Fun, danger, and 70s airplane toys

I had several of these (or more properly went through several) and got proficient enough to do loops, fly it inverted in the other direction, and occasionally "land" as you were supposed to do when it ran out of gas.

It was a lot of fun, but because you were in the center of a SPHERE the axis of control was not as intuitive as one might like. In particular, going "up" changed the orbital "plane" (no pun intended) and as a result was going to intersect with the ground unless corrected. You could do a little bit of hackery by squatting down and standing up to change the spheres center but trying turning rapidly in a circle while in a squat, it doesn't work well!

One of the adjustments that was "picky" was setting the vertical stabilizer for consistent yaw. You wanted the plane to pull toward the outside of the circle, it would do that from centripetal force once it got up to speed but before then a bit of help, well helped. Too much though and if you tried to fly inverted it started flying toward you and that wasn't helpful at all.

The best thing about the engines were that 12 yr old me could completely disassemble them and rebuild them in about an hour. That was something you had to do, Cox would "refurb" an engine (which I had them do once when I found a wrecked plane that clearly had been out in the desert for > a month) but once I got good enough at it I could do the refurb and save the $15 + postage that Cox wanted.

Fun times.

I remember, when young, I would always find these old chemistry sets for sale at garage sales around my grandmother's neighborhood. Parents didn't really care, so long as you didn't destroy / damage anything!

I had the 80s versions of these, a cox P-51 and a red little toni cosmic wind. Super fun once you could get them started but also crazy messy. Playing with them lead me to build an RC Great Planes PT-40 (0.40), a super sportster, a gentle lady rc glider, and another glider that had an electric motor with retractable blades to launch it. Instead of standard gliders which used a whole roll of rubber tubing as large as a soccer field. Then I got into RC helicopters which are pretty difficult to learn how to fly but absolutely crazy what you could do with them 3 dimensionally once you did.

So much of my kid job money, allowance, holiday and birthday money was spent going through the Tower Hobbies catalog. Good times.

A modern analogy is remotely-piloted aircraft / drones. These come in several variants. Related to the article, they can be dangerous; ie they reach high speeds, high altitudes, contain 1 or more rotating blades, contain high-energy batteries, and sometimes don't have great failure modes in the event of lost link, out of batteries etc.

I think a fundamental difference re the article's description is modern drones are capable of being flown safely. There are ways to build, maintain, and fly them safely, and ways for them to end in tragedy. It sounds like the 70s toys are dangerous as a default.

Some sub-categories for anyone not familiar:

  - DJI quadcopters: The most popular type. Command-based controls; they're generally safe, easy to fly etc. Use electric motors and lithium batteries. Popular with photographers, as a toy etc
  - FPV quadcopters and fixed-wing aircraft: Often have a degree of DIY and custom builds. Run one of several open-source firmware. Can go really fast, are very maneuverable, and can be flown for long distances. Can have various safety issues such as reckless flying when near people or animals, flying too far from the operator or with obstacles in the way without a good lost-link response etc. User assembly can lead to problems like weak solder joints coming loose. Various degrees of automation including autonomous flight, manned-AC-style autopilot modes, and angular-rate-based manual control.
  - Model airplanes: Commonly flown by an older demographic at airfields, with direct line-of-sight between the pilot and aircraft. Control signals directly command control surfaces without a flight controller. May be ICE or battery-powered. Community-enforced safety standards. Less likely to go lost-link due to no BVLOS capability.

My friends and I found documents authored in the 70's and went around the 90's trying to buy saltpeter--whatever that is. Luckily time had changed "Do I need to call your mother?" into "What the hell is that?" and our mothers were never called.

We eventually gave up and graduated to shoplifting model rocket engines, which we powdered with vice grips.