Stories

Dad was flying a Lumpers, (diesel powered), and I was flying a kit called a Linus, (Cox Babe Bee powered). I still have the Babe Bee which is currently residing in a Flying Octagons, built from a plan featured in the Aeromodeller Annual 1974. It will not stay there much longer as the Flying Octagons is far too dangerous a model to fly when there are people in the near vicinity, but that is another story!

It was Saturday morning, and the weather was calm and sunny, and we had been flying for an hour or so. I fired up the Babe Bee in the Linus and Dad launched it into the blue yonder, and as soon as it left his hand I realised that we had forgotten to switch on the radio in the plane. Oh dear, oh dear.

Well, all was not lost because in those days the planes we were flying were just guided free flight models, and would happily fly on their own. Off the model went in lazy climbing circles, not moving down wind a great deal, but getting higher and higher.

After the usual three and a half minutes the engine stopped and the model began to descend. By this time it had drifted downwind, and over a road. From our position on the top of a small hill we could see the models flight quite clearly, and so we watched until it landed in a group of trees about half a mile away.

Carefully checking our bearings we set off to find the model, but as usual when we approached the area where we thought the model had landed the trees looked totally different, the heather deep, the gorse very thick and unforgiving, and the hidden potholes deep enough to swallow a medium-sized modeller.

After about an hour of searching we gave up and forlornly went home. However, the atmosphere in the car soon changed after my Dad said that we would go back on Sunday and have another look, as there was an area he could not search, and he rather fancied the model might have landed in.

I should have asked why he didn't look at the time, but I was so consumed by my loss that it never occurred to me to ask. Sunday dawned bright and sunny, and after breakfast we set off for the common again, and within fifteen minutes of arriving there I heard a loud shout that lifted my spirits immediately.

Dad had found the model, and retrieved it from a small tree. Great, excellent, what a result. On the way home our spirits were high, and the conversation was about what went wrong in the first place, where the model actually went, how lucky we were that the night had been dry and warm, and finally how Dad found it so easily and quickly.

He paused, and thought, and then said that there was an area that he had not been able to search on Saturday where he was fairly sure that the model had landed. However as soon as he looked on Sunday, he saw it, and was able to shake the small tree to dislodge the model. So why did you not look there on Saturday, I ask in a quizzical voice? "Well, he said, there was a young couple canoodling under the trees, and I did not want to disturb them!!"

Having had one flight with the newly built machine I fuelled up for a longer flight as there seemed to be little or no wind at the time. Off went the model, in came the wind, and away down wind went the Flying Golf Stick, with me in hot pursuit. It was a cold grey December day, my aged Dad was sitting in the car watching (and probably laughing at me by now), and I was the hottest modeller in the UK!

The machine all but dissappeared into the gloom of that December day, and when the engine finally stopped I could only vaguely make out it's shape in the sky. I had a line on the landing area, but it was vague and a long way down wind. So I stopped jogging, mainly because I was rapidly running out of puff, and walked in the correct direction by skirking the ploughed fields.

After nearly two hours I returned to Peter and Fred, and the look on my face told them of the failed recovery. Both said they would come and help search a bit later, and that is what we all did. On the way we stopped to look at Fred's Simplex, which was lodged at least 100 feet up a 120 foot tree! It was too tall to climb without safetly gear. So we went on and searched for the Chip Chopper for at least an hour, and at the point of giving up we all gathered and said there was not hope of finding it. We were on a path shrouded by trees and shrubs, and as we headed for home Peter decided to walk back through one of the fields. He climbed over the fence, walked a little way into the field, and turned to look at us, then said, "Look what I can see". Well of course Fred and I could not seen anything, but as soon as we followed Peter into the field we could see the Chip Chopper clearly. We had found it at last, but it was also just too high to safely rescue.

In the meantime my aged Dad was getting cold sitting in my unheated car, and when I returned he was grey with cold. He never realy complained about life, even though he struggled with a stroke-induced walking and speaking disability, but he did say that my car was a cold car, and that after the heater had been on at full throttle for 45 minutes!

Fred and Peter said they would come back two days later with the required gear to rescue the models, whilst I had to go to work. The required gear turned out to be drain rods, which can be bolted together in very long lengths, but are designed to bend. However, Fred and Peter threaded them through the branches of both trees and managed to dislodge both the models without any real damage.

However, they had walked a long way with large quantities of drain rods, a large ladder, and on the way back carried the two models as well, so by the time they staggered back to their cars they were very tired. As Fred pushed the ladder back into his car it went straight through the windscreen!

I was flying one day in the summer when Peter came over to tell me that he had lost his Austenezer during the week. "Where did it go?", I asked, and Peter gave a description of the flight and landing in the far distance. We decided to go over and have another look there and then.

As we weere trudging through the long grass in the field adjacent to our r/c site, I asked Peter what colour it was, and he replied that it was camoflage colour! This was going to be very difficult to find.

Well, we did not find it on that occassion, but a month or two later Peter was walkinmg by a large blackberry bush in the landing area, when he noticed the wing from the model on the grass beside the bush. The rubber bands holding the wing on had perished, and the wing had fallen out. So he knew the fuselage must be in the bush. Even so it took him another thirty minutes to find it, the camoflage colour, plus two months or so of mold, making the model almost invisible.

So the moral of the story, is paint your models red, or blue, anything but camoflage colour!

This was obviously just the excuse the firemen needed to get out the fire truck. They all piled into the large machine, turned on all the lights, sirens, horns, and anything else they could lay their hands on, and sped across the tarmac to the stricken plane. When they arrived at the site of the disaster they reached into the back of the truck and produced a small step ladder, and proceeded to rescue Fred's model. Then, leaving Fred behind, they piled into the truck and sped off, sirens blaring, lights flashing. All that action and noise just to take a step ladder to a small building! At least Fred enjoyed himself.