The Trailing Edge
The Aviator
Anybody who has seen the 2004 Martin Scorcese film The Aviator will likely have fallen in love with the Hughes H-1. It’s sumptuous silhouette is featured in the key photo above as it glides over the slope near Wilson Lake, Kansas around the time the movie was released. The H-1 was and is truly one-of-a-kind aircraft from a one-of-kind man. We’ve heard it posited that if Howard Hughes had lived today the incapacitating mental illnesses which tormented his later life would have been easily treated. Whether that’s true or not we’ll never know but assuming for the moment it is, one can only imagine and marvel at what such a brilliant mind could have produced over the full arc of his life.
The PSS (power scale soaring) version featured above is a testament not only to the exquisite beauty of the aircraft, but also the sailplane-like slipperiness which made it ideally suited to the mission for which it was designed: to go far and to go fast. To achieve this goal, Hughes incorporated brand new technologies like flush rivets and retractable landing gear. It set a transcontinenal speed record of by flying non-stop from Los Angeles to New York City in 7 hours, 28 minutes and 25 seconds. Furthermore, the records were set by Hughes himself in the cockpit — a fact sure to melt the ice in the veins of every red-blooded aviator.
Back down here on Planet Earth, we were troubled when we read an early draft of The Ed’s piece for this month: 250g is not much in the way of latitude for building the future ships of our dreams. Then we rummaged through the ‘to be evaluated’ pile and found this:
It’s kismet! When time allows — seemingly it never does — we’ll dive into this and put together a sub-250g, micro-PSS version of Hughes’ greatest work. Problem solved. Furthermore, when The Ed saw us fondling the box he shouted over the shared partition:
“You know there are some micro retracts for that, right?”
Today? Today was a good day.
New(ish) in The RCSD Shop
This beautiful chino cotton New RCSD Logo Peaked Cap comes in eleven colors (including camo!) to match your inimitable personal style. Thanks to the adjustable strap it is one-size-fits-all for both men and women. It features the New RCSD logo on the front and on the back you’ll find the classic RC Soaring Digest sailplane motif (inset, bottom right) which appeared starting with the the very first issue from January of 1984. Order yours today.
All items in the Shop are made especially for you as soon as you place an order, which is why they are fairly priced and it takes us a bit longer to deliver them to you. Making products on demand instead of in bulk helps reduce overproduction and waste. Everybody wins. Thank you for making thoughtful purchasing decisions!
Make Sure You Don’t Miss the New Issue
You really don’t want to miss the May, 2023 issue of the New RC Soaring Digest when it’s out — we always have some exciting things in the works. Make sure you connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and Post News or simply subscribe to our Groups.io mailing list. Please share the New RCSD with your friends — we would love to have them as readers, too.
That’s it for this month…now get out there and fly!
Read the previous article or go to the table of contents. A PDF version of this article, or the entire issue, is available upon request.
