Is Soaring Up to Its Glass in Hi-Tech?
What to ex-Spectra in the future?
This story originally appeared in the 93–1 edition of Second Wind, Dodgson Designs in-house newsletter. — Ed.
I have been in RC soaring about 25 years and I have never seen such a flurry of new kit manufacturers as I am seeing now. In the past a modeler had only a handful of kits from which to choose if he wanted a serious open class competition glider — and only one choice if he wanted a serious open class competition glider with full multichannel control. Now there are probably 15 choices!
In the years around 1965 to 1970, there was a great creative surge in the newly discovered sport of soaring in the US, culminating in the magnificent and huge hi-tech Jerry Nelson Ka 6 out of ‘Hummingbird Haven’ California and Earl Pace’s Labelle from Seattle. The Ka 6 utilized a scale fiberglass fuselage and composite hollow-core molded fiberglass and foam wings with ailerons just like on the most exotic of today’s gliders. It was sold as a complete glider, pre-painted and ready for radio gear. It was also sold as a package deal with an EK·logitrol radio installed. There were several of these beauties flying locally — most notably the ones in the hands of Doc Brooks. When the wild Doctor was flying his huge Ka 6 on the slope, I landed — both to watch his daring antics and because the very large glass bird in Doc’s hands took up the whole slope and would effortlessly slice through the gliders of the uninitiated like a hot knife through butter. Many of these Ka 6s were sold around the country.
The Labelle was a ‘short kit’ and was sold only to a few lucky friends of Earl Pace who never really put his kit into serious production. The Labelle sported an immaculately molded, white gelcoated fiberglass fuselage. It had glass and blue-foam vacuum bagged wings. This was my first introduction to the vacuum bagging process. The Labelle flew well. The only criticism that I had with it was that it had too much flex in the wing rod by today’s standards. A larger diameter wing rod would have easily taken care of the unscalelike flexing.
Alas, Earl Pace was also a full-sized soaring pilot and soon completely gave up model development and Jerry Nelson sold his Ka 6 kitting operation and moved on to another career, leaving the Ka 6 and Labelle as searing memories of a light that shown too brightly and too soon for a country that would not be ready for them for another 20 years. What is worse, Europe is given the credit for the development and first applications of this technology several years later — while the poor US is always described as playing ‘catch-up!’
While impressed with these amazing all glass birds, I as a kit designer, surmised that it would never be feasible to kit such exotic craft due to the labor intensive nature of the medium. It was also evident to me that these glass ships were not well suited to thermal competition flying and spot landings. As it was, my multichannel gliders were already more expensive than my polyhedral competition. Even now, knowing the price of materials and the time involved, I do not see how manufacturers can be making any money while selling their all glass kits for surprisingly low prices.
As a footnote to this ‘golden age’ of glider development, it was during this same 1970s era that I saw my first rotating or pivoting wing glider fly. It was on the slope at Fort Lawton. The innovator was Sandy McAusland, a mechanical engineer who later gave up RC for full-sized soaring. Sandy did not stick with the concept to refine it but he was one of the first to try it.
Unfortunately, after this great creative era, which also spawned the Todi, the first serious multichannel thermal competition glider kit, most parts of the country fell into a polyhedral slumber lasting for about fifteen years. The most innovative that the crowd with polyhedral paralyses got was putting ‘blimp-like’ 20% thick airfoils on their polyhedral dinosaurs. As one fan of old Broadway musicals put it Put the Blame on [B]ame. (I think I was referring to Mike Bame of glider fame at the time) The 1981 F3B World Championship contest is an illustration of the extent of the polyhedral paralysis in mainstream soaring.
Except for the flyers from the two main pockets of multichannel dominance, Carl Blake — a NWSS flyer, and Dwight Holley from the North East US the third U.S. team member — a California flyer had just started flying an aileron ship. No wonder the U.S. was seen as lagging behind the rest of the world in glider development!
This was a year after we had introduced our Camano with full flaps and aileron control and only a year before the advent of the Windsong and the birth of full-blown crow capability Crow was the ability to use both ailerons in the up position of about 40 degrees like spoilers while using full positive down flaps at 90 degrees for speed and landing control. With crow, the Windsong could lose altitude safely and dramatically by pointing the nose straight down without building up too much speed. This was over ten years after Jerry Nelson and Earl Pace introduced the world to hi-tech composite soaring!
Finally in the last half of the 1980s the US soaring mainstream started looking at Europe and discovered that much had happened while they were in their polyhedral coma. Suddenly, some of those who had been snoring the loudest, grabbed the torch of technology and went leaping into the present with a vengeance. Since this time, technology has become the passion of the press touting all the new materials like Spectra and other innovations. People who only a month ago were totally freaking out at having to apply fiberglass cloth to the turtle deck of a Lovesong were now amazingly and seemingly effortlessly whipping out vacuum bagged quadruple tapered flying surfaces! It is a miracle!
I am reminded of a flyer who has built several of my kits — all the while complaining about how difficult it is to build the taco shell fuselage and apply the glass cloth to the nose and turtledeck. He then proceeds proudly to tell how he "improved on the design" by covering the wings, stabs and rudder with glass cloth and epoxy before MonoKoting them. Needless to say, his additions required much more effort than did the simple fuselage construction, the thought of which immobilized him with fear and panic. It is hard to take this kind of irrational ‘tacophobia’ and the resultingly heavy 100 oz Lovesong too seriously. However, since perception tends to drive reality and you can't effectively fight it, and since we have a reputation to uphold for innovative breakthroughs in soaring, we have developed our new MonoSeam fuselage technology that we have just introduced with the new Sprite!
Now on to what is happening today. There never has been so many high-end kits from which to choose! It is a great time to be a modeler. However, the often heard lament is "oh, so many kits — oh, so little time”. For the first time, the modeler has a wide choice among nearly ready-to-fly open class gliders. For the first time a flyer can buy a glider off-the-shelf and with a minimum of building skill and time have a competitive contest glider. As I see if this is both good and bad (see The Harley-Davidson Lesson linked in the Resources section below). It is good because it puts high performance soaring into the hands of anyone with the bucks so it opens up high performance soaring to people who otherwise would not be able to partake in it. It is bad because it lets interlopers and neophytes into the high performance realm of soaring — forever piercing the veil of knowledge, craftsmanship and dedication that once separated the soaring gods from the rest of personkind. The instant plastic glider was inevitable. Its coming was foretold by the Nelson Ka 6 and the Labelle more than twenty years ago. I guess the real question is, what took it so long!
What does all this mean for the future of soaring? Believe me as a kit manufacturer, no one has thought harder about this question than have I. First of all, I see many new entrants continuing to join the kitting business. Since the very limited high-end market cannot sustain many companies, I see even more manufacturers leaving the business or diversifying into other products. Remember that for many years, Airtronics and Dodgson Designs had the bulk of that market pretty much to themselves. I don't know about Airtronics but Dodgson Designs never got rich. Imagine the same niche market split up 15 ways instead of just two or three.
Another trend that I expect to see develop is a split between the instant off-the-shelf plastic model market which will appeal primarily to the non-builder flash-in-the-pan ‘instant-gratification boomers’ and the market that is geared to the traditional craftsman/builder/flyer. In order to survive, the builder market will have to continue to offer a performance, maintenance and a serious price advantage over the plastic herd. This is an ongoing challenge since the plastic ‘cookie cutter’ birds are becoming ever more competitive and capable as the technology matures. As you might guess it is the craftsman/builder/flyer market that continues to interest me. The plastic gratification end of the market is far too crowded already — and besides I am allergic to epoxy. With my new MonoSeam fuselage technology, I can offer a mixture of convenience, price and performance other's can't match. Watch for a Camano replacement, standard class glider utilizing the Sprite technology — soon!
©1993 Bob Dodgson
Resources
- The Harley-Davidson Lesson by Bob Dodgson as featured in the November, 2021 edition of the New RC Soaring Digest.
- Spectra by Honeywell — it’s still around! From the website: “Pound for pound, Spectra fiber is 15 times stronger than steel, lends its lightweight strength to industrial workplaces. Spectra is light enough to float in water while remaining hydrophobic.”
Read the collected works of Bob Dodgson in the New RCSD: see The Dodgson Anthology. Also, are you a fan of the retro Dodgson Designs logo? Otherwise, now read the next article in this issue, return to the previous article in this issue or go to the table of contents. A PDF version of this article, or the entire issue, is available upon request.
