Back Yard Fun

Here are a few pictures from this past Saturday (7/10/04). Randy Ryan invited me over to fly in his back yard, and we had a blast. Neither of us could stop grinning. I flew my Swordsman 18 (for what I estimate was my first flight in 10 years!), and Randy got first flights on his new Lil' Satan and Balsa Bird. The Satan is powered with a C*X Tee Dee 051 and really zips around. The Balsa Bird is powered with a C*X Tee Dee 09, and is also very fast. Randy had a couple of "low tension moments" with the Balsa Bird, and also in the overheads with his PAW 09 Diesel powered Sig Akromaster. He got things under control in both cases, and all our models survived for another day. We're going to try and keep this up on a regular basis, since it is just more fun than ought to be legal. THANKS RANDY!

Andy

And here's a picture of Randy actually going around in circles (very quick circles) with the Lil' Satan. Zippy!

Andy

I had a ball too. This week I'll be cutting me circle so we can fly some big models. Its just now finally dried out enough form our wet spring.

More to come!

Hey Randy or Swordsman,

I'd like to know more about that TD 09 Balsa Bird. Whose design, area, weight, line length etc.?

I once built a 24" span Musciano trainer from plans in his book, and powered it with a TD 09. (I think the plans called for .10 to .19!) It was verrry fast, started with 35' lines, ended up with 52'. Now belongs to a friend, I would like to try something like that again - just for (backyard) fun.

Thanks.

HI Darryl,

The Balsa Bird was designed by Earl Cayton and published in about 1957. I can't remember the mag and issue but I have the info. It was designed around a Torp GH .09. I built one about 1964 with a Fox .10 and had a ball with it. Its fast but will do a little stunting. I flew the new one on 52' lines but that's way too much, 40-45 I'm thinking now. Actually I built this model for pure nostalgia and flying it wasn't the intent. But, since its airworthy I'm not the type of guy to just have something like this hang around.