In The Air
Bird? Like. Bird-like.
Sometime in the mid-1970s, the cinematic rendering of Richard Bach’s mega-hit book Jonathan Livingston Seagull had arrived in the movie theatres of Vancouver, BC. By the time our family got to the Vogue on Granville, the near street level marquee had already been defaced: some selected letters had been stolen, and the booty undoubtely used as an aide-mémoire for a would-be cinephile to help write up a review for his crappy mimeographed newsletter.
The movie was — well — ‘complicated’. That, of course, is a 21st century metaphor for ‘not very good’. Incomprehensible for a 12 year old, certainly. The super-cinematic, timeless soundtrack music by Lee Holdridge and Neil Diamond, on the other hand, was (and is) out of this world — I still listen to it to this day. But not even that was the reason why our family stood in a long line to see the Hall Bartlett film. I will reveal that in a moment.
To be entirely honest, I don’t think I ever read Bach’s book, at least not when it was first published in 1970. Many years later — perhaps? — but even then I didn’t think it was a patch on Richard Bach’s other books written before Seagull. My favourites were Nothing by Chance followed closely by Stranger to the Ground. Incidentally, these are must-reads for anybody even remotely interested in anything that flys. But Jonathan Livingston Seagull does make it plain what readers might have had a hunch about after reading Bach’s earlier works — that is, Richard Bach might well have been much happier if he had simply been born a bird.
I exchanged emails with Bach a number of years ago (regarding a podcast I was working on at the time) and his very polite albeit terse comment back then was “I’ve just stopped interviews…I’ve done a number of them and today it’s been difficult to summon the energy to do more.” His huge success as a writer paid for a very nice life, I’m assuming, but the care and attention required to sustain the earthbound dreams of his admirers — including me — was simply draining for him by the sounds of it.
A bird, on the other hand, just flys. That’s all. Well that, eat and mate of course. But it’s a mercifully short list of things to do. Perhaps that was the point of Jonathan Livingston Seagull: flying all day, and every day trying to do it just a little bit better, was really Bach’s idea of heaven.
I can relate. Perhaps we all can, a little.
Short of achieving the impossible dream of some Bach-ian nirvana, perhaps the next best thing to actually being a bird is flying an aircraft that draws some strong design cues from them. There are few illustrations more appropriate than the ‘gull’ configuration of the wing as beautifully illuminated by Vincent de Bode’s Slingsby Gull featured in a richly-detailed article in this issue. It is also pictured above, on tow. Then there is Thomas Martino’s modern take on the configuration in his articles simply entitled The Gull which ran in the December 2021 and January 2022 issues of RCSD. Of course, there is the beautiful work of Chris Williams in his Petrels I Have Known and Loved which ran in the July issue last year. Suffice to say there are no shortage of examples of those drawn to the gently canted wings of the bird-like form.
There are other examples. My favourite aircraft for testing out a new slope for the first time is Michael Richter’s Alula. It is obvious the designer took inspiration from the coastal raptors near his home. I think the wing shape resembles a turkey vulture — their hideous appearance up close is a stark contrast to the utter grace when they are on the wing. But it turns out the pretty configuration of Richter’s Alula results in a glider which can turn on a dime and remain aloft — in hands other than my own, of course— seemingly in the slightest hint of lift. In this case, function follows form rather than the other way around.
Then there are the amazing bird-like renditions enabled by the new, lightweight-material 3D-printing processes. The best example I’ve seen so far is the appropriately-named Seagull from PlanePrint in Innsbruck, Austria. They have somehow managed to reverse engineer the real bird in almost every detail. The resemblance is uncanny. That said, I don’t think there are too many seagulls with electric ducted fans — but never having had the opportunity to discuss it with a seagull, I can’t say for sure they don’t want one. However, a glider-only option is available. As and when I build one — make that print one out, I guess? — that’s definitely the version I will choose. It only seems right.
However, I somehow take consolation that in a world where there is no shortage of very exotic, gorgeous airframes made of unobtanium and resulting in spectacular performance— the CCM Vantage, in this issue, for example — there are still lots of people who want to return to the simple, original form of those humble creatures who actually invented this thing we love to do.
Back to Jonathan Livingston Seagull the movie for a moment, to answer the question of why it was necessary for all five members of the Gannon family to rush to the Vogue in the icy-cold winter rain. That was because the November 1973 issue of Don Dewey’s RC Modeler magazine had the story of how the late, great Mark Smith had had his door knocked on by Hollywood. His reputation had reached there as the guy to build a radio-controlled seagull for their new movie.
The RC Modeler article describes the profound difficulty — back in the days way, way, way before computer radios and gyro stabilisation — to build a faithful rendition of the eponymous Jonathan Livingston Seagull. What’s more, it wasn’t sufficient for the bird-like model to limp around the massive, you-could-fly-a-brick lift found at Torrey Pines. Rather the movie’s producers’ expected JLS to perform a challenging aerobatic card as well. I’m pretty sure barrel roles made it to the screen. Mark eventually had to concede a little ground to the real birds and ended up adding small, transparent disks to the model bird’s wingtips to make it even vaguely flyable. And only then in his extremely capable hands. If you look closely at the film, you can just about see the stabilising disks in some of the frames.
The article was one of many in my dog-eared copies of RC Modeler which crowned my bookshelf as a kid. If it could be done in a manner which respected whatever residual rights are still out there, I would love to feature not only the JLS article in the New RC Soaring Digest, but a number of other really great articles which appeared in that magazine over the years. If you’re in a position to help with that, by all means, please get in touch!
As usual, I have overstayed my welcome and run out of space — and readers’ patience, to be sure.
However, if you’ll pardon one last thing I wanted to add: that is, to warmly welcome a brand new contributor from a part of the world which has not been represented in our pages previously — Dr. Gurmail Singh Malhi, Associate Professor, Department of Aerospace Engineering at Chandigarh University, Mohali, Punjab, India. He provides a great write-up for the Sky High Aeromodelling Competition which he organized this past September. One of my goals for RCSD in 2022 is to broaden and diversify our audience, and I can’t think of a better way of doing that than this article, while simultaneously encouraging the next generation of RC glider guiders. I really hope you enjoy the article as much as I did.
Beyond that, there’s too much in this issue to list here so suffice to say we’re very proud of what we have managed to assemble for February and we genuinely hope you enjoy reading it and thankful that you do.
Fair winds and blue skies.
©2022 Terence C. Gannon
Resources
- Jonathan Livingston Seagull — The full-length feature film by Hall Bartlett on Amazon Prime.
- Jonathan Livingston Seagull — motion picture soundtrack by Lee Holdridge and Neil Diamond on AppleMusic.
- Nothing by Chance — paperback book on AbeBooks.
- Stranger to the Ground — paperback book on AbeBooks.
Cover photo: We have the honour of announcing the inaugural member of the RCSD Three-Timer Cover Club. Alexandre Mittaz’s beautiful photography has graced our cover — you guessed it — three times. This month’s features a Baudis SkywalkerXL over a beautiful snowy landscape near Gadmen in the Gruyère region of Alexandre’s native Switzerland. The elegant 5m, 7.5kg ship is being held aloft by a northeast ‘Bise’ wind that was blowing on December 26, 2020. Alexandre also asked us to share credit with his friend A. Ramirez, which we are happy to do, of course.
Here’s the first article in the February, 2022 issue. Or go to the table of contents for all the other great articles. A PDF version of this edition of In The Air, or the entire issue, is available upon request.
