Definitely Not Toys...

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You might remember the film "The Flight of The Phoenix" from 1965 - it's been repeated many times on terrestrial TV and is readily available via streaming - and the story was retold in the 2004 remake, "Flight of The Phoenix". For those that don't know the story, its basic premise is that a cargo plane, carrying a small number of passengers from Jaghbub to Benghazi, in Libya, crash lands in the Sahara desert. Anyhow, the central plot line is the building of an aeroplane upon which to escape back to civilisation from the remaining viable pieces of their original, now severely damaged craft. The principal architect of this plan is a German aeronautical engineer,  who comes up with a scheme and plans for a bastardised aircraft based on the one remaining engine and various fragments of wing and airframe. Anyway, one of the dramatic swings of the plot is when the rest of those stranded realise that the German engineer was a model aircraft designer, at which point pretty much everybody doubts the sanity of the project and practically gives up hope of all survival. Long story short: they all prevail, escape and survive, bar the few dramatically-necessary deaths along the way. Watch the original if you get the chance; however my point is that aeronautics is aeronautics and physics is physics.

The difference between a model and a full-scale aircraft is pretty much merely one of scale, and the essential design factors are the same or vastly similar for both, given normal operating conditions and parameters.  Sometimes however, things can be achieved at the smaller 'model' scale than simply can't be achieved in the macro world of flight in as short a timeframe [or even at all]. We all know of the extreme G-forces that jet fighter pilots can pull for short periods; their craft for a little more than the pilot before the inevitable failure of either; but these days, in the rarified world of a branch of the aero-modelling sport of radio controlled slope soaring [gliders launched into the wind on a slope or ridge], the smaller scale world of aeronautics is taking on a far more extreme character than one could imagine, with modellers using 'Dynamic Slope Soaring' techniques achieving speeds in excess of 500 mph and pulling well in excess of 100G in the process: more than an order of magnitude greater than is feasible in the 'full-size' world of manned flight. You have to remember also that Germany developed its formidable airforce during a time when they were forbidden by the interwar restrictions imposed after their defeat in WWI to actively engage in the development of new, powered aircraft. All of their technical advances were made through modelling and glider development; the accumulated knowledge deployed in the pre-war build up of the 1930s. Check out some of the flight footage available on YouTube of the latest developments in DSS: it truly is mind-boggling...

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