2018 FAI F1D World Indoor Free Flight Championship at West Baden 

The real question of mastery to uncover is WHY, and WHAT made may of 1999 so special. I'll never research this. The mystery is better.

@@Personalinfo404 "Some things you can't find out; but you will never know you can't by guessing and supposing; no, you have to be patient and go on experimenting until you find out that you can't find out. And it is delightful to have it that way, it makes the world so interesting. If there wasn't anything to find out, it would be dull. Even trying to find out and not finding out is just as interesting as trying to find out and finding out, and I don't know but more so." Mark Twain.

@@Personalinfo404 industries in the 90s didn’t have to mass produce items like they do today. If you speed the production of something and allow for hundreds of it to be made at the same time the quality will be sub par

@@imtrxshy6977 Your words are founded in ideology and coloured by nostalgia. Industries in the 90s had to mass produce just like always, because more production means more sales means more profit, which is good for business. Speeding or scaling up production does not inherently mean a reduction in quality either.

Because in June 1999 a fire broke out in the Number 4 Rubber Band Factory in the jungles of Malaysia. This particular factory specialised in harvesting rubber bands found in the droppings of civets. The entire stockpile of predigested civet poo rubber was lost.

The only wise comment in here.

I suspect they do

Or, and bear with me here, perhaps everything between that event and this comment has all beeb a dream, all occurring in the mere seconds that it takes your school aged self to wake up. Or, maybe it wasn't... What do I know... 😂

Funny. I remember seeing these airplanes on TV as kid in the 80's on I think it was NOVA. After watching the program I tried building one out of saran wrap and parts from a balsa wood plane. Needles to say it didn't work. 30+ years searching for these planes when they came to mind and I finally found them today. The internet is truly a blessing. I didn't have it when I was a kid so finding these planes was nearly impossible when you never knew what they were called. I'm just as amazed today as I was when I was kid watching these planes fly.

Same,because it so slow and it's flying

This is a most interesting story.

Even though we know they’re real they’re still a dream. Been into flying model aircraft for a long time and always wanted to build one but they’re so delicate and I’m so…nervous building that kind of stuff I’d probably drive myself insane constantly breaking bits of frame.

No te

it IS kinda gracefull and calming :)

me too :)

Same

Same

@dan phillpotts what did you just type

Yet you still can't recall your real name!

@@MichaelKingsfordGray I do remember that whenever there was a local microfilm contest, these were held at the local high school gym with the bleachers retracted; the same setup used when grade school kids flew their "AMA Cub Delta Dart" planes in competition. (I even remember coming in 4th place once, and winning a Guillows Hawker Hurricane kit that was a bit too advanced for me at the time.) But when I built and flew my Cub in 1968, anyone younger than 15 wasn't allowed on the gym floor when the adults flew their microfilms. We were told that a sneeze could blow them apart, and after seeing this, I can believe it!

I build a ship in woodwork. It was basically a rectangle of wood with bits cut out it. Mind you, it floated like a council brick. So technically, it looked like a ship 👁👄👁

@Jolly Green The only Comet model I ever built was the Mitsubishi Zero. If memory serves, it used a cardboard tube kind of like those used for a model rocket body as the "spine" that held the rubber band with the balsa formers glued onto it to form the fuselage. I was in Eighth Grade at the time, and thought that was a pretty neat idea. My older cousin who was in high school snarked that it was a 'good idea' if you like model plains that weighed twice as much as they should; but he DID give me some credit for taking on a kit that was not die cut. (Needless to say he built the Comet P-38 and motorized it . . . .)

idk why this is so fking funny to me 😭😭😭

For Penny Plane, that 3 gram weight (when I flew these, it was 3.1, the weight of a US penny before they switched to zinc) was a *minimum* -- that is, the model had to weigh at least that much. Like pretty much all competition classes, what started as a "beginner's" class (with the minimum weight and maximum wingspan) quickly got "competition inflated" to the point where there had to be a "Novice Penny Plane" with even more restrictions. Then there was P-24, with a plastic propeller and maximum span, and last I heard, P-24 airplanes were flying close to five minutes under a high ceiling...

your enthusiasm is admirable but a bit out of synch with the speed of the propellers :P

@@goreacraft 🤣👍

were gonna need a stronger bigger rubber band ,,!!!

I wondered that, too. Probably the rubber band is low tension and the propeller has a lot of drag.

The propellors are very large, with lots of pitch, and the cross-section of the rubber is pretty small. The real trick it to make the airplane light enough to fly with a propellor that slow.

how do you make the engine

Spray adhesive on a balsa frame. Had to lift it just right to break surface tension. Then cures on the frame in a rack in a box away from dust for a while. That was for thinned nitrate dope on water though.

@@AdamantineAxe interesting. Thanks for the info.

But that *N* factor though. There's like... no buhlack people there!

@marko don't worry that happens when we get a bit older

@bacorable Praise the Lord!

Pp

Aww, thanks for the knowledge.

Anelasticity in part as well. It's a property of the rubber itself.

You gotta get that good 1999 stuff

The blades are very long, which means they have a lot of angular momentum, so they spin slowly but have a lot of torque.

They smothered the planes with their pre-come

The claim sounds a little dubious at best unless the latex produced from the trees that year was due to a combination of an ideal growing season and maybe the solvents used being banned the following year leading to less durability in rubber produced from other solvents but as you said degradation over time would lessen the elasticity of the material, whether a silicone spray can protect the rubber from ageing is another question. It would be like a wine snob/connoisseur claiming to be able to tell the shoe size of the person who crushed the grapes from the taste of the wine. or an audiophile being able to tell from the sound of a cable whether it was cryogenically frozen during production.

torn jeans, broken noses, a good black eye are an inseparable attribute of this sport. in the end, only the one who owns the Colt Peacemaker to perfection will remain

В 72 году модель НИКУ БЕЗМАНА. ..ВЕСИЛА. 1.О40.ГРАММА.....ЖУРНАЛ МК .73 Г...

Don't take it so easy! Years of training behind him and still, it is extremely difficult for him to do it perfect!

55cm maximum wingspan.

I search every where i cant get it

@@muhammadathifkt1576 The only currently available rubber is called Tan Super Sport. It's made by FAI Model Supply. The rubber being used by most people in the video was made more than 20 years ago, and it's not possible to acquire any more.

@@jakepF1D What sets the May 1999 rubber apart and why can't it be replicated today?

@@andysmith1996 May 99 has a better torque curve for indoor models than modern rubber. Almost all rubber sold today goes to outdoor flyers that want a high peak torque for a fast climb. For indoor we want a lower peak, and more sustained torque in the middle of the curve. My understanding is at least one of the chemicals used in 1999 is no longer available, and even if it was I'm not sure FAI Model Supply would make a batch because it would be less desirable to the majority of their customers.

i hear there is a website called youtube. the have videos of everything including f1d indoor model airplanes flying!

@@shmuck66 see these as in for sale as kits.

I'm wondering the same thing.

Yeah, that's what I was wondering, too. Figured twenty-something year old rubber-bands would be dry and brittle by now.