R/C Aerotowing, One Man’s Quest
By Jim Dolly
My hope is that the following story will encourage others to pick up the challenge of starting an aero towing group within their own club. Len Buffinton and Dave Darr (the founders of rcAerotowing.com) have asked me to serve as the Director of First Flight. In this role, if I can be of any help or assistance please feel free to contact me. My email address is: jim@rcaerotowing.com.
Growing up under the traffic pattern of two airports and having inherited the airplane gene from my father, I guess it was inevitable that my life would somehow revolve around flying. While my vocation took me another direction, my avocation would be all things aviation.
The Cumberland Soaring Group (a full-scale soaring club based at Cumberland Municipal Airport near Cumberland, MD) had a PA-18 Super Cub tow plane and a Schweizer SGS 2-33 sailplane that it used for flight instruction. The pair were a common sight in the sky over my house and I never failed to look up and watch as they climbed for altitude. Hearing the tow plane make its dive back to drop the tow line was another thrill I seldom missed.
At age five, I got my first model airplane. It was a simple solid wood model with a very low parts count; still my parents decided that they should help me build it. That was the last time I let that happen. Seven years later, and after exhausting the plastic model kits available at the local 5&10 cent store, I wanted to fly! I convinced my mom to let me have her Green Stamp collection and after several hours of pasting, I had enough books filled to get a U/C model Bell P-38 Airacobra with a WenMac 0.049 glow engine.
Three years later, my father let me start to take flying lessons. Just about the time I soloed full-scale, I also got my first R/C airplane, a Top Flite Schoolmaster with a Hallco Galloping Ghost radio system. Richard Roy “Dick” Miller was my R/C flight instructor. Dick was also a PhD statistical research chemist and worked at the local ballistics laboratory. Image that, a teenage kid with an honest to goodness “rocket scientist” for a mentor!
Dick was also a full-scale airplane and sailplane pilot and he introduced me to R/C aero towing. It was about 1970 when he came to the field with this giant R/C airplane called a Senior Telemaster. There were several local club members that were soaring enthusiasts and they set about doing R/C aero towing with the Sr. Telemaster tug pulling a variety of the polyhedral winged standard class rudder/elevator sailplanes of the day. I often got to run along with the sailplane steadying a wingtip while it got up to flying speed.
Dick Miller, Dave Gish, and Bob Riggs became very proficient at aero towing by the time I went off to college two years later. Eight years later, I graduated and came back to Cumberland. Dick and Dave had since moved away and Bob was looking for a tow pilot. I bought a second-hand Sr. Telemaster, installed a home made tow release, and got my first taste of R/C aero towing. Unfortunately, Bob became ill shortly afterward and no one else cared to take up the task.
Fast forward another fifteen years and Dick came back to Cumberland for a visit. We went to the field and did some flying and he proceeded to tell me about life in California and the scale R/C aero towing that he had become involved with. Upon his return to his home in California, he sent me some video of his flying friends and the amazing scale planes they were flying. I knew right then, that someway, somehow, sometime; I would revisit R/C aero towing.
In 1992, I was able to buy the forty-six acre mountain top property where the Cumberland Soar for Fun had been held annually since 1967. There were only a couple local R/C pilots that cared to do any soaring and then mostly just in the fall around the time of the Soar for Fun. Flying by yourself is just not as enjoyable as when you have at least a small group, so I spent most of my R/C flying time at the local power club located on a flat field in the valley. Most of my soaring was now with electric launch sailplanes.
The years rolled by and in 2006, I decided to build a new Telemaster 40 tow plane. I had no one to tow, but somehow it seemed like a good idea. The Telemaster was built as an electric powered aircraft and flew one season as an electric. The next season I was disheartened to discover that my very expensive 4-cell LiPo batteries had expired! The Telemaster 40 would sit out the next season. Just before the 2009 Soar for Fun, I decided to convert the Telemaster 40 to glow power and use the NIB O.S. FS-52 Surpass 4-stroke engine that had been sitting on a shelf collecting dust for nearly ten years. The next project would be to try and find someone to tow at the Soar for Fun.
One of our local Club members, Brian Padovini, had invited two of his DLG friends to come to the SFF. Kyle and Marcus each brought Multiplex Easy Gliders with them in addition to their DLG’s. They had installed the optional Multiplex tow release in the nose of their Easy Gliders just in case they got the chance to try aero towing! Well, Brian literally “hooked” me up with Kyle and Marcus and we proceeded to have an absolute blast aero towing. YES! Finally! I just knew it could be done and done well given the right planes and pilots.
At the start of the 2010 flying season, I bought a second-hand Easy Glider Pro from Brian that he got in a trade for one of the DLG wings he builds. Brian has become a first class builder, pilot, and a force to be reckoned with, in the DLG world, but that is another story. Once again I was faced with the problem of the local pilots not being all that interested in aero towing; that is, until I hooked up the Easy Glider Pro behind my Telemaster 40 and, with engine running, handed the transmitter to my friend Dave Darr and said, “Here, fly this!”
As they say, the rest is now history…Dave (a helicopter guy) was hooked! This same process played out over the next few weeks and now no less than eight local club members have become enthusiastic R/C aero towing addicts!
In many ways, aero towing has transformed our local club. Instead of one guy flying while the rest sit around talking and waiting a turn, aero towing is an activity that encourages multiple planes to be flown at the same time. The necessary coordination makes it all run smooth much like square dancing according to the description some have chosen. We now have multiple tow planes and many an evening has been spent aero towing with two tow planes running full-time to keep six to eight sailplanes in the circuit.
After all of these many years, I feel like I have finally been able to pick up the mantel of my friend Dick Miller. The foundation had been there for a long time and now the construction has started in earnest. Instead of being seen as a stunt done at great risk and then put aside, aero towing has now become an everyday activity at our flying field. The participants are diverse in age, experience, and types of aircraft flown. The numbers of sailplanes and tow planes continues to grow, and best of all, the enthusiasm continues to grow.
