BELT AND PULLEY PROP DRIVE SYSTEM by Paul McIlrath

FROM THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, NO LESS (continued from last month)

"Founded by Lord Wakefield of Hythe in 1928, the biennial Wakefield competition takes place all over the world. Next year's competition will be held in Israel (WS editor: The date of this article is April 23, 1998); last year it was in the Czech Republic, where Mr. Andriukov was again named champion.

"Mr. Andriukov's design changes have so recast the sport that many top fliers now purchase parts or entire planes from Eastern Europe, where a cottage industry has sprung up to produce models designed by Mr. Andriukov and other top Eastern European fliers. Some old time fliers are irked by the developments in their field. David Hipperson qualified for the British Wakefield team but declined to compete at the 1997 world championship as a protest against the use of purchased airplanes by competitors. 'I'm quite happy to fly against Andriukov and his airplanes,' says Mr. Hipperson. 'But I get a little cheesed off when I fly against him and a dozen others with identical airplanes.'

"Wakefield flyers typically become involved with the sport as children and often fly for 40 or 50 years. Mr. Andriukov began flying model planes at age six in Latvia, where his father was a general in the Soviet missile command. He made the national team in 1981, receiving treatment similar to that given champion athletes, including foreign travel and a yearly spring training session. But Mr. Andriukov's engineering job in Ukraine was a casualty of the economic collapse in the early 1990s. For a few years, he supported his family by exporting Wakefield planes. He moved to the Los Angeles area last year after a model-making buddy got him an engineering job at AeroVironment Inc., where he joined a team working on a solar-powered high-altitude flying wing to be used by NASA.

"He has become a regular participant at regional competitions like the one last weekend at Taft, a tiny oil-patch town an hour and a half north of Los Angeles. Taft is one of the few places in Southern California with the huge spaces and relatively tranquil winds required for flying Wakefields. The planes, which are not radio-controlled, are guided based on how the flyers have preset the rudders and other controls. The competition starts with seven three-minute flights spread over seven hours. Fliers know if they don't hit three minutes in all the flights - or their craft fly out of sight - they are out of the competition, but the mood is still relaxed. 'I will try, but not too seriously,' promises Mr. Andriukov, who freely banters with the rest of the competitors between long hikes to retrieve his plane. Seven of the 13 competitors, including Mr. Andriukov, qualify for the fly-off. Everyone takes a break until the late afternoon, when the winds are calmer.

"When they return, it's a different Mr. Andriukov. He now equips his plane with a superb rubber band - from the 1997 batch that is considered the best ever. Asked by this reporter what he's doing as he tinkers with his plane, the normally patient Mr. Andriukov snaps, 'Preparing for fly-off.' Mr. Andriukov is among five flyers who keep their planes aloft for at least five minutes. The next round is seven minutes, very difficult unless a plane catches a thermal. The stocky Mr. Andriukov takes a couple of deep breaths, like a champion weight lifter, before giving his plane a mighty heave. His plane climbs about 400 feet in the first four seconds, then begins a slower spiraling ascent. Several other competitors get their planes up almost as high, but the last competitor touches down in six minutes and 31 seconds. Mr. Andriukov's plane, meanwhile, is still making graceful circles hundreds of feet above a kitty litter factory when the timer goes off at 8-1/2 minutes, and the craft begins its descent.

"A broad smile splits Alex Andriukov's broad, sun-burned face. A few minutes later, he receives his reward: a bottle of champagne with $28 ($2 for each contestant) taped to it, and he pops it open. The second place finisher, Bob Tymchek, a long-time top flyer from Nipomo, California, briefly frets about tactical mistakes before joining in the camaraderie. But 'if I had to get beat,' he says, 'it's OK to get beat by Alex.'"

HERO IN OUR MIDST

We have received favorable comment on the story of the Doolittle Tokyo Raiders so this article about our own John Valls, taken from that which appeared in the Laredo News this past April, is timely and reminds us of the many unsung WWII heroes among us. Lest we forget; they are rapidly passing into history.

John says there has been a surge of interest in WWII history. He has been interviewed by representatives of the University of Texas Press, and a book incorporating his experiences is in progress. Some of what is in the following article is a repeat of what has been presented in past issues of Windy Sock but is being repeated here for the benefit of recent subscribers and those who surf the Internet at random - approximately 5,500 hits per month. It's a great story.

John Valls did not intend to end up in the infantry; it just happened that way, the result of an indiscretion on his part you might say. It was in the last year of the war that the U.S. Army Air Forces found they had a lot of pilots about to graduate that were no longer needed, so entire classes were washed out, en masse, and questioned as to whether they would like to be gunners instead. Well, John tells us, "I stood up and said, 'Sir, if I can't fly the airplane, I don't want to be on it!'" Toot sweet! The officer said, "Infantry!" So John found himself slogging along like the Mauldin characters in those dark days of the Battle of the Bulge and its aftermath as the Allied armies fought their way to Berlin.

"We were out on patrol when we saw and heard a whole bunch of men and vehicles coming east toward us.....thought they might have been Americans - right up until they were close enough for us to see the swastikas flying everywhere....Almost as far as the eye could see...soldiers, tanks, other vehicles and equipment. It was an awesome sight...then a single jeep broke away from the mass and drove up to where we were. It was driven by a Nazi soldier, a colonel.....flying the white flag, and about 30 yards away you could see (Field Marshall Walther) Model in a huge, heavily armored vehicle, not actually a tank." The colonel came up to John and said, "General Model wants to surrender." Then he suggested that John get into the jeep and drive over to the commander with him. "I'll drive," said the colonel. "No, I'll drive," countered John. But it didn't take long for John to find the German gearshift system was in no way like the American, "...and I couldn't get it to go. After a couple of tries all I had succeeded in doing was grinding the gears...the colonel said nervously, 'No, I'll drive', which he ended up doing."

As the Laredo Times article put it, "For when Model humbled and humiliated himself before the lanky Laredoan, and clicking his heels as he bowed reverently to his captor, the field marshall who had had his fill of the field (sometime later he committed suicide), was also acknowledging that the 300,000 men at his command - a whole army - was now taking orders from Laredo's 'army of one,' not from Model, not from Hitler, not from Patton, not from Ike - not even from Roosevelt, but from an American GI from Laredo who had slogged across Europe....slept in an open foxhole...and now wondered, 'What the hell am I going to do with 300,000 German prisoners?'

"John Valls received a Presidential citation for this action."

In that same month, April 1945, John Valls, again at the head of an advance squad, was the first soldier through the gate of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in northwestern Germany. The 60,000 prisoners were in the emaciated, skeleton-like condition that the world has come to consider typical of those unfortunate souls. From the Laredo Times: "Kicking down that door and being the first Allied soldier that the soldiers saw was a particularly satisfying act for Valls at the time, and remains a memory that he cherishes, despite the dismaying, to say the least, sights that he witnessed, the smells, the groans, the living conditions, the piles of the dead and the dying, the indescribably horrible odors, the mass graves dug too shallow. The looks of grief, suffering, loss, desperation, despair, surprise, relief, disbelief, and thankfulness....Belsen was the place where Anne Frank and her sister Margot met their doom....casualties were in the thousands, even though this was not one of those camps rigged with gas chambers for wholesale extermination.....Typhus and starvation were Death's handmaidens here. Anne Frank died of typhus one month, almost to the day, before John Valls arrived to set the remaining 60,000 inmates free.....there were 5,000 dead bodies piled up there. "I wish I hadn't seen what I saw at Belsen. When we first walked in, you could hear a sound like when somebody scores a touchdown - only low, very, very low because all these people were practically dead - most of them just sat there and stared while we walked in. But one little man whom looked like a corpse with all his ribs sticking out came up to me thanking me in whatever language he spoke and offered me his most precious possession, part of a little rabbit skin vest...he kept insisting....so I finally took it, and the little man was so happy that it made me feel good, and still does."

(Concluded next month)

K.I.S.S. RUBBER STRIPPER by Marcel Lavoie