SCAT Electronic News 4 May 1998

SCAT Electronic News 4 May 1998

 NorCal FAI Events - Prelimilary Results
This is an America's Cup Contest

F1A

[flyoff places only]

1. Brian Van Nest 1560
2. Hector Diez 1515
3. Martyn Cowley 1440
4. Tom Coussens 1424

F1B

[10 minutes next morning flyoff places only]

1. Vladi Andriukov 1560 + 370
2. Alex Andriukov 1560 + 346
3. Roger Morrell 1560 + 325
4. Walt Ghio 1560 + 317
5. Mark Bennett 1560 + 59
6. Rich Rhorke 1560

F1C

[10 minutes next morning]

1. Roger Simpson 1560 + 421
2. Doug Joyce 1560 + 242
3. Ed Carroll 1560 + 131


We had to leave before the Mini-Events finished, and the editorial
assistant went on strike after copying down the above part of the results.
Waegel Field always seems to have that effect on her. Fred Terzian has
promised to send us the full results so we will be publishing them.

Sacramento Scribblings ..

Thanks to Steve Geraty for running the FAI part of the contest.

Great to see Craig Cusick on the field helping out his buddies from down
South. Glad to see that living up there has not affected his sense of humor.

Strong performance from Hector Diez, inspite of grumbling that this F1A
stuff was getting too hard and he should maybe make serious use of those
Nelson's he has.

Larry N did a Stafford Screen and the high tension wires turned
the carbon in his F1B wings back to plain carbon tow. Fortunately the
ground was a little damp so no fire ensued.

George Batuik lost a little dignity, but fortunately nothing else as he
slithered down to the waters edge in the canal to fish out his F1B, aided by
helpful comments from wife Judi and Jerry Fitch.

Gentleman-of-the-meet award to Mark Bennett who rescued Kate Joyce's
F1A when it d/t only feet from a large black bull. But Mark, it was a fair
pay back seeing you piggy backed off Kate's thermal to get that max.

Vladi Andriukov's win in F1B must put him well into the lead in the F1B
category in the America's Cup.

Electronic failure ?! No not a timer, but Fred Terzian had trouble with his
stop watch that caused incorrect times to recorded in the F1B flyoff.
Fortunately this was rectifed and the above results are correct. The
problem appears to be with the start switch. Being mechanical, this is the
part the most likely to go wrong. Do not take your stop watch for granted,
make sure it is working properly.

For those interested, the weather was great until 30 seconds after we
launched in the 5 minute flyoff round, when it really rained hard. My
model was never immersed in water but by the time I got back to the line a
number of the wing panels had water in them. Further flyoff rounds were
postponed until the next morning even though it did clear up. As a
precaution we moved to the top of the hill to keep away from the road and
the canal. It turned out that this was not needed as the models did not drift
that way at all.

The surface of the field is a rough as ever, a number of the derelict fences
have been removed but there is still wood and wire lying about in some
places.


New Tech
--------

Alexander Andriukov was seen testing a new model. This is basically the
same design as his existing models but has the timer molded into the pylon
so it [the timer] does not have a faceplate. This model is still in the
experimental phase.


History .. Past and Future
----------------------------

From John Malkin


Roger,
Being one of the type of people who always offer to go
onto committees I was pleased to accept the post of Recording Officer
of the Wellington MAC (really an extension of the old Upper Hutt
Aeromodellers!) and after I had got my arm set in plaster and ears
bandaged from the badgering I picked up all the books etc that go
with the job.
There is no doubt that history makes for interesting
reading and browsing through the WMAC Records book what did I spot
but one Junior named Roger Morrell who back in June 1963 (when ,did
you say) established a Junior Club record for 1/2 hour Aggregate of
12:42.2 (Max flight time is 3mins and all flights over 30secs count)
Surely this cannot be the same RM that I see is busy in
the SCAT Club these days, I thought to myself, whereon turning over
the page what else pops up but some chap named Martin Gregorie who in
March of 1971 established a WMAC record for 1/2A Power of 540secs
for three flights.
Suddenly it all came back to me that these were the raw
recruits that we shaved some of the rough edges off and sent them
forth to be smoothed down further in other territories.
I must delve further into this mine of information and see
what other Gems spring out.

On a more serious note your article on the Leading Edge is
wired may have to have the word Barb in front of wired, but it
appears to me to be a normal type response from those that have not
had any association with these units.
I may have had a similar opinion if I had not been kept
closely informed of these developments by the SCAT Electronic news
and also the fact that I did aquire one of these units too.
It really is too late to legislate against this type of
approach as it is already being used in quite a few countries and to
change the rules now would only cause more of the dedicated fliers to
turn the energies elsewhere .We only need to look at F1C to see what
the 5 second rule has done to a number of fliers in that class.
The Electronic unit is really here to stay and whatever add
ons are applied to them may never all be known if there is some
unscrupulous modeller out there,but my association with fliers is
that they are capable of monitoring themselves a hell of a lot better
than being legislated against.
At this stage the Electonic Unit is a fairly new device and
it could be likened to the early transistor radios and the
development that has gone into that field up to now.

John

Photos
------

We have some more Verbitsky photos, but are not mailing them this time.
They are available on the SCAT Web page as May 1 News Item. We are
looking into better ways of mailing photos and 3 views and still waiting
for feed back on that. By the way we are not especially predujdiced
towards Evgeny, but that's all the photos we've received so far.

Editing Policy
--------------

In response to some comments, our policy is to edit as little as possible
the material we receive. We believe that exchanging information is more
important than anything else so try and get it out as soon as we can.


...............................................................................

Roger Morrell