Aerotow - Maui Style
Aloha and welcome to the exciting world of aerotow and large-scale soaring. It's cool, it's fun and it's new to Maui skies. Ted Willett was the first person from MISO to get involved with aerotowing and today is it's biggest proponent.
Ted's story and the start of aerotowing on Maui began with Ted's 4-meter ASH-26 from Multiplex. A beautiful airplane, the ASH took First Place in Modern Scale at SoarUtah for Ted in September of 2000. It was a proud day for MISO. Then in 2001, Ted decided that "bigger is better" and after much research, he bought a gorgeous DG-1000 with all the bells-and-whistles from EMS models in Germany. So far, he's taken the plane to the Alpine Soaring Festival in Oregon and to the Yakima Fun-Fly in Washington. Unfortunately, a loose tailplane led to the demise of the ASH in Oregon. Today, the DG is Ted's true love and it is quite an airplane.
The radio in the DG is a JR 10-SX and with all the gadgets in the new plane, it gets pushed nearly to it's limits. In addition to the standard ailerons, flaps, airbrakes, rudder, elevator and tow-release, the new DG has the optional extended wing-tips with winglets, water-ballast and retractable landing gear with brakes. All told, there are 11 servos, two 5-cell, 2000 miliamp-hour batteries and a servo-management (signal booster) system in the airplane. The electrical system looks like a nightmare with wires seeminlgy everywhere.
The airplane itself is a thing of beauty. Very graceful lines with four-taper wings that sweep forward at the root then curve back at the tips. The cockpit has been detailed with guages and pilots, Barby up front with Ken in the back seat. The individual canopies open and the cockpits are removable so allow access to the electronics. A very sweet set-up.
The plane weighs about 25 pounds without ballast but the 5.33 meter wing-span makes it a very graceful airplane in flight. Aerobatics are very scale-like and rolls and loops are very smooth. Ted says the plane is a dream to fly and insists it takes almost no effort to control it in the air. Still, regardless of how well it can fly, it is big and it takes a big plane to get it into the air. That's where the Piper Cub tow-plane comes into play.
The only tow-plane currently flying on Maui is a 1/4 scale Piper J-3 Cub which belongs to Tim Moniz of Island Hobbies. The kit is from Hanger-9 and was built by Ted specifically so he would have someone to tow his DG aloft. The kit calls for a gasoline engine in the Zenoa G-23 class but the requirements of towing a 25 pound glider caused Tim and Ted to opt for the huge Zenoa G-62. Although the take off roll is very scale-like, this Cub can hang from it's propeller and climb vertically!
The controls in the tow-plane are much less demanding of the radio than the glider. Only five channels and seven servos are required. The extra channel is the tow-line release and the two extra servos are the result of using two servos on the aileron two on the elevators. The radio for the tow-plane is a JR 10-SX. The only addition to the basic JR package is a JR peizo-gyro on the rudder channel which greatly eases the take-off roll of this tail-dragger.
At the controls of the tow-plane is a veteran pilot, both in R/C and full-scale. Dave Cowan, who can often be found flying his ultralight aircraft, is a retired Hawaiian Airlines pilot. Dave's interest in flying has placed him at both ends of full-scale aerotowing. He's flown full-scale gliders being aerotowed and he's flown full-scale tow planes. This give him a lot of insight into R/C aerotowing.
Anyone interested in scale sailplanes or aerotowing should contact Ted Willett, Dave Cowan or Tim Moniz. People who may not particularly be interested in getting into large scale-sailplanes might enjoy aerotowing, even if only as a spectator. It's an awesome thing to see. Also see our photo album for aerotow photos.
