TARMAC Notes for August

 

It was Queensland and the roadside sign said `You are entering a drought stricken area.’  Although the sign was a bit hard to read through the writhing mist with rain beating against it.  What a joke.  From the time we left home in WA, until we arrived in Queensland, the rain stayed with us.  Delivered by our own personal black cloud.  It was raining when I started the trip.  It rained in the hills leaving Perth while I lay on a tarpaulin under a wet caravan with rivulets of ice cold orange water trickling down the back of my neck.  I wasn’t happy.  I was looking for (and finally found) the intermittent electrical fault that was blowing fuses and had defeated an auto electrician an hour before.  It then rained across the five mainland states as we traveled across the country and all the way home.  In fact, of the month that we were away, there were only 5 days when it didn’t rain, and one of those replaced the rain with icy Antarctic winds. 

 

Still it had some up sides.  I saw my son get married on one of the 5 fine days and also visited the Nationals.  And we had the odd moment of excitement during our travels.  Our first stop on the trip East was at the caravan park at Norseman.  We didn’t get as far as I had planned on the first day due to the delayed start.  We finally settled down for the night with Rommel our 12 month old German shepherd pup curled up on his bed on the floor of the van.  At about 3 AM we were jolted into wakefulness by a 35 Kilo Rommel springing on to our bed.  Not silently, but with hackles raised, bared teeth and gutteral snarling as he stared at the side of the van.  It fairly put the wind up me as this was NOT behaviour that I had seen from him before.  We wondered what might be outside, but the only noise was the faint sound of a truck rumbling past.  After a while we all calmed down and Rommel, after a few more grumbles and muttering was sent back to sleep on the floor.

 

The next morning as we were leaving, we mentioned this disturbance to the lady operator of the park and she said that her dog had barked at about that time too.  `He probably smelled the cat’ she said.  To explain further she said that just before we had arrived, another overnight visitor when booking in had told her that they had a cat with them.  She replied that Dogs or Cats were no problem and either were welcome at the caravan park.  `I just thought that I should mention it, in case it roars during the night’ said the visitor.  That triggered off the enquiry as to what sort of cat it was, and the answer was `A tiger’.  It was being transported east for some unspecified, tiger related business.  The truck that we had heard driving by was the one with the aforementioned animal and apparently Rommel HAD smelled a cat, but a different sort to the variety that he likes to chase.  He doesn’t seem to like the smell of Tigers. 

 

Another interesting (and totally non aviation related) experience that we had while travelling, caught my notice because of my former employment in the communications industry.  An overnight stop at Nullabor, had us parked with the caravan next to a Telstra CDMA mobile phone tower.  Now for years there has been lots of debate on the safety of mobile towers, and plenty of folks have been unhappy about having them placed near where they live or children’s schools.  I have never been totally confident that the emissions from these things are as safe as the communications carriers claim.  But when I woke during the night to the sounds of a pack of dingos roaming about outside, I noticed a brilliant glow from the luminous hands and numerals of my ancient wrist watch.  Plenty of times before I had strained my eyes to read that same watch in the dark with absolutely no success.  My conclusion was that the not very luminous paint on the dial was being activated by the radiation from the tower.  I was very pleased to be able to move on the following day, and this has reinforced my view that I wouldn’t want to live close to one. 

 

 

 

Found together at the Richmond Nationals were these four Australians who have all built commercially available model aircraft engines.  From left is David Owen (who produced the build it yourself `Mate’ kit and several other engines), Gordon Burford (The Sabre, Taipan and Glo-Chief engines),  His son Peter Burford (Most recently the jewel like PB .033), and Steve Rothwell (Rothwell power scramble engine and the awesome vintage A team race engine, the R250)

 

While I was wandering about at the Nats I was pleased to meet up with a lot of Aussie modellers that had previously only been names and some that I already knew.  I was particularly pleased to be able to talk to some of the leading engine men in the country and see the fastest racers around.  It was an eye opener.  Among the nice chaps that I met were a couple that I was slightly concerned might want to harpoon me when we finally met.  But, thank heavens they didn’t, and in hindsight, (ethnically speaking), I suppose that the biggest risk of that sort of activity would have come from the stunt circles.

 

The vintage A racing was of course an attraction for me, having done a little myself in the past.  When I saw the Brian Hoggan / Grant Potter R250 powered `Dimpled Dumpling’ practicing in traffic I was stunned.  It set an amazing heat time of 3:11.6.  I put the stopwatch on it to satisfy my curiosity and lo and behold I got a time of 17.4 seconds.  Before you folks east of Eucla fall about giggling and saying things like “He must have missed a lap or something.” I’ll plead guilty.  I did miss a lap, but it was deliberate. 

 

As many of you know, we in WA time Vintage A models for nine laps rather that the ten that seems to be the standard over there.  The reason being that the time can be translated easily into actual model speed, in MPH for those of us stuck in the past, and for the interest of people like me who want to know that sort of thing.  So I was able (with a little mental arithmetic) to work out the speed of that swift Dumpling as about 103 Miles per Hour.  That is awfully fast.  While I am still beating this subject to death, I notice that the east coast guys seem to quote Classic B times for seven laps.  That is one half mile distance on 60 foot lines; as is the nine laps for vintage A.  Why don’t you quote Classic B over ten laps to match the A class models?

 

 

 

Paul Lagan’s (NZ) copy of the ready to fly, Yatsenko built, take apart stunter.  Powered by a Discovery Retro .60.  The fits and build quality of these models have to be seen to be believed.  They don’t just look well built, they also fly extremely well.  A similar aircraft flown by Masaru Hiki won the Nationals.

 

There is no denying that the Rothwell R250 is the standard against which any current vintage A engine must be compared, so it is a considerable tribute to the engine building skills of Stan Pilgrim that he managed to get to the final race with comparable speed, and the only non Rothwell engine.  He was using one of his own hand built Oliver Tigers, although he told me that he has also had an Enya .15D going as fast.  Most of the Enya .15Ds that I have seen in action, seemed to have an enormous appetite for crankshafts.  Speaking (as I now am) of crankshafts, Stan says that for the Olivers he uses the replacement crankshafts produced another talented engine builder, Andy Kerr. 

 

Andy showed me a few examples of these beautifully made parts that are manufactured from nitrided tool steel and are about 40% stronger than the originals.  They have not had a failure with them so far.  The Rothwell R250 uses the same material.  They are available from Andy to suit the MKIII and IV Olivers for $75 each.  They are the best you can get.  He has even sold some to Tim Gillot, who produces the very fast `Timmy Tigers’ in America.

I saw a few other bits of the Nats, including the world class F2C racers, where I found that most of the modellers seemed to be a bit younger than the nationals average.  At least several of them still had natural colour in their hair.  Not only that, but they had hair to have colour in.  The exception to this was Grant Potter, who, though I suspect might have both hair and colour in it if he chose, has decided that fashion (and possibly wind resistance) dictate the polished cranium look.  This seemed to fascinate that urbane gentleman Julius Reichart who mentioned that he has known Grant for a very long time.  In fact he could recall when the young fellow was just a lump under his mother’s pinafore (or words to that effect).  Idle conversation revealed to me that Julius might consider coming out of retirement, and his old friend and partner Hutton Oddy is enquiring about engines.  You never know, do you?

 

While I was in NSW, I was invited to visit Dennis Percival and see both his workshop and his enormous air force of stunters.  Work (the curse of the drinking class) had kept him away from the Nationals up to that point.  He was in the process of packing up all his modeling treasures for transport to a new (smaller) home.  It won’t be easy as his present shop has about the same area as a Myers basement.  I wish him luck.  The very thought of moving my giant tonnage of what some people refer to as crap sends shivers down my feeble spine, and reinforces my plan to only abandon my workshop if I am carried out feet first in a pine box.

 

Something that should interest any amateur fiddlers about with model engines is an interesting item from fellow modeler, engine builder and member of the `Motor Boys’, Ron Chernich.  Ron is selling a CD of Model Engine News.  It is a snapshot of the contents of his engine builders web site, with a few extra bits.  This is a mine of interesting stuff that I for one, want.  Although most of the stuff is available to you by logging on to his site at     http://staff.dstc.edu.au/chernich/ron/index.html     this CD will guarantee that you have all the information stashed away in case the unthinkable should happen and something deprives us of Ron’s monthly engine fix.  You can contact Ron via his website and the price to Aussie buyers is $60.

 

As of today, I have been writing the TARMAC notes for more than fifteen years.  But due to a change in editorial policy of the West Australian State newsletter `Windsock’, the TARMAC notes in their current form will no longer be printed in that publication.

 

 

 

From the TARMAC archives, here are 3 views of a 14.2 cc engine built here in WA in 1952 by Graham Ockleshaw for use in a tether hyroplane.  Some details and a drawing were published in Model Engineer magazine by the designer, a Mr. George Lines (AKA Meridian).    This engine has a lapped piston (no rings), rear rotary disc induction, and a twin ball race supported crankshaft.  It also has several unusual features. A composite piston made of cast iron with a rivetted in light alloy little end yoke and the glow plug screws into a contra piston that can be moved to vary the compression ratio.  That is controlled by the upper cooling fins which screw on to a threaded section at the top of the cylinder liner.  Graham produced his own castings for the crankcase and even made the glow plug himself because the commercially available ones (like KLG) didn’t seem to be able to stand up to the stresses of this engine.  The engine is very strong and since the method of launching  the boat which was fitted with a `surface’ propeller was to throw it across the top of the water (not always perfectly), it has been submerged below the waves several times while screaming at full revs without any damage at all.

 

Although aviators have their ups and downs, the only really hard thing about flying is the ground.

 

Charlie Stone                VH4706                      Email  cestone@bigpond.com