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Radio Controlled Helicopters? Not Back Then!
By Tony Stockill

At High School in the '50s, we built and flew model planes.  Mostly they were gliders, but some kids, with rich parents, could afford  a motor.  If you were extremely well provided for there were the new "miniature" radios, but these weighed a ton and needed a bigger engine.....  Even when I left school and went into the Royal Air Force as a Radar Fitter on real planes, they were still using vacuum tubes and heavyweight chassis.

The preferred form of model plane flying, if you had a motor (I had a friend who did) was known as 'control line' flying.  The plane had a simple control which enabled the elevators to be moved so that the plane could be made to go up or down.  This was controlled from a C-shaped handle with two lines attached, one to each end of the C.  These lines were about 8-10 metres or 25-30 feet long, and were fed along the wing of the plane, into the fuselage, and attached to a crank, which operated the elevators internally.

This crude device worked pretty well, as there was no need for left/right control, the plane just went round and round until it ran out of fuel.  The person flying the plane would spin round and round in the middle of the circle, and make the plane

go up and down, or even loop.

This may not sound very exciting, but it was, especially when you had combat - two planes and two kids next to one another in the centre.  Each plane would have a ribbon streaming from it, and the idea was to cut your opponent's ribbon (maybe the plane too).

This could be a hazardous game, but we weren't so safety conscious in those days!  Another hazard was starting the motor by flicking the propeller, and remembering to take your finger out of the way when it started.  Many a chunk of finger was left on the field of battle!  Hopefully the motor stalled when it hit your finger, as you probably dropped the plane!

There was much discussion about building a helicopter at that time, no kits available, of course.  Then we found out we would need a 4:1 power to weight ratio - impossible with our tiny engine, and we didn't have a good way to stop it spinning via a tail rotor.

That's all changed now - you can buy a ready to fly remote controlled helicopter or build a kit - if you can call it that.  We spent many hours really building with plans and balsa wood and balsa cement and tissue paper and dope.  Sometimes it only took 10 minutes to smash it!

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