Hot action in the slopes

Model Airplane News, May 2003 by Loud, Richard

State-of-the-art sailplanes at Soar Utah

FRIDAY HIGHLIGHTS

Hoping to repeat the success of the last Soar Utah, the IMSF crew planned a side trip to Antelope Island in the middle of the Great Salt Lake on Friday morning. About half of the pilots made the trip to the island and, as always, were treated to amazing scenery with panoramic views of the Great Salt Lake and the Wasatch Mountains. On this trip, however, the wind remained light, so most of the flying was with hand-launched gliders and light-air slope ships. Most pilots returned to POTM on Friday afternoon and were welcomed with 10 to lymph winds coming straight up the slope.

Friday brought many other highlights, including test flights of Dave Wenzlick's 1/10.5-scale A-10. At 10 pounds, it needed a strong, steady wind to fly, and, for the initial flight, Dave elected to remove the nacelles to avoid any unnecessary drag. This was one of those times when everyone else landed to watch another pilot's flight.

For the ultimate in cool, you didn't need to look, or listen, farther than Southern California boys Brian Laird, Ralph Roberts and Tim Neja, who flew their Czech-made Opus sailplanes from R/C Direct. Something about the hollow molded wings on these planes makes them whistle when the ailerons are deflected. With three in the air at once, we were treated to a virtual symphony of aileron rolls.

Eric Swenson of Medford, OR, taught us something about how far slope aerobatics have come by flying his 4-scale Fox on a knife-edge down the length of the slope. I'll bet most people thought that couldn't be done without an engine up front!

SCALE COMPETITION

On Saturday morning, the official day of the scale competition, the winds started light and grew to an intermittent 10 to 15mph. The pit area was filled with some of the world's finest examples of RC sailplane craftsmanship and ingenuity. For the scale judging, pilots flew a series of six required maneuvers with the option to substitute one maneuver of their choice. The competition also featured a static judging component and pilot's choice awards. Entries were divided into three categories: modern, vintage and power slope scale (PSS).

During the scale flying rounds, the intermittent winds seemed to favor the pilots who flew long-wing scale sailplanes and gave an extra challenge to the PSS pilots. Nonetheless, aces such as Brian Laird, with his scratch-built Air France SUD Caravelle Airliner, and Tim Neja, with his Carl Maas-designed Super Tucano, carved up the sky during their judging rounds.

Mike Lance impressed the crowd with his Ws-scale Minimoa sailplane with its 4.5-meter gull wing. With the sun shining through its translucent covering, the vintage model performed a series of multiple loops, rolls and low, high-speed passes. Mike also had entries in the modem and PSS categories, flying his 1/4-scale, scratch-built EPP foam Schweitzer 1-26 and Durable Aircraft Models P-51 in the same type of aerobatic routines.

Dave Wenzlick chose to fly his initial judged round with his 5.28-meter Nimbus 4 sailplane. Dave modified a Gerasis kit, turning it into a motor glider by adding a 5.2:1 geared Hacker BSO-9XL brushless motor in the nose turning an 18x11 prop. Equipped with a 20-cell, CP 1700mAh battery, the huge sailplane looked as though it found a monster thermal when Dave gave it throttle! Trading some extreme altitude for airspeed, Dave brought the Nimbus down for screaming high-speed passes and then bent the wings into an amazing S shape as he completed graceful aileron rolls. Dave was also set to fly a judged round with the big A-10, but he found that an aileron servo had been damaged during landing on the test flight the day before.

A "SUPER" PERFORMANCE

This year, two Carl Maases participated. Truth is, it took both Carl Sr. and Carl Jr. to design, build and fly their huge 1/16scale B-29 Superfortress. Weighing 11 pounds, with a length of 75 inches, the 107-inch-span Superfortress needed strong, steady wind before either Maas was willing to toss it off the hill. An opportunity arose on Saturday afternoon, and it was not wasted. With Carl Jr. at the Hitec Eclipse transmitter, Tim Neja performed the launch duties. Carl Jr. proceeded to impress the crowd with more than 10 minutes of high- and lowaltitude bombing runs. He even coaxed a roll or two out of the massive bomber. On one pass, the bomb-bay doors opened, and a load of plastic ordnance was dropped to the cheering audience. The bomb bay is interchangeable with a box fitted to drop an RC X-1 rocket plane, although the X-1 made no flights on this mission. Everyone held his breath as Carl brought the B-29 in on final approach, and the crowd erupted in cheers after a perfect landing on its innovative, retractable landing skids.

Sunday brought another day of flying, with winds a bit lighter than the day before. Tom Henscheid, owner of Mountain Toys in Meridian, ID, showed his innovative use of EPP by flying his Beechcraft Staggerwing-perhaps the only production PSS biplane kit on the market. The Staggerwing had impressive maneuverability, and in Tom's hands, it positively danced through the sky.