to keep an eye on the Brits, who had much more experience steering than we had. At that time, "shark's teeth" were allowed on the front of the motorstick to let the steerer push from behind and keep the line out of the prop. This led to moving the model up after cruise and was disallowed later on.
>
> The rules finally settled down in 1979 and are the current ones used. I think Larry Cailliau can be credited with devising the steering tube - a real polyethylene tube at first, before the current caulk saver. Everyone had a lot of trouble catching the line between the prop hub and thrust bearing and couldn't get models off the line.
>
> With regard to Carl Redlin, balloons have been used for a long time to retrieve hung models.
>
> Ray
>
>
> --- In Indoor_Construction_at_yahoogroups.com, "Nick Aikman" <nickaikman@> wrote:
> >
> > Greetings all,
> >
> > I have a question - idle curiosity really.
> >
> > Who/when/where was steering with a balloon and line invented? The earliest reference I have is a pic of Carl redlin surveying his model wreckage on the line at the 1st World Champs at Cardington in 1961.
> >
> > Thanks.
> >
> > Nick.
> >
>
Received on Tue Apr 21 2009 - 01:18:52 CEST
This archive was generated by Yannick on Sat Dec 14 2019 - 19:13:45 CET