Control-line Model Aeroplanes

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What's Control-line?

You are probably familiar with model aeroplanes or airplanes, but these are usually Radio-Controlled. Control-line flying is much simpler and the planes fly in a hemisphere tethered by steel wires and a handle held by the pilot. Simple tipping of the handle up and down with your hand steers the plane to fly anywhere you like on the hemisphere.

Graphic courtesy of Palmerston North Aeroneers at http://members.tripod.com/aeroneers/pna-col2.htm.

Sound too simple and archaic? Not high-tech enough? Maybe, but control-line flying avoids some of the complexity and reliability issues of other types of model planes and concentrates on the elements that are more fun:

You are close to the aeroplane at all times (~16 metres) so you can see what it is doing.
You can feel the pull of the aeroplane and where it is going. Experienced pilots can fly manoeuvres without watching their plane.
Easier! - easier to learn (especially for kids); simpler equipment; less preparation; less maintenance; can fly in smaller areas.

There are a few varieties of competition in control-line flying:

Aerobatics (also called stunt)
Racing (like Formula-1 races with planes, including pit-stops)
Speed (like drag racing with planes, one at a time)
Combat (one-on-one dog-fighting, more about this later)
Carrier (speed control, take-off, landing)
Scale (flying scale models of real aircraft)

At the moment, these pages are mostly about Control-line Combat including F2D. Feel free to fill out the other control-line competition types with more pages.

Where to next?

(You can find these links on the Navigation bar near the top of every "Control-Line" page marked with the icon Control-line/NavBar/F2Dicon.png )

Get details of the Aeromodellers of Logan City (ALC, the club of this Wiki's maintainer)
Go to the Combat pages.
Control-line Events Calendar (what's coming up in Queensland and Australia (mostly combat related)).
Articles on Control-line and Combat ideas, equipment, and techniques
Some interesting files for Download.
Here's some useful Control-line Links (clubs, combat info, videos, etc.)
Latest News page for visitor's comments, recent page updates, news, for sale, ...
Flying on the weekend? Here's a 7-day Weather forecast (Australia only).