It was Sunday evening at the BMFA Power Nationals - a new-fangled name for what we used to call the Nats. After a windy day it had gone relatively calm and the free-flight sport flyers came out in their hordes. Ah, but what's this? A well-known helicopter flyer and model shop owner creasing his sides at the sight of models hitting cars and people. I prefer to be charitable and assume that he was rubbing his hands at the thought of all the business it was generating. After all, free-flight flyers spend lots of money, don't they? Or perhaps he had shares in a car body shop.
No, I refuse to believe that he actually got pleasure from the sight of such stupid mayhem.
How do you sport your rotors?
Now that one of our model model helicopter magazines (Rotorsport, UK) has bitten the dust - actually, the next issue will be the last - it might be time to consider what just might be a continuing trend. If you take any of the American magazines you may be aware that they are cutting down, or even discontinuing their heli coverage. Flying Models' has certainly dispensed with the services of Pete O'Connor, while 'Model Aviation' has always had virtually no coverage. I have not seen a copy of either 'Model Builder', or 'Model Airplane News' for quite a while, but I am sure someone would have made me aware of their heli coverage if it was worth noting. Ray Hostetler's 'Model Helicopter Technique' is another that I have not seen for quite a while - simply because I cannot afford to subscribe. It costs more for 4 issues than 'W3MH' does for 12. In other words, friends, model helicopter magazines (the paper ones, that is) are expensive and becoming extinct. Make the most of them while you can.
Now you see it...
What an amazing world we live in? A world where the meek and law-abiding get trodden on and the unscrupulous are encouraged and succeed. Lest that should seem like an unnecessarily cynical remark, I would urge you to consider the number of items that have been released for public consumption that should clearly have never been allowed to see the light of day. It does depend on the market of course. In the USA there are innumerable devices that have made a fortune for their inventor/manufacturer, yet were patently useless. It used to be possible to produce a few hundred thousand of some totally useless or impractical device, put it in a plastic bag and label it a 'Revolutionary New Gidget' - or whatever - add 'thousands sold' and 'patent applied for' and sell it for 10 cents. Everybody would buy one, find that it was uselass and throw it away - well it only cost 10 cents! Because of the size of the US market, however, the total sales would be sufficient to make someone a millionaire.
Of course, this couldn't happen with model helicopters, could it? Well, if you have been around for a time, you might remember the 'Revolution', the 'Questar', or even the 'N***a Pro'. Our editor took a lot of stick for telling the truth about the latter machine in a paper magazine. It was replaced by an 'even better' model which has probably sold about as many as the number of thumbs on one hand. To be fair, I don't believe that any of the machines mentioned has made anyone a millionaire.
It doesn't have to be the whole machine, of course. It is amazing how many models are originally produced with poor clutches, only to go through the same process of 'development' that has already been followed by the same manufacturer with an earlier model! Then there are the number of starting systems that simply don't work, canopies that can't be painted, or stickers that are impossible to apply. Oh yes, by the way, do these people really believe that we all want to fly machines that look exactly the same? One answer might be that they do - in Japan.
How about the trend for some of the developing Far Eastern countries to produce look-alike versions of items that are produced by the fully developed countries. Most of them don't work all that well - you really wouldn't expect it at around half the price and a tenth of the development, would you? Whatever made you think that we were talking about model aeroplane engines anyway? The joke here is that the fully developed eastern countries started out by copying items from the west anyway.
Meanwhile, the world is being devalued by those who have our best interests at heart. we can no longer buy real adhesives that actually stick things because they are too toxic. Have you tried balsa cement recently? I used to go to sleep in a room full of cement and dope fumes and it never did me any haarmmmmm - er, where were we?
What's more, in the immortal words of Henry Crun, "You can't get the wood you know". It seems that the old rule of supply and demand has become the rule of what's good for you. If only that were really true.
A valuable tail
I recently had the need to replace the year-old clutch on a 'Concept 30SR-X' and was taken aback to find that the round piece of mild steel with a couple of slots in it cost no less than �30 ($50), plus a 24 mile round trip to the nearest Hobby Stores. By sheer coincidence, I also found a need to replace the clutch on my three year old 'Maverick'. A call to Morleys at 2.30 on Tuesday afternoon saw the clutch drop through my letterbox first thing on Wednesday morning. The cost? �8.70 ($12) including postage. It occurs to me that someone has their values wrong. Far be it from me to say who.