Christchurch and District Model Flying Club
 

Now you see, it now you don't

I saw an article in a magazine which I meant to cut out but did not. I am not sure if it was a hoax or a real experiment. It said that the Japanese were going to make a few thousand paper aeroplanes and drop them from the Space Station which is going around the earth. The idea was to see where they would land on the earth.

If it was true, it makes me wonder what would happen to them. We know that a solid object would eventually slow down and get burned up in the earth's atmosphere. But would a light object do that if it were to be pushed out of the space ship? Would it not go for ever along the direction which it was pushed or would the gravitational pull of the earth or the sun or the moon eventually draw it towards them? If they were given a push earthwards I suppose they would meet the atmosphere at the same speed as the space station is going around the earth. So I guess they would burn up because of the speed. Or they may be so light that they could dip in and out of the atmosphere. I suppose if they were dropped, if that is the right word, from a stationary satellite like those used for navigation there would not be the speeds of entry going around the world, only that from the gravitational pull. So if you find a probably charred paper aeroplane with Japanese writing on it you will know were it has come from.

So to the title. I was flying at Beaulieu in February. The weather was overcast and the cloud base low. How low I cannot say because I am no good at judging height. It gave us enough space to fly so long as we did not go very high. I was buzzing around at a decent height, flying my Gladiator. A marvellous plane. If you want to do aerobatics it will cooperate. If it is windy or calm, it will cope with all those conditions. I do note that if I have had a layoff of a few weeks it cannot remember what to do, but apart from that it flies well. I was, so I thought well under the cloud base when the plane lifted up, obviously in a thermal, and disappeared into the cloud.

Recently we had a couple of weeks in Malta and flew back into Bournemouth Airport through cloud. The plane bumped about quite a lot. So if a hundred ton Plane can be thrown about what would happen to my model. Being a resourceful sort of bloke, I thought, if I leave it flat it will go up for ever. So I put the sticks into the comers and put it into a spin, and waited. After a count of about 5 seconds out it came spinning slowly earthwards. I stopped the spin, and flew away.

It would have been interesting to have let it go up into the cloud and see where it came out but I dare not, in case I lost the plane or it came down in the wrong place. For my Birthday, my Son, who is not a flyer, bought me a second hand Stryker which he found in a Shop. It is an electric foam copy of an American Fighter and is supposed to go 80 M.P H. If either I or the plane survive to tell the tale I will relate it in the next issue.

Brian Wiseman

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