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Electric Round The Pole


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Greetings flyers all - from a lapsed aeromodeller since 1970 ..... (doing trains now .....)

WHO WANTS A VINTAGE BARGAIN ? Talk of electric RTP - I'm putting on eBay this weekend a Harry Butler "starter" kit, complete and unstarted. Bought it in the early 1970s but then got married and never got around to doing it.

All this reminds me of my first RTP experience - in the school gym. We built a thing a bit like a balsa chuck glider, with a Jetex 50 on it. Flew beautifully round our home-bodged pole until the fuel pellet ran out, and it landed perfectly. But it had totally filled the gym with pungent white smoke so we hurriedly closed down and went home. It never did get resurrected.

Found an RCME 25-year jubilee edition amongst my souvenirs - anyone want it ? Did have a copy of edition no.1 but sold that several years ago.

Unless it gets censored - my email address for all enquiries is ... [email protected] ...

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  • 7 months later...

Hi all just found you whilst looking for RTP info. Have volunteered to help local cadet force resurrect their Ballards RTP kit......Been an aeromodeller for 60 years but never flew RTP.....so I need all the helpI can get . reading all the posts on here is quite time consuming

It is the SUDBURY. Suffolk cadet force so if there is any body on here anywhere near here please give me a shout.

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  • 3 months later...

Ah! RTP!.

Several school friends and I organised combat events at the MEE at Wembley Conference Centre during the mid seventies. We were sponsored by Phil Greeno, of pylon racing fame, so all our planes were scaled down copies of his "Manneater" design. Later we produced our own designs.

Harry Butler also chipped in with a ton of motors and props when he saw how interested the spectators were.

My brother also flew a speed plane. Fully asymmetric with a dolly for take off. Clocked at 64 mph (IIRC). On 15 foot lines that's very fast!

Edited By CTB on 05/07/2018 20:24:30

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I have posted here before but you can go a long way with RTP!

If you really want to you can even go electric RTP control line but making a centre pole that conducts electricity and moves the lines differentially needs a bit thought.

Why bother? Well it allows planes to be flown that would be rather too delicate to be flown any other way.

Like this true scale tissue covered 18" span Fokker Triplane built in 1968.

SC-Triplane-1d.jpg

It weighs 2.25 oz (64 g), uses a geared "slot car" motor and for ultimate realism the 9 cylinder Oberrursel rotary actually goes round with the prop!

My final RTP control line plane (1970) a 22" span Martin baker MB5.

MB5 front

All sheet stressed skin construction in 1/32 balsa with a geared slot car motor for each each prop. It weighs 4.5 oz (127 g).

Flies well on quite short lines but you really do need 'control line' control to stand any chance of keeping all those carved balsa blades clear of the ground on landing. wink 2.

p.s. Described in the present tense as I still have them!

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  • 4 years later...

Just to re-kindle this old thread ......

 

I was looking through some old Aeromodellers online this morning and I came across a report of the ME Exhibition of 1975 and a photo of my mate and his little Pitts S2 I mentioned previously (five years ago, blimey!).  

 

HB was so impressed with it, as you know, he kitted a Pitts shortly after although IIRC he enlarged it slightly and might even have plumped for the S1 (I can't remember now) when he did so.   

 

Happy days as they say!

 

1617847466_AeromodellerMarch75AnyBaldwin.thumb.JPG.ac27ce093a2b2735d1ade47067475a7b.JPG

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