Test flying a Perryman "He-Man" Wakefield class rubber powered airplane

[@GrandadIsAnOldMan]

That is an old style beauty, there must be a mile of rubber in there 😆 And great to see the boy fix his own glider in the background 👍

[@tomcoryell]

Superman is doing a great job of chucking that glider! There can be such beauty in rubber powered free flight!

[@jonlobello7151]

You certainly have a little slice of paradise where you live there.

[@jamesjacocks6221]

Gentleman George Perryman was a legend. He pushed the envelope for Wakefield aircraft for at least three decades. His later designs were almost avian. Beautiful seeing that plane, the whole scene, your family out doing beautiful things.

[@tomedward8652]

I live in a small flat in Berlin city centre. I am totally jealous of your house and the land it is on. I too would be flying everyday if I lived somewhere like. Wonderful.

[@M5guitar1]

Beautiful FF. Reminds me of the time I put 50 winds for a test flight on a small scratch-built stick model. It circled up to 15-20 feet....and freewheeled into thermal never to be seen again. I was 17 years old then and will forget that chase. That was 43 years ago.

[@joshuawfinn]

You never forget your first flyaway. Pure magic!

[@iskandartaib]

I remember mine. It was that first year they had to hold the FF Nats separately, in the early 90s - they did it in Lawrenceville, IL. A Nats close by? Before that it'd been in California or Kansas. So I drove down to catch a day of it, to see what Free Flighters did (I am a CL flier). What a day. Driving into the parking lot, there was someone breaking in a Wakefield motor. Never seen so much rubber being wound before. I got to meet George Perryman himself and got a peek inside the mobile home where all his models were being kept. Unfortunately it was Embryo day, all the big stuff was in storage. Still, it was interesting to watch him fly - he'd talk to the model as it flew. They were flying B or C power, though - HUGE models roaring up in tight spirals - I remember one shedding a wing, and the engine cut a second before it hit the ground. I had taken along three or four sheet-wing stick models, about 13 inch span and was flying them off to the side when I got a chance. I'd typically get 45-60 second times with these models - OK for a small field. There were bubble machines and mylar streamers on poles everywhere - one moment I noticed all the streamers nearby were pointing straight up! I'd just wound the model and released it. Suffice to say it never came down. In a couple minutes it was OOS downwind. Didn't even think of trying to chase after it.

[@scable-eq7bp]

Josh, that was awesome, beautiful aircraft. The P1B1 -- Sky Voyager I purchased from you is an amazing little plane, had to upgrade the rubber, the other stuff kept breaking. After several flights to get the CG right, we sustained flights of over 3 minutes, almost lost in a thermal on the last flight, luckily it turned out of the thermal and glided back to earth. We were flying on a 1000 acre sod farm down here in Florida, so we had plenty of room......

[@riazhassan6570]

Interesting gliding going on in the background, too. But yes, I remember when these long-bodied Wakefields first appeared. The early ones had long snouts with a sudden bulge about two-thirds down, and they flew very well. But they spelled the end of the championship as I had heard about it from afar, struggling with cane, bamboo or strips of local pinewood and rubber strands cut from inner tubes, to build self-designed models (some actually flew). I greatly enjoy Joshua’s series. He is a competent aero modeller indeed

[@sasquatchjunk]

Your first flight after you showed the winding as the British would say was over the moon...literally! Nice flights Josh and great camera work Hope! You guys are great. I was on another part of the web and all I saw was protests, shootings, basically horrific garbage. So getting to see a family playing together and enjoying the peace and fun of avionics puts things in perspective. Keep on showing the positive side of the world you guys, thank you for all you do.

[@michaelbare5380]

That is just epic. Modeling in the 50s with everyone doing this must have been a blast!

[@joshuawfinn]

Yeah those guys were incredible.

[@jamesmcdaniel7907]

There is nothing more rewarding than defying gravity with something you built

[@magnusericsson8684]

A beast from the past, before things were set, todays competing models are pretty uniform

[@cringualexandrupopa4858]

Good model, good flight. It deserves a beacon, not to be lost!

[@joshuawfinn]

Yeah it has a beacon and I'm going to set up RDT as well eventually.

[@Bang_Satria]

best rubbber band powered plane i have ever found in yoitube

[@joshuawfinn]

Glad you enjoyed it! Rubber power is my first love in flying. You'll find several others on this channel that fly even better!

[@iskandartaib]

Kind of sad, looking through KZbin, there are no videos of George Perryman flying his Speckled Birds. This one looks like it belongs to the long-motor-run-gentle-climb school. One of Perryman's later Unlimited designs had a gearbox in the back, which effectively put two rubber motors in series, creating a motor twice as long as would fit in the motor tube. I suppose it makes sense to do that for the One-Flight-At-Dawn event.

[@Johnellenberger1]

Beautiful airplane! That thing looks great in the air and has a ton of flight time. I wonder what would happen if you made it an R/C and kept the rubber motor. I've never seen that before!!!

[@joshuawfinn]

I've done that and it works out great so long as you keep the equipment as light as possible. Give it a try!

[@gwheyduke]

Looks like a guided missle ! A fellow modeler used to call nose weights added to adjust CG "tail lightners"

[@joshuawfinn]

Hey I just say leave the CG off because that makes the plane lighter!

[@raymondbaylis9016]

You are so good at this buddy

[@johnnydavidcreative]

Fantastic video! What a beauty of a model! Love it. And I love to see the wide open spaces in HD - thanks for posting. Blessings; johnny :-)

[@joshuawfinn]

Just wait...we've got some footage coming soon of a field that makes that one look like a speck. :)

[@johnnydavidcreative]

@@joshuawfinn I will look forward to future videos - simply love your channel Josh and Hope!!! Blessings, johnny :-) :-)

[@leifvejby8023]

George Perryman made some really special models -

[@joshuawfinn]

Yes he did! I've been privileged to see some more in the AMA museum and even own a few myself. He was amazing!

[@bjornjohansson4911]

Interresting proportions between wing span and fuselage. The flight is so cool.

[@robertk.5195]

The moment I saw the length of the rear fuselage, I instantly recalled a discussion I had with George Perryman in the early 70s. I had been playing around with simple Guillows "toy" airplanes - Flite Streak and such. I was sorta coaching a teen boy who lived in the same apartment complex as me and we did lotsa gliders and these all balsa rubber jobs. There were towering pines, so we flew small stuff out of necessity. Of course my flying with Perryman and a protege of his was at a fairly large open field in the Georgia countryside. So anyways, I was telling George about the simple mod I'd made to a Flite Steak that yielded surprising results. Tha mod was to glue a long fuselage extension to set the tail surfaces way back from where they'd usually be. That resulted in a straight up climb until the rubber was just about spent. At the top of its climb it would flop over and fly better than any simple rubber ship. George and his protege allowed at how they'd been theorizing about just such a configuration for a competition class model and how what I had told of might be a hint that such a plane might do well. My flying with these two (his protege actually won the Mulvehill before his teacher did!) lessened due to a change of employment to where I rarely saw them much. I've often thought I might build a more ambitious ship to see if my long-tailed fusekage planform had promise beyond a 25cent toy, but I've not had the opportunity to do so.

[@bjornjohansson4911]

@@robertk.5195 Dear Robert K. Many thanks for your efforts of telling this interresting findings. As you may expect, I am an old swedish man, that not have english as mother tongue language, but I got your message anyway. This lengthen of fuselage, might have more substance in behavior, that just lengthening of leverage of the stabilizers area moments. Otherwise, you could have followed up by a reduction of these, to keep the same stability. Even the body enlengthment of of the fuselage serves as stabilizer areas. So. My humble conclusion of your findings are that the areas of the stabilizers are under-estimated by the designs, to make proper stability. Right so? There may however be more benefits, than that, by a longer fuselage. Longer rubber is not one of them, but the fact that the weight of rubber is less prone to shift effect in weight balance between powered on and off. That means, that the rear part of the fuselage, don't have to resist the linear force from the rubber motor, and may be constructed lighter. Or? Best regards.

[@joethomas5983]

looks like fun!

[@EleanorPeterson]

Mmmm, nice. But as I used to scream at Charlie Brown: "Hey, Chuck! Look out for that Kite-Eating Tree!" Seriously, though - I'm currently into flying lightweight free-flight planes with miniature radio control. If you just have rudder-only you can leave out the dethermaliser altogether, let them fly free, and only 'interrupt' them now and again to point their nose towards home. Modern radio is so light that the old classic balsa and tissue models barely notice the burden. It certainly beats chasing after them when the dethermaliser doesn't pop! 😁

[@Colin399]

What a machine, love it.

[@표규상]

ㅈㄷㅇㅊ

[@표규상]

쇼크ㅂㅈㄱ쇼아!

[@표규상]

ㄱㄷㅈㅈㅁ

[@radiocontrolegliders782]

that bird flys anazing

[@rickyonovitz3214]

Your open area seems so refreshing. For myself, in Camarillo California, there are open spaces for farming, yet nobody can fly planes on them..

[@joshuawfinn]

If you can ever make it to Lost Hills or Perris, they still fly there. :)

[@quincyherbster5888]

Great flight. Thanks

[@rdaystrom4540]

Nice airplane. Good job.

[@MasboyRC]

So cool.. i love your design bro

[@cloudstreets1396]

Can’t even imagine how many airplanes you have sacrificed to the tree gods. What a precarious place to fly free flights.

[@joshuawfinn]

Not as many as you'd think. I bought a long collapsible carp rod a few years back that makes retrieval from trees much easier. Where we lose them is going off into inaccessible territory or extremely tall trees in dense forests.

[@undiaencasa]

Gracias por compartir estos vídeos, saludos.

[@melbournesubtropicfruits9474]

Glad the D/T worked and didnt get hung up in those trees - I used to fly open rubber with rear peg in front of the stab and almost 1 min motor run well about 45sec - won a perpetual trophy with it.

[@joshuawfinn]

I fly the American open class (Mulvihill) and we have motor runs ranging anywhere from 45 seconds to 2 minutes depending on how brave you are (shorter is braver!). It's a lot of fun but if you screw up with a fast climber, the consequences are high. Mine developed a wing warp this past weekend and spiraled into a gully from 500' up.

[@AeroCraftAviation]

Wonderful flyer there Josh! I've always wondered about those characteristically long Wakefield fuselages. Is it in the interest of maximizing power, or structural integrity, or aerodynamics?

[@joshuawfinn]

The minimum weight back then was 8 oz. When they removed the cross section rule that was based on fuselage length, there was no longer a penalty for long airplanes, so several Americans decided to make their fuselages long enough to hold 5+ oz of rubber with no slack. Perryman's was the longest.

[@slingshotrc4634]

@@joshuawfinn LOL. I wondered about the intent. So it's a big rubber hauler. Interesting.

[@None-zc5vg]

@@joshuawfinn How can fuselage distortion be minimised or avoided altogether when there's so much pressure on the structure from the wound rubber. ?

[@joshuawfinn]

@@None-zc5vg fiber covering (tissue or polyester) and/or Warren truss construction. The model in this video happens to feature both.

[@valveman12]

*Watch out for the 🌳🌳🌳🌳!* I enjoy watching your rubber band planes fly. I am worried about how close they get to the trees. I'm sure you had to recover a few planes from the trees.

[@joshuawfinn]

Lots of tree retrievals. ;)

[@MrCrossbiker]

Nice flight.

[@archivist17]

What. A. Beautiful. Monster!

[@crashrr2993]

What a beast? Luvvit!

[@innovatorx2112]

Nice model sir ,I need to make one for me too😄😄

[@manishmunutwar9059]

Nice one

[@zonabeltv1180]

Amazing

[@077mrx]

Was 40 gram motor the rule in 52?

[@shmaknapublar]

What kind of hardware do you use on the hook and peg ends of your large rubber motors that are generally wound in the model? Thanks Oh and glad to see that thing take to the air.

[@joshuawfinn]

I use a big Crocket hook up front and an aluminum tube sleeve at the back that fits over a 3/16" aluminum tube rear peg. The motor is bound around the sleeve with a small rubber band to keep the strands from slipping off onto the peg. Just makes it unwind a little smoother.

[@shmaknapublar]

@@joshuawfinn Thank you sir.

[@monkfry]

Hahaa “Daddy’d prefer to not have a heart attack right now”. 2 minutes later, “That’s not good. . Where’s my dethermalizer”?

[@joshuawfinn]

Yeah, pretty much!

[@jamesberwick2210]

Where did you put the tree magnet? It must have one in it, it likes trees!

[@joshuawfinn]

Turbo encabulator magnet buried in the nose. Works great!

[@jamesberwick2210]

@@joshuawfinn Must work well, it finds the tallest tree to light in. I had rebar magnets in my sailplanes, flying close to the cliff, I'd find any rebar sticking up with a wing tip. Three times, three different hills, I found the rebar.

[@skipperrussell2025]

I have a Super Speckled Maxer Bird Kit.

[@joshuawfinn]

So...different from the Sig Mini Maxer? If so please send details to [e-mail] as I'm compiling a lot of George's designs.

[@aviatop7110]

Good!

[@diegoconti7166]

Hola con cuantos grs de goma lo volas

[@hammeys1]

Thats great

[@FPVREVIEWS]

you must be an expert at getting planes out of trees.. can you make a video on your methods?

[@basgerritsen9669]

Hi Josh, I was wondering if you could make a video or audio recording of your 6s deamon, so we can compare speeds. I dopplered lukeattubatos plane at 262km/h average, his average gps speed was 269km/h, so not too far off. I dopplered my own 6s microblitz at 270km/h today, so I'm aching to know how fast yours is.

[@joshuawfinn]

I need to get that done. Also gotta get some recordings of the Skeletor out in an open field. Unfortunately I crashed mine recently when the elevator servo failed, and it totalled the airframe. :(

[@basgerritsen9669]

@@joshuawfinn that's very unfortunate, was it the skeletor or the deamon that broke? Luke's previous version also crashed because of a broken elevator servo, seems like its becoming a theme...

[@joshuawfinn]

@@basgerritsen9669 skeletor broke. I have two 6s Mini Deamons and both are doing pretty well. The new Skeletor I'm building has a quality servo in the tail so that should eliminate that particular failure mode.

[@Barnekkid]

If you don't mind my asking, what state are you in? Seems idyllic thereabout.

[@joshuawfinn]

Georgia. A particularly rural part of it, too. We like it that way. :)

[@friarrodneyburnap4336]

Is your property a working farm?

[@joshuawfinn]

Not exactly. We have fowl for eggs and pest control.

[@buzzz241]

It seems you could use radio control with all those obstacles!

[@joshuawfinn]

Yeah...I've got some of those. Freeflight remains the ultimate challenge though. :)

[@buzzz241]

@@joshuawfinn Thanks for reply.

[@coved19newscomedyvideos84]

You are garet

[@jimbo2629]

With all those trees you need rdt☺️

[@joshuawfinn]

So true. I actually do have an RDT on it now. :)

[@Metal-Possum]

The wings look narrow and the fuselage long. Such strange proportions. Also, it looks a little tail heavy?

[@patrickradcliffe3837]

Did you retrim it before you flew it?

[@brsrc759]

Why such tiny wings?

[@joshuawfinn]

It's an artifact of a set of really crazy rules. The planes were limited to 300 sq in maximum combined projected area for the wing and stab together, and had to weigh at least 8 oz with rubber. The solution ended up being to make the fuselage as long as it had to be to hold 5 oz of rubber taught so it wouldn't bunch up after unwinding.

[@brsrc759]

@@joshuawfinn ahh very cool

[@jafs0354]

wow that's great flights slow

[@alfredlebeau3137]

Is hiuchs like spier olimpic wou 🤯😱👋🏻👍🏻🇵🇦

[@glitchinthematrix5761]

Thought the moon was a ufo.

[@wilfredmay5231]

Pity about the kid.

[@mauroignacio3907]

slow top

[@BackwardTelevision]

Very bonkers but very nice.

[@joshuawfinn]

Bonkers is fun!

[@jerrysanders9101]

I love the lidal fella pulling the wagon around.. the entire scene is so peaceful and great. Contrast that to the blm riots and other nonsense.🇺🇸👍