How the hell did the planes stay in one piece?!?

The Shakin' Mark --

I've got lots of hours on this same actuator. CA hinges had not really come into their own at the time -- actually flex hinges were available, but CA was not. We used pinned hinges because they were freely moving and not subject to fatigue breakage. At slower speeds, the planes flew with a bit of a Dutch Roll and you could see the tail wagging around. At higher speeds, it was not as evident. The transmitters were relatively simple and sent out a single tone. When the tone was being transmitted, the motor in the actuator would turn in one direction; without the tone, it spun in the other. I could actually tune my stereo receiver to the TX frequency and hear how it changed when the stick was moved. The TX could vary the frequency of the tone and also the duty cycle. The RAND actuator then mechanically would convert this variance into surface movement. Since both the rudder and elevator were in constant movement, your plane control essentially averaged out whether the rudder flopped more to the right or left.

It worked amazingly well, albeit, tough on battery time and without the precision we have today. I still have my galloping ghost actuator, transmitter and receiver. I've often thought it might be fun to try to get it back into the air again.

the old andrew

An antique flying antiques