I want to try Combat.

I've always wanted to try combat, but the stuff they do nowadays doesn't seem like combat to me. I'd like to see something like the old slow combat.

The Vintage Mark

Rusty, if your interested in trying it, one of Phil's speed limit .25's are the way to go. 1/2A isn't the way to try it. Seeing that you already have it makes it a worthwhile attempt. The problem is engine runs using Cox equipment. Getting two to run identical is a task in itself and having both start at the same time is another feat. This is where you pour fuel all over that Cox engine and set it a blaze.  They could run flawlessly for you all year long until you try and do this. To achieve proper line tension, small length lines are required. This has the  planes  going too fast and they really are twitchy. It becomes very easy to move back into 1/2A. The main goal is flying your opponent in the same circle without incident. Just follow through some figure 8's initially and inverted. No need to go full blown combat, just following. Never maneuver if you can't see your opponent at least until you get about 20 matches under your belt. Keeping it inexpensive is a must. Using Power Pro Braid lines keeps you in the game without buying a new set of lines every match. It's not uncommon to get into line wraps initially. Being aware of what you did or your opponent is the key. Have you ever seen one of those pictures that your required to stare at and then all the lines come together and a image appears within the middle? That's exactly how you have to fly combat. Your looking at your opponents plane and not your own.

Have you ever flown with another person in the circle? That in itself is a task initially. I wrecked more planes in trying just to fly level. You have to learn evasive maneuvers without putting your plane or your opponent in danger. The simplest maneuver is the inside loop. When two planes aren't setup for the same speed, this becomes even more problematic as the fast one really takes over. A quick inside loop can buy several seconds between you and the other.

Many decide that they will try a old plane which is slow like a Ringmaster. This is probably the worst way to give it a go. The older planes fly terribly due to their design and thin wings, they slide rather than fly through a maneuver. The needed airspace to accommodate the older slugs is rarely compensated for resulting in a mid air. You don't need a plane that is quick maneuvering either. This can equally put you in danger. You need a plane that is slightly nose heavy which flies without you looking at the plane.

You should just be able to fly your plane with your head 90 deg to the side and do loops eyes off. I don't mean quick 4' radius loops. Adrenaline takes over and one typically puts more input into flying the plane than if they're in a relaxed state. This means you generally want slower controls and a small handle so that you don't overcontrol the plane. Flying .25 size combat wings will also greatly improve your stunt skills. Ken

My Dad and I with some others use to fly some combat with Black Hawk model , hollow logs and stuntman 23 with Bee engines , this was 40+ yrs. ago and had a blast doing it I was also a pit man at 11-12 yrs. old . Loops and wing overs were common as Ken said running two the same is hard to do but the chase is loads of fun !! man the good old days at least stay with the same power plant for both to make it more even steven and the best controller wins with cutting streamers

hey ken..
i see you are in P.A. is there any combat/stunt stuff going on locally?
i'ed love to bring my son just as spectators.

Roger we have several combat  contests through the year. The one at Brodak's in Carmichaels, Pa this past week was one of them. I wasn't able to attend unfortunately and I know we were missed. Middlesex New Jersey has 2 contests a year, one in March and one in Sept. Hersey, PA also has 2 contests, one in May and one in Sept. The last contest of the season is the Philly Fliers contest in the last week of Oct. New Jersey also has one in the 1st week of Oct at the Red Lion Airport Vincentown, New Jersey. We also have a few non sanctioned contests. I like going to Rusty's neck of the woods and fly at Huntersville, NC. I leave my house at 3 am and arrive at the hotel at noon, unload, eat and the contest begins. Lots to see there. Ken

Thanks for all the info ken. Just looking for day trips as spectators. I checked the cans site and found that the garden state circle burners have a stunt event this Sunday. The weather is questionable at the moment but hopefully clears. Hope to head up and check it out.

Welcome to the Dark Side. I think the Force will be strong with you.

I wondered how my Impulse post would be received. Thanks for the replies. I was reading Kim's post about an upcoming Sig 1/2A event and started to include it in my reply until I saw it didn't mention Combat. But the seed was planted, so I cut this part of the text and started a new thread here.

Yes,it's all true, I do want to try something new. I was inspired at Joe Nall by a Dad and his two young boys trying to fly a couple of little rib-winged planes with Cox parts-box engines.  And yes, they were having All the troubles Ken warns of. The worst of which was the insistence of one of them to crank backwards every time. It was a comedy of misfires, and then blood when Dad got into a prop. They were having fun and that's what lit my interest. I'm told the same three were pictured in Stunt News last year in a Joe Nall article.

I'll follow through with the little ones just to play with since the project is already started. I'm still at the beach, and I suppose Wayne, Will, and Watt are all home from Brodak by now. I'll catch up on all my CEF topics next week. Meanwhile I'll try to refrain from stARTING TOO MANY more daydream induced topics Lol.
Rusty

EDIT: Hi Mike, you snuck one in while I was writing. Yes Master, the Force.

If anyone can make it to the Bladder Grabber August 7-9 at Harvey Field, Snohomish, Wash., I promise you will have a great time. I hope to see Fred there again this year. My oldest son is competing in FAST this year.
Here's a link to the flyer.
http://www.flyinglines.org/15.bg.flyer.pdf

High Preformance 1/2A on Friday and two days of Fast Nelson .36 combat Saturday and Sunday.

I built a couple Man-Wen coroplast trainers with black widows that my boys used as combat trainers. They really took a beating, I'd sit on the grass and hand lauch one after another. They would work well on .049 TD's and bladders.

I highly recommend aluminum carb bodies for TD 1/2A combat. When you stuff them in, you don't run the risk of losing your venturi and needle valve assembly. Not to mention cracking the POS plastic one.

Two Lil Bats and their new engines



Two high performance reed valve Cox .049s with big venturi backplates, diesel cranks, Tee Dee P/C sets with SPI cylinders, and Merlin heads w/Norvel plugs. They should scat. They need breaking in first. I’m still getting them put together with anti-reverse starters. They will get party balloon bubble-less tanks.

The engine on the right is a Black Lynx Ron gave me after winning it in the Reed Speed II contest. It's a badass right out of the box with all of the above except the hex drive plate for the cam starter. I'm building another one to match it exactly, it has the garnet colored crankcase from a Fit90 package of airmail a couple of years ago. It's TD P/C will be from the pair I bought from Bernie with my Reed Speed I winnings. The only difference is I don't have a Diesel crank for it. That might give it a slight edge, but you just can't tell with these

Wayne's Bat is an ounce and half lighter. Mine is all slathered with paint and an epoxy and a fiberglass firewall with blind nuts. I might strip the bottom side and see if I can drop some weight. Also have to make two 35’ line sets, so will have to get some Spectra for those.

We’ll probably look pretty funny out there till we get the hang of flying together. I'm bucking just about all of Ken's advice, sorry ol buddy. But It's what I already had and we thought it would be fun if not comical to try. I'll be playing with the Gladiator in the mean time too. I bet I could get some pretty good laughs if I walked onto the field with these at the Criterium in October.
Rusty

those look like a handful! should bee fun.
i hope you guys can keep them in the air and in one piece for a couple runs on video...

Rusty , ya'll going to have stooges or pit men ? yes video will bee nice and just maybe a good laugh or two , I can see two damn good flyers out there having a blast

We can hand launch the first one and stooge launch the second one. I don't expect we'll bust them up too bad. The worst I see happening is ripping an engine off. I'll make a strong firewall on Wayne's Lil Yeller one like my Blue Spangle has. I have colored gift stuffing tissue for streamers. It's really strong compared to crepe paper streamers, and oil doesn't weaken it.

We're planning to fly Sunday, so I'll try to be ready by then. My Nobler is on the table too, so I hope I can try it out. The old 4 oz. tank from the Oreo should work nicely in it for the .35fp.
Rusty

It's been my experience that the KB cranks actually slow things down a little. It's heavier than the standard crank.

Cribbs74 wrote:It's been my experience that the KB cranks actually slow things down a little. It's heavier than the standard crank.

Yeah, that's what I thought too. It might take the punishment of Combat style crashes better though. I'm thinking mostly of the kind of break where the splines crack off, but with long screws it's probably not an issue. Otoh, I've read that the KB material is actually softer to help it flex more, absorbing the high impact of diesel combustion. I'm not so sure that's a no brainer. Our Scandinavian friends Surfer Kris and the Machinist Chris(twin cyl. Coxes) would be good for an explanation. Kris' field is physics.
Rusty

All I was saying is the bee crank will run a tiny bit quicker. Just fly over grass.

Cribbs74 wrote:All I was saying is the bee crank will run a tiny bit quicker. Just fly over grass.

Right, I knew what you meant, I think so too, tach race tests have proved it. I just embellished my agreement wondering about other aspects of Diesel cranks. Sometimes I wonder "out loud."
Rusty

The Bee crank did run faster. I outfitted them with fuel balloons yesterday morning and Wayne and I gave them each a couple of break-in runs. I used the yellow safety-tip 5x3 props Bernie used to give away with orders. The Black Lynx was well behaved and needled easily, hitting peak at about 5 turns on the needle. I mention that because PlaidHatter was recently concerned with needle settings, and this is an example of an unusual, but not rare setting. It would bounce off of 16k, which isn't much for an all out Hi Perf Cox, but I recall low numbers on the yeller props before. It'll get faster as it breaks in. That's a fully built engine and should be as strong as the big name Hi Perf Coxes, like the Killer Bee and Venom.

The one I assembled with new parts-drawer innards matches it except, as mentioned, it has a regular crank. Of course I found my new diesel crank after it was all bolted up It lit off like a screaming banshee, but the needle was all over the place and it wouldn't stay lit on its own. I thought I'd found an air leak in the plumbing, but it still wandered off and shut down. On the next run I needled it while squeezing the balloon and could keep it going for the full tank by changing my grip as it wandered. It runs really fast, but I didn't get a tach on it. And I overheated the crap out of it on the second run. I was using Sig 35, and now wish I had used the Glowplugboy 35 with the 18/2 oil.

We took the yellow Bat over to the church yard and gave it a rip. It was really windy and the lines had quite a bow but Wayne wrung it out pretty good. It needs some adjustments and maybe some tail weight, but we hope to fly them both tomorrow at our club meeting. I'll take a closer look at the "Red Lynx" tonight and see if I can get it running right.

Our new member, Larry was curious about the balloon bladders I used. They are 9" party balloons, and I put a perforated plastic straw through the length of it and a piece of large fuel tube feeding out. Fold the balloon back over itself, wrap that around tightly and zip-tie it. In the picture, I have a piece of silicon tube on the tail end of the pickup tube. Don't do that, it comes right off. Force a half inch or more of the  straw into the silicon fuel line.
There is a lot of plastic swarf left after drilling the pickup tube, so after cleaning as much as possible, use a filter before it gets to the engine.
Here is a pic of my Bubbleless non-pressurized bladder and the planes. It's bubbleless because if you pull out all the air before filling, it cannot foam or suck air during wild maneuvers.

Thanks Rusty for the follow up. I bought small 5" ballons and experimented with assembly.... waaayyy too small. I did see 9" ... I'll grab those tomorrow. I hope this works with the SureStart. I modlfied the firewall of the Bat to accept it .. so I'm moving forward at least

larrys4227 wrote:Thanks Rusty for the follow up. I bought small 5" ballons and experimented with assembly.... waaayyy too small. I did see 9" ... I'll grab those tomorrow. I hope this works with the SureStart. I modlfied the firewall of the Bat to accept it .. so I'm moving forward at least

Yeah, it'll work fine with a surestart. You don't need the choke tube because all you have to do to get fuel initially to the engine is to give the balloon a little squeeze and fuel flows right into it. You'll see it drip out of the back of the engine. In fact I flood it about half the time, so I just raise the nose a bit while I flip and burn off the flood and then it cranks right up. But the tunnel you probably made will give the intake plenty of air. I stacked mine on a couple of washers for an air gap.

I also added an extra 1/8" ply plate with medium fiberglass and epoxy to strengthen the firewall and give more bite for the screws. It also helps balance as it may need a bit of extra weight up front. The balance points in the instructions are conservative. Ours are balances a full inch behind the LE and we're thinking of adding even more tail weight. Combat planes do their job better tail heavy. It's all about quick turning rather than lazy level flight.

To hold the bladder in place, I bored a small hole near the side of the center strip that a small zip tie can be fed through from underneath, around the neck of the bladder and back through the hole and secured. When it's upside down, it still flops around more than I want , so I may tie it down in a similar way near the rear. Most people use a film canister or something to contain it, but that's so bulky and aerodynamically ugly, I never worry about it.

You could do what I use with pressure bladders and contain it like this picture. It's hard to see but there's a black string tying the back end down. BTW, if you're not familiar with pressure bladders, that 1-1/2" latex tube will hold enough fuel for a 15 minute flight. That Satan is still one of my favorite flyers.
Rusty

Thanks for the tips Rusty. I left th choke tube on and made a couple of rails to mount to. Still to early in my membership to post pics ... I will when it lets me.

Hope to fly the Satan with GoldenBee tomorrow morning .... lots of rain around tho. Crossing fingers ....

Thanks again

That is one wicked looking wing rusty!