Teesside Model Flying Club

Teesside Model Flying Club.

In the early 1960’s, the old airfield at Thornaby was regularly used at weekend by aeromodellers, the use being shared with dog walkers, learner drivers under instruction, and anybody who wanted space. The airfield then had a lot of Tarmac, and established aeromodelling clubs like the Novocastrians from Newcastle even held their annual Rush Trophy Gala there. These were the early days of radio control; free flight and control line were also popular. There had been a very successful control line club at Thornaby called the Pathfinders, but this ceased to exist sometime in the early 60’s.

At its peak, perhaps 20 or so model flyers would gather informally at the old ‘drome on Sundays, mainly radio flyers, such as it was in those days.

It might be hard to believe, but radio then was a flying one-at-a-time business. If this sounds like it was a severe limitation, it was not so at the time. Successful radio controlled flights were something to be pleased about, as each weekend would see plenty of unsuccessful flights. Simply to watch others making their flight whist waiting for your turn was a pleasure itself, as were listening to the inevitable excuses when something went wrong.  The chief cause for complaint when models crashed at Thornaby was “something in the woods over there!” Some individuals were convinced that the small patch of woodland held some mysterious airfield equipment that stopped their radios working. On more than one occasion it was the trees themselves that stopped my models from flying, quite literally.

The radios were of a type called “super-regen” and only one radio could be used at a time. Control was by rudder only, and the escapement [now replaced by a servo], used to control just the rudder, was powered by a twisted rubber band. To add to the problems of early radio control, it came in a strictly left, right, left, right sequence. You had to keep track of which way the model turned last time, to know what it would do next. If you were more upmarket, a ’compound’ escapement was used which gave left, right,  then neutral with a quick blip to control throttle using the earlier left, neutral, right, neutral type of actuator.

All you had on the transmitter was an on off switch and one button for control! We remained just a loose group of flyers, but radio control was taking over from other activities, and it was a growing hobby.

In time, a type of receiver called a “superhet” became available which allowed more than one radio to operate at a time, and then later still, single channel control evolved into multi channel using crystal controlled receivers. Early multi channel gear used the “tuned reed” system and was relatively expensive, a ready-built outfit costing perhaps a month’s wages. This resulted in some flyers building their own radio outfits from commercial kits or published plans.

Various other silly systems were developed in an attempt to turn a single channel outfit into one that would control both rudder and elevator, the most notorious being the “Galloping Ghost” system. This involved both the rudder and elevator constantly waggling about, the controls hopefully [but rarely] giving more of a waggle to the left than right, or more to down than up. The model, even on the rare occasions that the system could be made to work, progressed like it was in some kind of death throes. Needless to say that system did not survive.  

By around 1965, most aeromodellers at Thornaby were predominantly radio flyers with a mixture of single channel, some multi reed systems, and just one well-off guy who had some “Citizenship” proportional gear he had brought back from working in the USA. This was an analogue system, not digital as we know it today, with none of the digital precision to which we are now accustomed. I was one of the regular flyers with a range of models from little single channel diesel powered models, to an HP 61 powered aerobatic model flown on multi channel reed equipment. It seemed to some of us that we needed to be organised. Thornaby airfield was being built upon and its availability was to be short lived. We talked about forming a club; most agreed but there were some dissenters. Jim Osborne, later to become a stalwart of the club, thought we were ok as we were and didn’t see the need. As nobody else would act, I drew the short straw and gathered a list of names, Jim’s included. Our first meetings were held in the Settlement Community Centre, then as now on the 3^rd Tuesday in the month. The Settlement, long since demolished, at the time was on Newport Road Middlesbrough. The meeting included some people who had been members of other clubs in the area that were either on their last legs or had ceased functioning. Among these were some members of what had been a club at Hartlepool, and in the course of time they donated one of their club’s trophies, known as the Goodall Trophy to our new club. The committee at the start was myself as Chairman, Alan Pearson [now playing with toy trains] was secretary, and Don Marquis [now a martyr to golf], was the Treasurer. Tony Oliver soon became club secretary, and Tony, Don Marquis and myself remained in these positions for the first 10 years or so of the club. The committee decided that the club should be called the Teesside Model Flying Club, since we did not want to cover “solid” modelling [non-flying scale models were an activity, believe it or not], but we did wish to encompass all types of flying models. The club has of course for many years now come to cater only for radio controlled models, though this was not the original intention.

In those early years, we did not have proportional radio. We had reed equipment which gave control over the usual functions, but you had full up or full down, full left or full right, and throttle by nudging the control a bit more open or a bit more shut. Elevator trim was worked the same way as throttle.  But radio and modelling was growing in its variety and soon proportional gear arrived. This was initially expensive and all but the wealthy built theirs from kits by Sprengbrook, Remcon, Micron and such, or from details published in the modelling press. We had specialists like Barry Mason who would lend a hand sorting tricky radio problems, and the late Ron Harrison, an electronics engineer who redesigned the receiver of the popular “RCM Classic” design into a much smaller package.  For those who lacked the confidence to build their own equipment single handed, Alan Crandon, now no longer a club member, ran evening classes in building your own radio gear, at the Prissick school. This was how many people got their first start into radio control.

Radio control helicopters simply did not exist.

Club members were basically sport flyers, with only a few venturing to the fly-ins and competitions held at Topcliffe or further afield. A small group of us were game for anything and would have a go at mild pylon racing, some light hearted scale comps, and the odd aerobatic or fun fly competition.

Until Jim Osborne more-or-less invented radio controlled slope soaring, the only models flown on slopes were magnet steered free flight gliders. No such flying happened in the North and very little of it happened any where at all.  

Almost outside of organised club activities,  club members were flying gliders on the slopes, Jim Osborne showing us how to do it with his beginners design the “Wizard of Oz” [get it?] which eventually became a very popular published plan.

Monthly club meetings were held initially right through the year, but were quickly dropped in the summer months due to poor attendance, the flying field being more attractive that the meeting room. We had talks and demonstrations by local experts, and we had an annual auction of unwanted modelling goods. The auctions were great fun; as auctioneer I sold such items as ½ tins of dope for more than the new price of a full tin, and knackered engines for the price of good ones. Silly but good fun.

For a number of years we held a Christmas pie and pea supper at a local pub like the Miners Arms at Swainby, usually with a quiz; wives or girlfriends were included.

We sometimes became involved in supporting local activities, perhaps the most notable being at the World Scouting Jamboree at Wynyard Hall where we provided both static and flying displays.

Despite being basically sport flyers, a few of us had come from a free-flight competition background, and were enthused by a new competition called Thermal Soaring. This was basically a duration competition for radio controlled towline gliders flown on flat land, not the slopes. It had started in the south of England but was of great interest all over the country. Once it became popular, a new national group was created called BARCS, the British Association of Radio Controlled Soarers. For competition purposes the country was divided up into areas, and a competition league was organised in each area. At its peak, our club had 14 club members regularly competing in BARCS league events, and for many years our club organised one of the annual BARCS league events. Our members did well both in the area league but also nationally. Almost every other weekend in the summer, groups of us would be driving a round trip of anything up to 400 miles to compete in the competitions.

Eventually after a highly active period of more than 20 years, the popularity of thermal soaring waned, mainly due to the models becoming technically more complex such that home built models were uncompetitive, and people lost interest. BARCS competitions are still around, a

couple of dozen entrants being a good turnout. Bill Haley and his then young son Stephen were keen and very successful competitors, and have since gone on to great things. Stephen has been on the British F3B glider team many times and has flown for the country with great success all over the world. Despite Steven being the star, in 2007 Bill himself made it onto the British team. Team Haley are possibly the most successful competitors to come from this club.

Over a period of a dozen years or so, our club’s annual

league event was attended by competitors from all over the country. Our own league event always had a full entry of 120 flyers, with more on a reserve list. Our first competition was held at Jim Breckon’s field, but this was too small and subsequent competitions were held at the Prissick School base.
 

Memories from the early days of the club must include the late Alan Codling, who, having seen Dieter Schluter demonstrate the first ever successful radio controlled helicopter, decided to make his own. Alan cobbled-up his copy of the Schluter design, using the gearbox from a dead Black and Decker drill as the main gearbox, and a Merco 61 as the power plant! The chopper did hover successfully, until one of the fly-weights detached itself and punched a neat airfoil shaped dent in his metal garage door. I have mistrusted helicopters ever since. Then we had Brian Hewitson who left his transmitter on the tarmac at Thornaby, and proceeded to back his car over it. And even dafter, was the slope flyer who ran at the slope with transmitter in one hand and model in the other, and succeeded in chucking the tx into the air whist keeping the model firmly in hand. We had some witty folk too. There is no need to mention his name, but we had one member who was determined to learn how to fly with ailerons, and was equally determined that he would learn on a model that had won the world aerobatics champs called the Taurus. He wrote these off so readily that he actually made a set of templates so that he could replace models more easily as he kept writing them off. As it happens, when the lad came under stress, he developed a slight stammer. The club wit commented “the trouble with **** is, he stammers with his hands as well!”

Lastly, how about the games the younger members used to play. Simply get your slope soarer to a decent height, put your tranny on the deck, turn your back to the model, and just see how long before you chickened out and picked the tx up again! No doubt the club safety officer would have something to say about that these days.

Ken Croft