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Re: [TowerTalk] Anyone use a 120' qso king?

To: towertalk@contesting.com, towertalk@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Anyone use a 120' qso king?
From: Chuck Smallhouse <w7cs@theriver.com>
Date: Tue, 28 Jan 2014 21:49:29 -0700
List-post: <towertalk@contesting.com">mailto:towertalk@contesting.com>

Using wooden clothes pins reminds of many years ago, in the early years of Ultra Light Aircraft.

Living/working in the SF Bay Area at the time, one weekend I happened to visit an unused runway at the Milpitas Airport. Does it still exist along the south end of the bay, west of Highway 17 ?

That day there were several guys experimenting in trying to fly some of the early concepts of Ultra LIghts. These were really no more than hang gliders with "washing machine" motors and pusher props suspended from them. The "Pilot" would take the classic position of a hang glider rider, with his hands on the horizontal supports of the wing(s) to control his direction. He would then have buddy start up the engine and hand him the throttle cable, on whose end was a wooden clothes pin, that he inserted into his mouth. It was a "fail safe" arrangement. The harder that he bit down on the clothes pin, the faster the engine would run. If anything happened and the wooden clothes pin fell out of his mouth, the washing machine engine would shut down, at least to an idle !

To get this contraption off of the ground, he had to run as fast as he could, with additional help of two buddies pushing on each end of the wing. Lift off was in about 50 feet.

One of their later(?) designs could of been taken right out of the Wright Bros. design book. It had bi-plane fabric wings and a rear mounted pusher prop motor and even some wheels, the pilot was suspended in a harness type arrangement. I think that he had a more normal throttle control method, in lieu of the wooden clothes pin. With a little bit of extra outside help, it could get off of the ground using it's wheels instead of the pilots feet.

Their flight time was not very long and hardly more than a 100 feet in altitude. The scarry part is that they would circle right over the busy Oakland divided highway, as their "runway" was quite adjacent !

Chuck,  W7CS

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