Free Flight Sport
By Don DeLoach | ddeloach@comcast.net
As seen in the August 2023 issue of Model Aviation.
A typical DT arrangement on a FF Hand-Launch Glider (HLG). The tailboom pops up when the viscous timer on the nose releases a hold-down line.
IN THE EARLY DAYS of Free Flight (FF), before approximately 1925, models were crude and inefficient. Few could fly more than a few seconds to only nearly a minute, and very few got high enough to worry about thermal air currents.
By the 1930s, balsa replaced hardwoods and bamboo as the primary construction materials, making…