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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