Good sir,
good little gathering for
CMac and a good send off... the pall bearers were a worry - one buggered
back, one dicky knee, one short of a full quid, one sus shoulder and one
offensively hearty cheerleader... yes, you can still count, one PB pulled
out at the last and Horse didn't get his fetlock to the coffin on time.
Ah well, at least we didn't drop it. Wonderfully matched in height we were
too.
Under CMac's house was a flying museum... thirty years of HG development,
perfectly blueprinted (the originals showed more detail for the swing seat
than for the kite), as well as various experiments in flight, production
models of some of CMac's designs (his company was called McDonald Hovering),
land yachts, anything requiring wind and sails and XC.
Twenty-five year old blueprints in CMac's perfect draughting hand were
more poignant than all the preacher's words. Even the moment when someone
(probably Chris, being an engineer) realised that a larger diameter spar
carried more load than a thicker wall section for the equivalent gain in
weight...the measurements were crossed out from 5 1/4 inches to 7 1/4 inches
in a different colour. CMac not only designed all his own gliders for twenty
years and built them himself, he was one of those originals who were inspired
by the Popular Mechanics article (1962) which showed the inflatable wing
for the Gemini spacecraft (the Rogallo design) that kicked off Dickenson
and Moyes in Oz and the Wills brothers in California. That meant he had
to teach himself and figure it out at every step of the way.
It's so easy today...you sign up with a school, get your ticket and
choose a glider from any number available, all safe and predictable and
built to certification standards. CMac also wasn't just one of the first,
he was also one of the best... he held the Qld record for a long time and
his name appears on virtually every trophy in Oz.
Ah well. I discovered a few things about him today that I didn't know
before... for example, that he had a PPL with 4-seater endorsement. I'd
been expecting to spend a lifetime (mine) storing up the little clues Chris
dropped from time to time and putting them all together at the end to challenge
him with the whole. Instead we got a full biography today, and talked to
a lot of people from other parts of Chris's life. So I got to find it all
out, in one day...damn. Ah well.
Chris McDonald wrote many witty and thoughtful articles for Skysailor,
but always used noms de plume. He holds the hang gliding record for the
Morning Glory - 165km - set on the very first flexwing flight.
