SCAT Electronic News 11 October 1999
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SCAT Electronic News 11 October 1999
"SCAT - 40 Year's of FAI Free Flight Competition"
Table of Contests
=================
25th California FAI Invitational
Livotto Learnings
Free Means Saying No - Parsons
Removing tissue/Poly Span covering - Andressen
RDT - Malkin
FIC - Wood
The RCDT discussion - Linkosalo
25th California FAI Invitational
================================
Oct 9 and 10 1999
F1A - went to 13 min round
==========================
1. Puhakka 3552
2. Cowley 3881
3. Weiler 2993
4. Brun 2926
5. Bradley 2740
F1B
1, 2,3 Brush, Piserchio, Pratt [to be complete, real soon]
4. Tymchouk 3103
5. Furutani 3027
F1C
===
1. Verbitsky 2580
2. Kerger 2340
3. Carroll 1904
4. Keck 1874
5. Archer 1753
F1G
===
1. Cooney 1213
2. Clapp 1152
3. Fitch 998
F1H
===
1. Cowley 1667
2. Stamov 1591
3. Van Nest 1505
F1J
===
1. 2 Johannes, Augustus
3. Gutai
Juniors
=======
On the Junior front Dallas Parker and Evan Davis [F1A and F1B]
were top scorers with a rumored 100 and 98 points respectively towards the
junior team. Also rumored was the fact that Dallas
had a cracked bone in arm because od a soccer incident.
Dallas you can follow after your father's tradition by
getting good results, but stay away from those injuruies.
I did see the Halseys , Steven Coussens and
newcomer Steve Davis [Evan's older brother] all on the
F1A flight line too. The points are a percentage of the winner's
time. not including fly off. So you can figured
that Dallas made the flight off and Evan was close.
The junior race for next year's team is very tight, this
is great seeing this level of flying.
Livotto Learnings
=================
Victor Stamov had and F1A and F1H both with the new Red Magic.
The F1A was flown by Randy Weiler and the F1H by Victor. They
both placed in the money. The installation and setup looked very
clean.
Speaking of clean, Victor's local guy, Randy Weiler was sporting
a new hairstyle that has to be see to be belived. But
at least Randy has not gone the Yul Brunner way of George
Batiuk.
As usual for this the contest the weather was perfect. The first
day was not too hot. On the Sunday it got into 3 digits
and became what Norm Smith rated as a 2 gallon day. Norm
has much experience of working in the desert and that
means if you did not drink 2 gallons [ 8 litres] of water
you would be in trouble. The excellent weather brought out the
thermals as the day progressed. Things were not easy as will
become apparant when the full scores are released. There
was almost no wind so one could easily chase on foot. But the
air was turblent and popped people out of the good lift
with even trying. I think that models that are good in the comparative calm
of Central Europe do not always do so well in these conditions.
At the very end of Sunday when they would have flown the
the 13 minute F1B round [we gum banders have to be a macho
as the Nordics] there was an abrupt weather change with a
very strong wind. With the rapidly approaching dark it
was not possible to complete that final round. The
tie breaker for America's cup points will be flown at the Sierra
Cup or Patterson contests. Because of very low wind from
the entrire time [except the last 30 minutes] timing
was not really a problem and there were not any OOS [out of
sight] before the max reported.
There was a significant number of visitors from abroad , Verbitsy,
Stamov, Abad, Malkin, Kulmakko, a bunch of Canadians, Gutai,....
as well a people from all over the US. Most showed up at the
Mega Pot luck dinner on Saturday. This is a great tradition
promoted by Pierre Brun who has tried to set an environment
where we can all eat and socialize together. The suprise wedding
party/roast was an outstanding sucess as everyone knew it
was happending except the couple who had recently got married
with letting us know. Fortunately the ever vigilant sisterhood
was watching . [yes I do know about Gutai, but he's
not from another country, just another planet !].
A sign of how good the party was was that Dave Roundsaville
turned up for the action.
From the scores you see that most of the events had a significant
number of fly off rounds. This is interesting in that it is something
that no simple rules change would alter. On the F1A day the weather
was perfect and sun set was at 6:30 pm. In the 11 minute round at
5:30 two of the flyers found good lift. By the time of the 13
minute round the left got much harder to find and Risto Puhakka,
the winner did just over 4 minutes to win.
A similar thing happend for F1B, the conditions were excellent, the thermals
stronger and a number of people kept on finding good air. This is brought
out by the 5th place getter Norm Furutani - Norm was using some old
'green' tan2 from June 94. This as by no means as good as the latest
stuff most of the others were using. However Norm kept on picking the
good air and was only eliminated in the 11 min round because
his d/t only went to 8 and half minutes.[ and I had offered
him a Black Magic electronic timer a while back!] In the 9 min round
he had been so high that the early d/t did not matter. Norm
was flying a Vivchar model that was about 5 years old with
a fixed pitch prop and effectively the energy of 30 grams
of rubber. As they say, the thermal does know what the
torque meter said.
Some days you are going to have a contest in great conditions, with
a number of great flyers who are going to turn in incredible
performances - you can't stop it, so why try ..
Free Means Saying No
====================
Author : This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
First, hats off to Chuck Markos for reminding us that FF is also an
adventure. Chuck's comments regarding RCDT were right on the money.
I find all this dialog regarding radio activated DT most distressing. Just
because the technology has come into it's own and is available, doesn't mean
it needs to be implemented. The minor added convienence comes at the expense
of destroying the essence of Free Flight. Radio assisted FF is an oximoron.
Free means free of any human influence once the model is launced. If the FF
model can be controlled in anyway by someone on the ground, then the model is
not free. I fail to see any remarkable difference in dethermalizing a model
down wind after a max with a timer or a radio. In either case, the model is
still out there somewhere, and even those that fear gophers and stickers in
their socks, will have to retrieve.
So, the RCDT controls when the flight ends. Will controlling where the
flight ends be the next step? With all the wimpering about the rigors of
model retreival, future FF models could be directed back to the launch site.
No more stickers in the socks.
What's really needed is a FF Simulator CDROM. The control freaks could enjoy
perfect FF as never before, and no chases.
On another subject: Who are all these modelers proxy flying some east
european guys models? Well, that's what we used to call it.
Dave Parsons
Removing tissue/Poly Span covering
==================================
Author : This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Roger,
Here's a super hint from Tucsonion Dick Strang who is a former PMAC
President despite living 125 miles away. Should be a welcome relief from
RDT and can save a lot of methyl chloride and chiselling and sanding and
cussing.
>From: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
>Subject: Removing tissue/Poly Span covering
>Date: Thu, 30 Sep 1999 17:31:16 EDT
>
>I had a couple of models that needed the covering replaced due to the dirty
>old desert
>plus a miscue by me in finishing one. The process I used was wrap the item
>in three layers of paper towel that is soaked in acetone. Then wrap the
>thing
>with Aluminum
>foil for a seal. Let set for 15 to 30 Min., unwrap and the covering
>affected
>will usually
>come off in one piece. You can do the top and bottom at the same time.
>Light
>sand and add a coat of dope and your ready to cover again. I did two
>wings,
>one coupe and one 1/2A, and one stab today in about two hours.
>..............Thermals, Dick Strang
Dick,
reply from This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Dick,
Thanks for pointing out a great method that few are aware of.
That is the ONLY way to uncover.
My variation was using plastic wrap instead of aluminum. Being clear it was
easy to see what was going on and the acetone resulted in seal @ overlap.
No paper towels were used. As covering was about 20 yr old I left in "bag"
for about an hour, outdoors. The Jap tissue came off in full panels and no
glue joints opened.
Sal was to place graphic description in POLYSPAN pkgs but didn't get a round
tuit.
This is another case of "Time Cures". When in high school it was obvious
that I was a backyard mechanic as fingers never cleaned too well despite
brushing with gobs of emulsifying hand cleaner. Then would come swimming
Thursday and hands looked like I never opened the hood after a half hour in
the chlorine.
RDT
===
Author : This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Roger,
Enough of the emotional clap-trap on Free Flight.What I (the
for,s) are really talking about is the termination of flight, that is free
flight termination, and am fed up with having to climb trees to rescue my
model or traipse 3 miles after a giant size thermal has sucked the model up
to some great height and refuses to release it despite having the most
positive angled DT.
I want the ability to terminate the flight when I think enough
time has elapsed to allow a max to occur and also miss all the traps and
dangers that can and do happen. It may be OK for those guys still young
enough to leap over tall buildings and scale the side of the Empire State,
but I just chicken out from scaling trees 70 or 80 feet high and other such
derring-do actions. Age is catching up with me as with us all, and I could
leap 5 wire fences with the best in the earlier days but not any more.
To all of the people who are working towards the RDT , I say
carry on and tell me when and where I can get one or two, because as soon
as I can they will be fitted AND USED.
Flying sites of good size are becoming few and far and having
flown on a small site for some time with a belt of king size plane eating
trees , I want to be able to have the pleasure of ensuring my Free Flight
model returns to the ground ( as in dirt,ground) and does not lodge up in a
tree, high tension wires, disappear under some moving vehicle (heaven help
us if that happened and an accident occurred) or some other nasty, so keep
up the pressure you Electronic whizzo,s.
John .
FIC
===
Author : This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Hi there from New Zealand can anyone answer my question
Has any one purchased either a
fully built up FIC or parts, from IMG International Model Group, how
did they find the quality & price
I would appreciate any feedback I can get. ?
cheers Nik
The RCDT discussion
===================
Author : This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
I think it is time for me to put my spoon into the soup... I'm writing
this based on the opinion that I would not like to see a new gadget,
obligatory to use, but manufactured only by a handful of people, brought
into the hobby.
The RCDT is claimed to have an advantage when you can DT your model at the
spot where you want to. This is obviously correct for trimming, but less
that in competition, where the model is at DT time far downwind and it is
hard to tell what the model is flying over. So this advantage is really
for trimming only.
Another aspect is the ability to DT WHENever you want. This would bring
advantage in two aspects. First, you could bring your model down earlier
from a strong thermal by a premature DT, or you could abort a mislaunced
flight (at least in F1A & F1C, for F1B this would be quite risky). This
brings a big advantage for competition, saving lots of retrieving distance
or even giving a chance to re-fly after a pilot mistake. It would give a
great advantage to those flying RCDT models over those who don't.
Ok, provided that we do not want to make the gadget obligatory, but still
want to keep the possibility to use it for trimming? Obvious solution is
to ban it's use for the competition. But this does not need to be the
case, as it might be useful to use the gadget to bring the model down if
e.g. timer fails. I think we could re-write the rules so that a flier
using RCDT needs to give the controller to the time-keepers, so that these
can control that the gadget is used only *after* the max is achieved.
Also, to avoid any questions of using two transmitters, a new rule could
be incorporated, stating that the timekeepers need to report if the model
is observed to DT *before* max is achieved, in which case the model should
be inspected, and the pilot should report why this happened and prove that
the DT was no intentional (but due to mis-set timer or something like
that).
On a second thought, this might turn complicated. Maybe the RCDT should
just be disabled for the competition...
-Tapio-
.................
Roger Morrell
