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Well, I can’t speak for the rest of you, but I spent many happy years of my youth watching, reading, and dreaming about flying remote controlled model aircraft. What I really wanted a scale, gas-powered P-51D (always a sucker for military hardware, that’s me…arrrgh).
In any event, I was lucky enough to grow up only about a mile or so from a decent slope soaring location, where people fly their R/C gliders in the updrafts pushed aloft by the face of a steep hill. What’s really cool about slope soaring is that there’s no engine, and thus A) no noise and B) you never run out of gas (as long as the wind doesn’t stop blowing). I really came to appreciate those two attributes after I finally got to fly a gas-powered R/C plane…the stink of the two-stroke engine, the mess of the oil all over the place, and the hassles of transporting plane, fuel, and field box pretty much turned me off, along with the fact that the planes fly at around 40-50mph, minimum. That’s too damn fast when the plane in question only has a three or four foot wingspan–it can disappear from sight in a matter of seconds! Also, it’s too easy to completely destroy one of those fragile planes by making any sort of minor mistake. By comparison, gliders are much, much more relaxing (although they can also haul ass, too–some slope planes can reach speeds of 100mph or more).
Ultimately, I talked my dad into getting hooked on the idea, and we eventually built (over the course of several years–it was the project that nearly never ended) a nice little Olympic 650 glider. It really helped when a good family friend, Art, came to visit. He’s got years of experience with R/C aircraft, and our on-again off-again project got finished in no time! 🙂
Learning to fly it was another matter altogether. It got smashed up kinda bad after the first few flights, but fortunately they’re pretty easy to fix, so it wasn’t that big of a deal. It did make us a bit wary of flying the plane “on our own”, however, so back to the shelf it went for a while…until I finally decided that, hell, if we’ve got it, we might as well fly it. No use fretting about destroying it, it might as well be on the scrapheap if it’s just gonna sit around and collect dust.
With that new attitude, I went out and finally really learned to fly it. I got some help from some of the local fliers at the nearby flying spot, and within a relatively short time I became reasonably proficient in launching, flying, and landing the plane. I was still afraid of destroying it, but once you get over the initial hump, you learn how to put the plane down reasonably gently, even if it’s gone off somewhere that you’re not so excited about (like way down the bottom of a steep hill).
Eventually, I picked up another glider, this time a flat-winged model with ailerons that would enable me to learn some basic aerobatics and would usher me into the speedier side of slope flying. Unfortunately, THAT plane has been sitting down at my folks house for years; I’ve been meaning to bring it up here (now that I finally have figured out where I can fly) but I just haven’t gotten around to it.
Which finally brings me to the point of this long reminiscence…I came across the wonderful [url=http://www.rowlhouse.freeserve.co.uk/]Slope Soaring Simulator[/url]! This little bit of Open Source joy was programmed by one Danny Chapman of the UK, and is an excellent little program that, at least to my relatively unsophisticated eyes, quite accurately simulates the experience of flying a R/C slope soarer. It’s completely FREE to download and use…ain’t Open Source grand?
There’s about two dozen different types of gliders to choose from, ranging between mellow “floaters” (like my first glider) to more aggressive aileron ships that are highly aerobatic. There’s even a replica of one of the scale P-51D kits…no motor of course, since it’s a glider, but at last my dream has come true! I can finally fly an R/C P-51D! What joy.
If you’ve ever wanted to try out R/C but were afraid of the expense (especially considering the highly destructible nature of the aircraft), this is the perfect solution. It’s absolutely free, and will allow you to get used to the mirroring you have to do when flying a R/C plane towards you. Best of all, the conditions are always perfect for flying (in fact they can be customized quite a bit). I’m diggin’ this the most!
Check it out: [url=http://www.rowlhouse.freeserve.co.uk/]Slope Soaring Simulator[/url] by Danny Chapman