Pee Wee .020 Round The Pole Flying

Do any of you old timers remember when the Cox "Pee Wee .020" became available ..... not long after a bunch of guys were flying small Pylon Racer designs on a tether line of only a few feet long attached to a center pole .... this was more often done indoors as I recall? The guys competed to see who's model would go a given amount of laps in the fastest time, I think is how it went? I know I have an old model magazine of which I have read an article about it, but can not remember the issue ..... does anyone have any feedback about this subject, and / or might anyone know of any particular magazine issues that might have reference to this subject?

I have a small rubber powered Carl Goldberg "Shoestring" kit that I believe would make a perfect candidate in tring to ressurect this kind of fun flying perhaps?

Years ago ( 1970's?)this was done during the winter months at club meetings. I remember it as being electric powered and the planes were much smaller than the rubber powered shoestring. Slot car motors were used if I remember right. Any old Chicago AeroAngels out there?

> Years ago ( 1970's?)this was done during the winter months
>at club meetings. I remember it as being electric powered
>and the planes were much smaller than the rubber powered
>shoestring. Slot car motors were used if I remember right.
>Any old Chicago AeroAngels out there?
>
>Bruce H

Not the one I am talking about .... the event I am referring to was in the late fifties and was definitely small glow engine powered. I will see if by pure luck I might dig up the article of which I read about it. I would guess that it was in American Modeler Magazine in late 1958, just a guess? By "indoors", I mean to say I think the guys did this event in garages, airplane hangers, and such.

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I remember that. It was aomething that a few of us talked about doing but never did. I think the British were more keen on it. This was about 1959. Sterling then came out with a line of 'Auto Magic' models that were essentially 2 lines on a fulcrum attached to a pole. We did get those to work but not with the supplied parts and only on completely calm weather. The good old days, they were really nice kits for $1.98 even had a c-47 and Piper Apachie. I still have the SE5, Monocoupe, and Rearwin in my collection.
Dennis

Ya got an Aeroangel here... I flew a electric round the pole that was made from a model rocket body tube. With the nose cone in as a tail fairing it would loop if you applied full power. Those were the days.....
Bob Furr

Never tried the pole flying, but when the PeeWee first came out I built a very small CL sheet wing, built-up fuse plane for it. Greatly underestimated its power and while using 5' dacron lines, flew into my own leg. Couldn't spin fast enough.
Sigh...

Don: There is a site for electric stuff.....
http://www.aquasite.com/skonkworks/model.html
I haven't figured if there are elevator controls or not.

A guy in PA had a site that had full sized stunt planes flying with a contraption for controlling them from the sidelines....kinda neat, but scary, too.

See Ya

>Don: There is a site for electric stuff.....
>http://www.aquasite.com/skonkworks/model.html
>I haven't figured if there are elevator controls or not.
>
>A guy in PA had a site that had full sized stunt planes
>flying with a contraption for controlling them from the
>sidelines....kinda neat, but scary, too.
>
>See Ya
>
>Peabody

That was Will Simcock of the flying Dutchmen in Pa. He has since moved to Rhode Island.
The system was neat to see but didn't go any farther then his origional prototype.
Dennis

One of the clubs I was in during 1953/1956 had a temporary access to a hangar-sized building that we could fly indoors in when the weather was poor. But for all its size, the overhead space was limited, and wingovers with Half-A's on 35' lines would have struck the steel framing up there (probably anything longer than 20' would have hit).

We filled a large water bottle with something pretty permanent (concrete?) and had a pivot of some sort on top of that to fly 049's on a tether line. As I recall, the plane had to take off as an ROG and to land without nosing over to earn a timing and all of the laps were averaged into the total time for speed. I suspect that we bypassed endurance on a particular amount of fuel, although I recall some discussion about that as a second type of competition.

Our club only got to use that building part of a single winter season, and we only held two or three "races" during those few weeks. What we did in there for the most part was fly an assortment of rubber power flyweight stuff (not necessarily "indoor" rubber, just small and light planes).

.

Kiwi

>Do any of you old timers remember when the Cox "Pee Wee
>.020" became available ..... not long after a bunch of guys
>were flying small Pylon Racer designs on a tether line of
>only a few feet long attached to a center pole .... this was
>more often done indoors as I recall? The guys competed to
>see who's model would go a given amount of laps in the
>fastest time, I think is how it went? I know I have an old
>model magazine of which I have read an article about it, but
>can not remember the issue ..... does anyone have any
>feedback about this subject, and / or might anyone know of
>any particular magazine issues that might have reference to
>this subject?
>
>I have a small rubber powered Carl Goldberg "Shoestring" kit
>that I believe would make a perfect candidate in tring to
>ressurect this kind of fun flying perhaps?

Resurrect? It's still going, in pockets, at least. The Aron family (Dad Rudi Aron and family including Jim "Uncle Jimby" Aron) hold the Aarroone Cup every Labor day - a .020 RTP contest with several categories, including sprint and I believe a 10 Mile race with numerous pit stops. They use TeeDee .020 or Tee Dee .010 twins, and speeds exceed 60 MPH on a 10-foot line. It's held in a Garage in Truckee, CA. and people come from all around the country. There's also a Concours and some of the models are absolutely beautiful.

I also heard that the inimitable GSO (Gordan Delaney) also knew of or knows of another group around central Utah.

The more I hear about "Uncle Jimby," the more impressed I become.

Sounds like a really good article for Stunt News. Or Model Aviation, especially as they might actually pay for it.

We did something like this at Purdue, and Howard Rush will remember this. Purdue Aeromodelers, in the old field house. Earlier, Neil Armstrong had been a member.

We used Tee Dee .049s and .051s, and the radius was something like 15 feet. The planes typically were deltas, with the motors mounted sidewinder.

Even with one line, the elevation of the models was dead level, never varying much more than an inch or so. These little, light planes would get that (ball bearinged) pylon rocking, too! Fuel was run what you brung, as I recall, and we used knotted fuel line as a pressure tank. They would last one or two flights.

Top speeds were near 100 mph.

Articles on indoor pole racing have shown up in the mags from time to time, first in Hobbies For Young Men, in the '50s sometime.

And a couple of times later.

>We did something like this at Purdue, and Howard Rush will remember this. Purdue Aeromodelers,
>in the old field house. Earlier, Neil Armstrong had been a member.

I remember these events being run in 1967 or 1968 at the Purdue fieldhouse. At least some of the guys were using delta winged designs then. I drew up a couple tailless mouse racers of like size to the pylon-tethered ones, except that they had low-A/R, semi-elliptical and trapezoidal wings. One of them is on my shelf here: red HobbyPoxy finish w/side-mounted TD .049 faired into buried tank.

Flew one of the 049 models at Purdue in about 1973. Mine had a Fox FAI 049 and was right up there with the TD models as far as speed. They were actually a bit scary and tales were told of a flyaway that punched a hole through a brick wall....

Bob Furr

>The more I hear about "Uncle Jimby," the more impressed I
>become.
>
>Sounds like a really good article for Stunt News. Or Model
>Aviation, especially as they might actually pay for it.

The rule book of the Aarroonne Cup is also just brilliant. The motto of the event is "If it's worth doing, it's worth doing to excess".

Yep,

"If it was a good idea, someone else had probably already thought of it."
Back when I was a kid in the early seventies we had a small control line club out in western Nebraska, I also came up with the idea for a indoor .020 pylon racers. Well the big day came and three or four of us had built planes. We had acess to a large loft and proceded to have a blast. Using 10 or 12 foot lines, I built a pretty neat racer out of 1" square balsa and flat wing, no tail, engine cylinder mounted flat, I made a wire detachable landing gear that fit behind clyinder and tank and would drop out, worked great. It filled the room with smoke and we had to add extra weight to pylon. Somebody had put a clock to it and said it was doing 72 mph! I remember that because I had put 72 on wing, for 1972!
Does that sound right? I never did the math, and we never raced again. I used a wooden top flight prop that I cut down quite a bit (all racers use small props...right?) and no idea what fuel.

This was a regular event at our indoor flying sessions in the MIT armory when I was a student there between 1959 and 1963. We flew Pee Wee .020 racers on a 15 ft. tethered pole. No control, of course. I eventually took the top speed of 71 mph with a Pee Wee .020 hopped in the way suggested by an article in MAN of that era driving a 4x4.5 prop, or something like it. Amazing what you can learn by reading!! That was my real intro to the fact that you can actually improve upon what you get out of the box! As they say, the rest is history ....

Okay guys, I found an article on this (still not the article I remember) ..... it is from MAN 9-1960. The guys from this period were flying these models on a 4.5 foot radius single line mounted on an 18 inch high center pylon.They used 4d-6p props cut down to 3 inch diameter. These guys also did this same thing with Jetex 50 powered models. They actually timed their models (for 14 laps) with a "Brush" recorder, some sort of rig with a scribed on paper read out?
I will show a few photos from the article here. The models were much smaller than I had remembered reading about.

Here is a couple more photos. This article in the old MAN magazine is one of the most thorough articles I have ever read ..... it gives ALL the rules, exact specs, etc. ..... everything one needs to know should one decide to build one and run by the rules of old?

>Here is a couple more photos. This article in the old MAN
>magazine is one of the most thorough articles I have ever
>read ..... it gives ALL the rules, exact specs, etc. .....
>everything one needs to know should one decide to build one
>and run by the rules of old?

I mentioned this in a previous thread somewhere or other. My uncle was a member of the American Airlines Gas Model Club, in Cleveland OH, and he told me about these. Looks like a lot of fun. They flew them in a hangar at the Cleveland airport.

Thanks for posting the pictures! Can you scan the rules, or even the entire article?

>>Here is a couple more photos. This article in the old MAN
>>magazine is one of the most thorough articles I have ever
>>read ..... it gives ALL the rules, exact specs, etc. .....
>>everything one needs to know should one decide to build one
>>and run by the rules of old?
>
>
>I mentioned this in a previous thread somewhere or other.
>My uncle was a member of the American Airlines Gas Model
>Club, in Cleveland OH, and he told me about these. Looks
>like a lot of fun. They flew them in a hangar at the
>Cleveland airport.
>
>Thanks for posting the pictures! Can you scan the rules, or
>even the entire article?
>
>Andy

I will scan the rules tomorrow night or maybe the next night.

In the 60's I was a member of the "Orbiteers" in Detroit and we flew around the pole racers at Babe's Royal Craft Hobby Shop in the back room. The smoke got so thick it burned your eyes but we still had fun during the winter months. JIM:D

I remember this from the mid 50s when I was a wee tyke. Wintertime flying in the local tannery gymnasium, this was the first model flying I was ever exposed to. Never flew it myself, never gave it much thought until this thread popped up, now I've got to clean out my pole barn for some RTP flying this winter. Besides, those lilliputian planes are cute! Make good desk decoration in my office and can be safely locked in a drawer. I've got a couple Pee Wee's laying around - think I've found 'em a home...
Steve ..

We have two of these in the NW Skyraiders. John Hall built one and flew it in his garage (our meeting room) a few years ago. It was actually kinda scary...not much room...certainly not enough between us'ns and the screaming PeeWee. Recently, Bill Sodon brought one to a meeting that he had built. I guess he could fly it in the main gallery of his Auto Body Shop/Hobby Shop in Tacoma. Steve

The article you refer to might have been the one our club the Utah State Aeromodellers had in one of the magazines back then. I can't remember just which magazine or when but it was a 4 page article on our .020 tether contests. We flew two classes. One was for scale models of racing planes of any type and the other was for purely speed ships. The top speeds were in the 70+ MPH range for the speed ships with the scale jobs in the 40's and low 50's as I recall. I'll try to find out which Magazine it was in and post it. Gordan Delaney (GSO) had one of the fastest times as I recall. He still has the model. The scale ships varied from Golden Age Racers to Unlimited Warbirds and Goodyear racers. We had lots of fun. I have a box full of broken .020 parts for my efforts. Lots of bent cylinders and broken shafts.

I pulled out my old records of "tether speed trials" for the Purdue Aeromodelers, 7 Dec 69. We flew on a 21 foot line, with sidewinder deltas running Tee Dee .049s and .051s. I think we brought our own fuel, can't recall. Top speed that day (not proto speed) was 89.1 mph, by Norm Drazy, a noted Cler of the day. I was second at around 84 mph. I recall Howard Rush officiating.

The all time record for the meet, posted sometime in the '60s, was by Neil White, at 98.4 mph. You may recall him as the designer of the combat ship Bosta, a monoboom eliptical tip design.

I might visited P.U. that year. Anyway, the deltas inspired the CL job in #19 above, which was built in school year 1969-70, when I was teaching in Flint, MI. It survives like several others through not having been flown (Ha!).

The entire article (text only), I have already posted all the photos.

Article text continued ..... see photos.

Last of text continued ....

I have a few (full size) plans for 020 RTP models I could at to one of my sites if anyone's interested!

>I have a few (full size) plans for 020 RTP models I could at
>to one of my sites if anyone's interested!
>
>Tony

Tony,

If you mean you could *add* the plans to one of your sites, that would be wonderful!

Thanks!

I certainly would like to see a few of the plans for the RTP planes. Hope you can find the time to post on your site, Tony.
Thanks!
Steve ..

I've added quite a bit of stuff to my full size 1/2a plans site.

>I've added quite a bit of stuff to my full size 1/2a plans
>site.
>
>
>Tony

Tony,

Just to let you know how much I enjoy these. And I suspect many others too, judging by the fact that the web site routinely exceeds its transfer quota and shuts off! With a little patience, I still manage to download them all. Really wonderful stuff.

Any chance of an ocassional Aeromodeler sport 1/2 A FF design (Poppet, Pushy Cat...)? I know, too many plans, too little free disk space....

Many Thanks!

See June 2002 Aeromodeller, pgs 48 and 49, "To the pole and back, with R/C" by A. Haslett. This tells you how to put an RC receiver, battery pack, and servo on a rotating disc on the pole. The up and down lines connect to the servo and you fly the airplane by RC as it goes round and round. He advises not flying indoors as it will set off the smoke alarm and scare the cat.