The 30-Year Saga of the Ventus C
And what happens when you entrust the flight testing program to a beloved Disney character.
Long ago and far away in the dim reaches of the late eighties and early nineties of a previous century, a German company named Graupner manufactured a 1:4.5 scale model kit of the Schempp-Hirth Ventus C high performance, all-composite sailplane. Years later — the late nineties — while perusing the many interesting booths at the big Puyallup Model Show near Seattle, I stumbled across a “new-in-the-box” Graupner Ventus C kit for sale by a private party for what I’m certain must have been a “can’t pass it up” price, now long forgotten (and probably not shared with the wife!) Apparently, the original purchaser finally admitted to themselves that they were never going to do anything with the kit. So, they dumped it on the first sucker who happened along…me. It did seem like a good idea at the time, though. Not long after that I kind of burned out on RC soaring and stopped participating for several years, although I hung onto all the gear, just in case.
During this period of dormancy, RC-wise, the Ventus was allowed to properly age undisturbed in its classic cardboard box.
In early 2008 I said goodbye and thanks to my job at Boeing. My wife Cheri and I retired in St. George, a small city situated in the beautiful red rock country of southwestern Utah. With plenty of free time on my hands, my interest in RC flying began to rekindle. I eventually stumbled across a couple of like-minded glider guiders — Terry Sires and Ron Wittman — hanging out at a local turf farm — a great spot for flying RC gliders. Through the wonder of acres of green grass combined with the comradery of other pilots the fire was set fully alight once more.
After flying my rebuilt vintage Laser 3M TD ship (below — white with red wingtips) and a used Snipe DLG for a while, the big box containing the Ventus kit drew my attention. Freeing the well-aged components from their dusty cardboard restraints, I slowly began delving into its construction.
The kit consisted of a shapely white gel-coated fiberglass fuselage with clear plastic canopy and plastic cockpit tray, balsa-sheeted foam core wings, a retractable landing gear, realistic metal spoilers, balsa, light ply, and various fittings, along with plans and instructions (in German), and decals. Assembly required actual construction of the stabilizer and elevator, the rudder, and the wingtip extensions out of sheet balsa. Remember those medieval times when large scale models required building skills? Time consuming work, but a type of model construction that, being an old-timer, I was very familiar with.
While living in St. George for a decade and dabbling in various RC pursuits — DLG, TD, electric aerobatics, even off-road trucks — I squeezed in some Ventus-work between higher priority projects, and finished those built-up balsa assemblies, installed the retract and its servo, sealed the balsa-sheeted wings with polyurethane, installed wing rod tubes in the fuse, and got the rudder hinged to the vertical fin. Lots of people build entire home-built aircraft in less time, and the Ventus still wasn’t nearing completion. But, at least by late 2016 I could assemble the ship and see that she looked like a rather beautiful sailplane even if she was still a long way from achieving actual flight. Unfortunately, work came to a standstill at that point as other activities took precedence.
In mid-2018 my wife and I relocated our household to Green Valley, Arizona — south of Tucson. After getting settled into the new digs I continued doing occasional work sessions on the Ventus, which had survived the move unscathed.
In the days of yore when this kit was designed, control surfaces were typically operated by pushrods emanating from servos mounted in the fuselage. After pondering my pitiful level of manual dexterity and the potentially severe difficulties that I would undoubtedly encounter in connecting barely accessible pushrods to nearly unreachable servos when assembling the glider, I decided to modernize the control scheme by embedding servos in the wings to actuate the ailerons and spoilers. Whenever you modify a design, the time required to complete the project increases exponentially, and it did here. But that was just the beginning. I also chose to embed the elevator servo in the vertical fin to forego the inevitable slop that a long, curved cable would have introduced into the system — more extra time, mostly spent in head-scratching, of course.
After investigating the RC flying fields and the types of RC activity in the Tucson area, the realization dawned on me that I was not going to find a suitable flying venue, or anyone with a winch or a tow plane to launch the Ventus. Further, there were no slopes suited to flying anything other than an indestructible foamy. Virtually every hill is covered with rocks and cactus. In sad point of fact there was very little RC glider activity of any kind in the region south of Phoenix. Thus, it made good sense to give the Ventus self-launching capability — yet more time expended designing (head-scratching) and building a motor/ESC/battery system. I researched the motor sizing thoroughly, then took a wild-ass guess and bought what “looked about right” and would fit. Oh man, does it hurt to have to saw off the nose of a sleek glass fuselage — so wrong! Anyway, many hours of work and several months later all systems were finally completed.
I wanted the glider’s finish to look at least somewhat realistic — no problem for the glass fuse. But, the wings and tail were another issue. Covering balsa with white plastic film was the obvious thing to do, but I thought the grain of the wood might show through. After countless hours of priming, wet sanding, and finally spray-painting with rattle cans, the wings, horizontal tail, tip extensions, and rudder looked pretty gel-coaty, at least from a distance. I probably should have just gone the Ultracote route.
Disney kindly allowed me (truthfully, I didn’t ask) to enlist their well-known character, Goofy, as the glider’s pilot. After completing basic flight training, and skipping ground school, he was installed snugly in the cockpit of the glider.
A few ounces of lead sinkers glued inside the fuse near the motor brought the center of gravity forward to the recommended location. I sensibly (for a change) decided not to put any more effort into beautifying the glider with trim until it had been flown successfully.
Finally, after a mere twenty years under my ownership, the Ventus C was ready for flight! Unfortunately, the lack of a good local field at which to fly a large glider, combined with some serious family health problems, relegated the ship to hangar queen status after completion. Goofy sat on the shelf for over a year until our situation improved sufficiently to enable my wife and I to travel to a flying venue that I felt was suitable for the maiden voyage.
In late 2018 I had flown in the Blue Skies of Arizona F3K (DLG) contest at a field near Eloy, which is about 80 or 90 miles north of us near Casa Grande. I wanted a flat field with plenty of elbow room for the maiden voyage of the big (to me, anyway) glider. The field at Eloy fits that bill to a tee — a vast expanse of nothing but dirt, and a fairly smooth, firm and flat surface for takeoff and landing. Flat-Earthers would like this place! One problem this glider has is limited prop to ground clearance. I found that a grass surface does not work, as the wheel sinks in and the prop becomes a very effective lawn mower! Firm dirt or pavement is a necessity for takeoffs. And ‘firm’ this dirt is.
Upon arrival at the immense field, I was disappointed to see that it was covered in small two-to-four inch dried-up weeds. They didn’t look like a major problem, though — just kind of crunchy underfoot, and maybe a few would get weed-whipped by the glider’s prop. Surprisingly, these innocuous little beggars almost proved to be Goofy’s undoing. We parked our pickup truck out in the middle of nowhere and set up shop. There was no other human activity within sight across the emptiness— a bit weird.
Assembling the bits and pieces of the Ventus under Goofy’s critical eye took a while, but the 152-inches and 7.5-pounds of graceful bird was finally ready to go with all the movable parts seeming to flap or retract or spin in the right directions and amounts. The electric motor with 10X7 folding prop was pulling strongly, powered by a 3300 mah 4S LiPo battery. Hopefully, it would be sufficient muscle to get the glider airborne. Everything seemed to be ready.
Goofy, the erstwhile pilot, gave thumbs up. So, I nosed the Ventus into the steady 10 mph breeze, held onto the tail, leveled the wings, cranked up the throttle, and let ‘er rip. The sudden rapid acceleration took Goofy completely by surprise. The Ventus leaped into the air so suddenly that he overcorrected with too much down elevator and slammed the glider back into the ground, with the left wing tip touching down in those damnable little weeds and causing the glider to spin 180 degrees into a ground loop with a pretty hard strike on the nose and prop. Oomph! What a terrible start! All those months of hangar-queening had apparently been very detrimental to Goofy’s piloting skills.
To my relief, the only damage was the lead ballast in the nose coming loose. The sinkers were easily glued back into place. I had words with the pilot, encouraging him in the strongest possible terms not to repeat that performance! At least we now knew that lack of power was not going to be a problem.
A foolish mistake I made in setting up the controls was about to bite us — the old dogs/new tricks thing. For decades I’ve always controlled a powered model airplane’s throttle with the left-hand stick, the same one that controls the rudder — up and down for throttle, left and right for rudder. In my somewhat-less-than-infinite wisdom I decided to put the spoilers for this glider on the throttle-rudder stick and control the throttle by the potentiometer lever on the left side of the transmitter. The reasoning seemed sound at the time — for unpowered gliders I’ve always controlled the flaps using the throttle stick. So, it seemed natural to put spoilers there, too, as they carry out the same function — glidepath control. I failed to take into account that old habits die hard, especially under stress, and that this model is powered and therefore would tap into Goofy’s powered plane reflexes.
With the ballast again properly stowed, our intrepid pilot signaled his readiness for Attempt Number 2. This ‘flight’, although it never actually left the ground, was even more exciting than the first. After quickly gaining significant velocity, Goofy let the left wingtip drop slightly, just enough to catch in those nasty little weeds and spin the glider 180 degrees with the tail flipping up and the nose with rapidly spinning prop(!!!) slamming down. Goofy immediately chopped the throttle, but the mad thing wouldn’t quit! It came screaming full bore back towards where Cheri was relaxing and enjoying a perfect view of what had now turned into a shit show. Before Goofy finally realized that he was automatically using the wrong input(!!!) — the spoilers — to throttle down, the glider whacked into the leg of Cheri’s chair right next to her, bounced off and proceeded to come back at her in an attempt to bite her ankles! Goofy must have been shitting his pants by the time he finally got it together and closed the throttle! Cheri said his eyes were as big as flying saucers.
Amazingly and thankfully, Cheri’s delicate ankles were unscathed! The only damage to the glider was a small ding in one wing leading edge and the usual ballast weights broken loose. There was also, of course, a problem with Goofy’s underwear. The most surprising thing to me was the survival of the CAM folding prop after being used as a 20,000 rpm dirt augur and metal cutter! Of course, if I hadn’t brought along spares, the blades would undoubtedly have disintegrated out of sheer spite. Given Goofy’s problem with habitually using the throttle stick to control the throttle I reconfigured the transmitter to switch the throttle function to the traditional left stick. Lesson learned.
OK, so third time’s the charm…right? At this point the intrepid Goofy — having changed into fresh underwear — was pretty dubious. He may even have been displaying a bit of uncharacteristic trepidation, as was I. I called into question Goofy’s skills, but he assured me that wind and weeds were the problem, not his well-honed pilotage. Further, if I would quit trying to make him rise off grojnd (ROG) through these grabby little weeds, there would be no hassle — “Just throw the damn thing, fool!”
The last time I attempted to heft this glider to fling it for a test glide I was surprised that I couldn’t lift it above shoulder height with my right arm. That ended the first attempt — I was not about to use my “throws like a girl” left arm. Fortunately, after months of weight training I had since regained some of the strength that I had lost as a result of rotator cuff surgery. Not one to ignore the advice of a cartoon dog/wannabe glider pilot, I decided to throw Goofy and glider into the blue in lieu of another ROG fiasco. At least the potentially disastrous results — since the idea was his — would be on Goofy, not me. I hoisted the Ventus up into the wind, Goofy opened the throttle until I could feel a strong pull. After running a few steps, I reared back and chucked the whole assemblage into the blue void. To my astonishment…and immense relief, the Ventus moved upwind smoothly in a slight descent with wings level. Goofy added power and angled the glider up into a rapid climb. No problem! Almost too easy! Too bad I didn’t think of this before Goofy did — embarrassing indeed!
After the insanity of the first two ‘flights’ this was a welcome lark. The Ventus C looked shapely against the clear blue sky, and flew beautifully, needing just a bit of up elevator trim to maintain straight and level flight. Control response was excellent. The power system luckily proved to be just about optimal with climbs to thermal hunting altitude accomplished expeditiously. This heavy glider flies fast compared to the composite TD ships I’m used to. Even so, it climbed very well in thermals with the motor off. Goofy found to his consternation that considerable care must be taken to maintain adequate airspeed while circling in lift, as the stall break out of a tight turn is rather sudden — a true thrill ride! Without any warning, the inside wing suddenly falls to near vertical, then the nose points straight down as the glider instantly cranks into a spin. At least 50 feet of altitude is lost before level flight can be resumed. There will be no low-altitude thermalling with this baby! Straight ahead stalls, on the other hand, were quite benign…fortunately for Goofy’s old/slow reactions.
Sadly, our time was up and we needed to hit the road for home with only one actual flight under our belts. Goofy glumly lowered the retractable wheel, raised the spoilers, and brought the glider in for a smooth landing, ending appropriately in a slow-motion ground loop, which was, of course, entirely Goofy’s fault. Even so, good old Goofy was stoked about twenty minutes of sublime soaring in his new ride, and is looking forward to really wringing out the Ventus in the future. Just this single successful flight felt like a great reward for all the effort and years that have gone into completing the glider! Persistence pays off again, albeit very, very slowly in this case.
Cheri and I celebrated the successful maiden flight with fast-food burgers in Casa Grande. Not Goofy, though. He was on his way back to advanced glider flight school to learn how to take off and land properly. I plan to have words with his original flight instructor, too!
Now that I know the Ventus flies well and that Goofy’s skills will be upgraded, I’ll be gussying up the old bird with proper scale numbers and markings, and other bits of visual adornment to make it look even more like the real thing. It only took a bit shy of three decades for this model airplane kit to reach this point!
How time flies…and model airplanes…sometimes. Thermals!
©2021 Waid Reynolds
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