single channel

all that was left of my first rc plane.
when i was 13 i lovingly built a single channel keil kraft scorpion and fitted this single channel and an os pet engine.

took it over to chobham common for its maiden.
took off beautifully.
climbed up into the sky.
pressed the button and nothing happened.
kept pressing it and it never turned.
last i saw of it was a small dot dissapearing into the sky.
never found it.

gave up after that.

My my, that brings back memories , and not very good ones either LOL

Garry

was a right pain to get working.
should never have launched the plane.

so many of the guys at the patch have similar stories Im to young for so much romantisism

MacGregor! Now that brings back memories.
The Terry Tone. In those days even the RC gear was a kit!

Home made Tx box, note the valve, it needed a 96V battery!

The Rx at least had transistors but you still had to solder everything on.

No crystals so heavens knows what its frequency really was.
This was my first RC glider.

All sheet covered (wings 1/32, fuselage 1/16)
My Dad built the vane damped rubber powered escapement (he was proper model engineer!) with closed loop cables to a bell crank to work the V tail rudder. A 3V dry cell in the cockpit provided the power and ballast.
Of course the V tail was far too ambitious (and small) for the control system (and my abilities) and its overall stability was marginal in any case.
It would glide more or less but pressing the TX button did not seem to make any difference and it would crash in the normal way.
Later rebuilt with a high aspect ratio wing and a T tail. That did not work any better either.

The amazing thing is I still have both the radio and the glider 45 years on!

In those days failure seemed the norm but it did make any sort of success that much more sweet.

Great post, love it.

Very nostalgic and we know "We dont know how lucky we are" get it all the time at the flying club

Thought I would just bring this old thread to life for Phil G to see, unless he has picked it up already

Garry

The OP is a Macgregor MR200, these were the last of the Macgregor 'button' sets and were more or less replaced by the Digimac series - from one channel upwards. Actually that particular set is very popular again, there were several at the Ponty Single Channel event earlier this year - on 2.4g of course - I'll attach a couple of pics.
Re the V-tail glider - our first club, when Dad got me involved at age 11 or 12, was purely a slope soaring club - the SSA in Sheffield. Our first successful slope soarer was a very similar looking 'Moonbeam 2' which had the V tail operated by a torque-rod from an Elmic Commander escapement. We had many, many succesful flights with that and the model continued to fly well into the propo era, still on its escapement. Long, warm, happy days.
One day I'll build another, for the nostalgia. S/C of course!
Cheers
Phil

Its moderm vintage isnt it ,its a captivating part of the hobby going bank to the hobboes roots ,1 up from FF.I find it fascinating.I think you need to be very skilled to keep control also.

Phil, I'll shortly be investing a bit of cash into the forum & I was wondering if you'd be interested in doing an article or review on a trad' build model & possibly make it single channel.
We can't afford a payment for this ..... but you do get to keep the model & all accessories.

Pol.