Saturday, January 10, 2009

Free Flight Postals

Postal events allow competition without the formality of a meet. Each modeller sends in scores by a certain deadline, usually a series of times. Many are run on an honour basis - and I certainly don't know anyone who'd cheat by sending in false times - what's the point? In any case, weather conditions are not the same for everyone. So in my view, postals should not be thought of as "real" competitions.

Click here for a super list of some free flight postals. I was sad to see that the 2008 Tiny Gliders Postal had few entries because it is one of my favourites. The plus side is that Alexandre Cruz did a great job of keeping it going and there is good reason to anticipate that it will be bigger and better in 2009! If I find out the new website for it, I'll post it here.

Finally, how on earth did this patent get granted by the US Patent Office in 1975? There's no way it was novel or inventive at that time!

3 comments:

lixo said...

Hi Chuck,
Alezandre Cruz is a participating member of www.e-voo.com/forum, and he won last P-30 contest in "Nacional Argentino 2008".
Regards and take a look at my blog to.

Chuck Glider said...

Thanks Eduardo. I'm so happy that you took the time to comment. Your blog is great with superb pictures! Do pass on my regards to Alexandre and let's all support the postals!

Donald Qualls said...

I suspect the real innovation with that model design was the down elevator tab. What that ought to do is reduce the effective incidence as speed increases, allowing the model to launch as if it were 0-0, then glide with the high level of static stability you'd expect from the actual incidence built in.

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