NASF RC Sailplane Competition
So what is an RC Sailplane Competition? Well, to put it simply, you shoot this big model airplane into the sky, and you steer it around, trying to find an invisible column of air to keep it flying for the required amount of time. Bud, one of the nice guys I met, told me it was a lot like fishing.
At this particular competition, the goal was to keep the plane in the air for exactly ten minutes. (By the way, if you're thinking 10 minutes isn't a long time, think about trying to keep a paper airplane flying for that long. It's a long time.) You were also judged on your landing. A piece of string, approximately 10 feet long, was place on the ground, and you were judged on how much the nose of the plane deviated from that line. So the only way to get a perfect score on the landing was to drill the nose in the ground right on the line at exactly the ten minute mark. (These guys have been doing this for a long time.)
To get an idea of how high the planes fly, keep in mind that the one you're seeing has about
a nine foot wingspan.
Most of the planes were made out of fiberglass and carbon composites. Super strong, super light, super
expensive. The guy with the timer is Rob Glover, the head of the flying club. He was very helpful and
gave me great directions to the field.
This shows you the relative size of the average plane out there, and you can see one going up
in the background. It's blurry because it's traveling at about 30 or 40 mph.
This is a closer view of one going up. The winch launching system consists of a nylon line attached to a motor
and passed through a loop about 400 feet upwind. The other end of the line is attached by a ring to a hook underneath
the plane. You engage the motor by pressing a foot pedal, and the plane's airfoil lifts it like a kite. At the top
of the arc, the controller makes the plane nose down, and the ring slips off the plane's towhook. At that point, the
timer begins, and so does the hunt for air to keep the plane up.
I snapped the picture right as the nylon line snapped on this launch. It made a terrible sound, but the plane
wasn't damaged at all.
Another plane going up. Yellow and white are by far the most popular colors for planes, because they're much
more visible from far away. And these things can get very far away.
More planes. I mainly took this picture because of the cool fiberglass case in the foreground.
This is a detail shot of the innards of Bud's plane. At the very front is the battery, then some padding, then
the servos that control the flaps, and on/off switch, and then the radio receiver. And that's pretty much it.
This was one of the nicest planes there. The bottom of the wing was black or navy blue, I couldn't tell.
Another pretty one.
More planes. That's Bud in the khakis. (Nice guy.) And if you think that to be a pro you need to buy the big expensive
fiberglass planes, think again. The black and white and red plane in the foreground flew the best out of all of them, and it's
your basic balsa model you can find in most hobby shops. The key is the pilot, not the plane.
Another shot of one about to go up. The white spots under the wing are the slots for the flap control rods.