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A Golden Flight
By Steve Foster

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A century ago a couple brothers who sold and repaired bicycles for a living made a golden flight that made history and changed the rest of their lives. Even though that golden flight at Kitty Hawk, NC on December 17, 1903 only lasted a few seconds and traveled a mere 120 feet the Wright brothers knew at that moment how great an event it was. I'm sure most of their joy was based on all the work they had done to get to that point and even more on how this would keep their future work going. But a small part of their feelings had to have a certain pride in knowing they just done something nobody in the world had ever done before.

Now the story of a different golden flight! It was made by a couple of guys that enjoy this hobby and compete as a team named "The Flying I-Beam Kids", our team name should let you know we think of a day of contest flying is like a ten year old Christmas morning. Now this flight won't be recognized in history books or change the lives of those involved. But it has that certain amount of pride in knowing that it was most likely the first of it's kind anywhere in the world. The first test flight of the Golden Girl R/C was on September 20, 2003 and only lasted for about 68 seconds. What made this flight unique is that it was probably the first radio controlled boost glider to fly for any significant time using a B size rocket motor any where in the world - COOL! Everything about the flight went so smoothly we could tell almost instantly we had done something significant. Although we did have problems with the glider in attempting to set a RC B BG record during SCST-3 that we were able to use it to set a RC C BG record time of 277 seconds, even this flight was again probably the first ever of it's type - Also Cool! (It also surpassed all the regular C BG records accumulated over the last 40+ years of NAR competition, a truly competitive model on it's first flight).

Let me go back to show you how quickly this event came together. Soon after getting back from NARAM-45 I began thinking with RC equipment getting smaller and smaller that some of the glider competition events in the near future are going to be dominated by RC gliders, especially at the national level, and we didn't want to be lagging behind in the race. So I began researching the web to find out what might be available to build such a glider. After about 2 weeks of research I ordered the main components necessary (shown in picture) then I contacted Rod and told him we had some micro RC parts coming in build us a glider. He decided to use the same plan he had won with at NARAM-44, the Golden Girl. Within a week he had the glider built and the parts were coming in. After adding the RC components we only made one significant change in the rudder control component. In all it was less than 4 weeks from deciding to do this and coming up with the RC Golden Girl.

Now is our glider perfect for B BG? No, but it is a very big step in the right direction. Our glider ended up with a final weight of 41 grams (1.45 oz). And we have already begun to see if an RC glider can be designed for A motors, a test flight of a prototype weighing 21 grams (0.75 oz) as already flown for 39 seconds. Just like the Wright brothers the first short flight is leading to many more flights to follow, probably none for the history books but maybe in the records of our own little world of model rocketry.