Category: UAV

Aaron & the Senior Telemaster Dec 1978

by Aaron Donaldson

Aaron and the Senior Telemaster in Dec 1978

Background.

My Dad, Ian Donaldson, has been involved in making and flying RC Aircraft for as long as I can remember.
He built two Hobby Lobby Senior Telemasters around the time that I was born in 1976. Ian covered both of the planes in a lovely orange film. (Must have been cheap at the time) One of them he flew regularly (It seems like it was almost every weekend). It was fitted with an OS 90 Two Stoke and He used it for regular flying, glider towing and lollie drops from the bomb door he installed. Ian kept us amused for hours, we made our own parachutes he dropped them from a great height with the Telemaster and we ran after them to collect them for another turn. The second airframe was constructed but sat unused in the garage for thirty years. Dad built it as a spare and would have used it if the first one was ever damaged beyond repair, but it was so strong and when it was damaged (rarely) it was easy to repair.

Ian has moved onto building and flying bigger and bigger planes since his first Telemaster, though has kept true to the design. Check out his Murphy Rebel Ultralight by clicking here. See a resemblance to the smaller model?

Both Senior Telemasters sat unused in the garage for some time until late 2006. My friend Simeon and I were standing in Dad's garage one afternoon and remarked to each other that we should "Resurect' the old beasts as we had no other projects on the go at the time. We ran the idea passed Ian and he agreed to "Donate" the Telemasters to us. After a quick inspection Simeon grabbed the unflown Telemaster and I grabbed the well used one as it had great sentimental value. The covering on both had suffered a little hangar rash, Simeon's only needing a couple of patches, and mine needing a complete recover. This gave us a chance to inspect the airframes too.
We were both amazed at how sturdy and intact the airframes were. A small bit of glue here and a piece of balsa there for mine, a bit of covering for Simeon's, and both airframes were airworthy again.Click here to see photos of my well used Telemaster before it was recovered.

We tackled Simeon's unused Telemaster first. A quick couple of patches on the wings, install some modern servos, throw a pretty warm OS 46 up front for power and off to the local field for a maiden flight. Can you believe it's maiden flight was more than 30 years after it was built, and still had 99% of the covering intact!!!

After some fun flying Simeon decided to have a go at fitting a small bullet camera on the Telemaster, with a transmitter to send the signal back to the ground, and see if he could fly it by watching the
footage on a 7" LCD Tv screen. We've since discovered it's called FPV flying (First Person View). The results were fantastic!! We both had a go at flying the plane, by only watching the TV, and it was amazing that it was so easy to do! I performed better take offs and landings watching the TV than standing beside it and flying normally.
Check out the videos of that day here

After plenty more use we had mastered TV Flying so we started looking for other ways to use the setup. I was surfing the web in Sept 07 and came across a news article about the upcoming UAV Outback Challenge to be held in QLD Australia. We followed the progress of the competition and both agreed to set up our own tem to enter into the 2008 Challenge.
Want to find out the rest of the Team Telemasters story and and see how we went in the 2008 UAV Outback Challenge??

Click the AusUAV tag here or at the top of this page.

This is the Telemaster and I now, 30 years on. Looks like the plane has shrunk a little bit
You can see some of the original orange color and covering on the tail still.