SEN- January 21 2000
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- Category: Archive 2000
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News and Reports 2000 - First half
SCAT Electronic News 21 Jan 2000
"SCAT - 40 Years of FAI Free Flight Competition"
Table of Contents
=================
A beginner's story - Pedersen and Markos
Story and Photos From Eloy - Davis
Peter King - Brokenspar
Re: aluminum airplanes - Gregorie
A beginner's story
==================
Transcribed and unedited text of a letter from a young modeler.
It was written on lined notebook paper in pencil. It's delightful!
He lives in Duluth MN of all places.
12/22/99
Dear Mr Markos,
I have been envolved in outdoor free-flight for as long as I can
remember. My Grandpa recently (about 2 years ago) introduced me
to Indoor Free Flight. It has taken me a year and a half from then
for me to get envolved in Indoor FF. I tried to start with
a bostonian as a first serious I-FF model, but I hadn’t gathered
enough experiance at that point. When the “pup” was finished,
it weighed in at 22 gms. It was basically half glue. It flew
for only 16 seconds, at that time though, I was proud of it.
(I guess I still am.)
After the bostonian, my grandpa bought me a
"Not Just Another Pretty Face" P-30 model. I built it and flew it
on vacation in Oregon. It flew for a whopping FIVE MINUTES on it’s
third flight with only 600 winds in it. This got me hooked on FF
outdoor.
In September I went to a MMAC (Minneapolis Model Aero Club) outdoor
contest, and took first place (I punched in three maxes) against
some well known older flyers such as Warren Ringlien, Joe Hueth
and Jack O'leary. I have now gone on to build a Winterhawk II,
and a Jesse James towline glider to name a few.
Now that I am well on my way to mastering outdoor,
I want to become more active in indoor FF.
Just three months ago I built an Easy B from IMS and test flew it in
my house. It was a bit overweight, so the best time I got out of it
was 45 seconds in my living room. It soon after broke when my
sister came in my room and stepped on it. (I learned a valuable
lesson. NEVER LEAVE AN AIRPLANE ON THE FLOOR.)
I then decided to go with something a little less delecate,
so I ordered a IMS pennyplane & built it. I test flew it in my school
gym, and it flew nicely, but it was nose heavy. I would have moved
the wing forward if I had the chance, but some wacky fifth grader
ripped open my Airplane box and stepped on it about five times.
I came back into the gym with the can of Pepsi I had left for just
to see the culprit snuffing out the last chords of life my pennyplane
had left. When I got to the plane, It was in about 1000 pieces.
Thats the last time he's ever going to mess with a big 8th grader
again, he'll have three weeks of detention to thing about it anyway.
So, for lthe last couple of days, I have desperately been searching
for a replacement. Then, right before I was Just going to give up
on lightweight indoor, I noticed your article on the Double Whammy
in the Nov. ’99 edition. After reading the article, and deciding
on building The Double Whammy, I Noticed the wonderfull phrase
at the end about also printing an article on the pennyplane version
If there was enough response. This would be a fantastic thing.
This seems to be one of my last hopes to the horrible situation
I am in. Please hear my desperate plea.
David Pedersen
age:13 ( P.S. Happy Landings! & sorry for the bad punctuatio
[In recent issues we have some 'more experienced' members
reminisssing about what they did when they were David's
age and just got started - their experinces are just like
David's, so I guess things really do not change all
that much after all.]
Photos From Eloy
=================
Thought these two photos were interesting and they each have a story,
also a little story with no photo!
This photo is is of my son Evan who is showing a very interested young
guy how his Prima F1B works. There were a group of boy scouts that came
out and flew a delta dart contest on Saturday which was very cute and
hotly contested. This was a competitive and energetic group of kids and
I thought that whoever had the idea of bringing them out to the contest
to fly their delta darts was right on. I think it came about from Jim
Farmer who is an old buddy of Jim Parker's in El Paso who was a good
free flighter when we were all teenage punk flyers (we are middle age
punk flyers now!) One of the cub scouts was his son but I'm not sure if
he is the one in the picture. The Delta Darters were getting 8 to 10
second flights and the group energy was about what you would expect
until Evan upped the ante and took my old Bob Wilder winder over there
and suddenly the flights were up to 30 seconds and the energy level went
proportionately higher. Evan commented to me afterwards that the kid in
the photo kept coming back with his Dart saying "just one more time" and
did this about 6 times. Sounds like a normal kid who never knows when to
quit! I had a real heartfelt few minutes watching these two chatter back
and forth about the wakefield, gave me goose bumps and all that, being
the sentimental guy that I am.
Evan felt like he had his worst flying day ever but I thought it was his
best as he had a learning experience on every flight ( timer in wrong
notch (twice!) waiting too late in the round to fly, cracking a wing
while holding his model between his legs to set the timer, having the
front ring come loose a little and flying anyway making for a bad prop
fold) etc., etc., , I don't know about you but I never had anything like
this happen to me (yeah, right!). I had to laugh on one of his last
flights when right after he launched it he ran off after saying "wonder
what's gonna go wrong this time", Acting like the wise older father I of
course said, "nothing will go wrong, you've already made every mistake
possible". Well, about two minutes into the flight damned if it didn't
DT early again. In spite of it all he got all 7 flights in and did them
all with a model he built so I felt pretty good about it.
The other photo is of Jim Parker a.k.a. "NordicMon" in the back of his
minivan and was taken as he was trying to set his electronic timer for
the fly off flight with Steve Spence. Jim was using a little bitty teeny
tiny PC computer with a screen about the size of the one on my pocket
calculator (clearly not a macintosh!) and was having a hard time seeing
the screen in the bright light. At one point he looked like the Shah
with the towel draped over his head in an effort to see the screen and
get the timer settings right. The short of the story is that the result
was a stripped servo gear (setting the bunt time for five minutes was
overdoing it a bit) so Jim had to resort to one of his older and not
recently flown models for the fly off. Steve got off early in the fly
off round in some decent air, Jim towed a minute later and putzed around
upwind for close to 10 minutes. Beautiful launch and a well trimmed
model but no air. The rest is history. Moral of the story? Well, the
obvious one is to always use a Mac for any computer work, but the less
obvious one is that you never know when some little glitch in your
system will sneak up and bite you in the ass right when you don't want
it to. I now refer, reffer, reefer (damn, never could spell that word
right) to this kind of event as a "Parkerism" which is sometimes called
s_ _t happens. In this case this is one of the few rare and actual
photographs ever taken of s_ _t happening. I'm gonna give this photo to
Jim to put in his model box as a subtle reminder.
Speaking of "Parkerisms" I managed to pull a few myself. In one of the
rounds where I was doing a remarkable job of towing (i.e. I hadn't
tripped during the tow) I managed to make brilliant maneuver when I
zoomed the model off and threw the towline only to realize that I didn't
have enough speed and the line stayed on the hook. I was in lift but it
was mild so the the model went downwind with the bottom of the towline
going from barely touching the ground to 30 or 40' high. After running
200 yards and almost passing out Evan came roaring up behind me on the
dirt bike, we chased it until it was right in the middle (unbeknownst to
me) of the old timers launching area where the line was again at ground
level. I was of course looking straight up and running in circles like a
madman jumping up and trying to catch the line. I heard all kinds of
yelling and commotion ( I thought they were cheering for me, turns out
they were yelling at me to get the hell out of the launch area). I would
imagine that from even a modest distance I probably looked like a
lunatic running and jumping up at the sky and grabbing at the air, kinda
like those street people that walk around cursing and waving their arms.
Well, I did manage to get ahold of the line finally and after doing a
few circle tows I centered the glider even better in the thermal and
then proceeded to do the exact same thing and launched the model once
again with the line still on, as I was nearly exhausted and out of
breath all I could say was " aaaaaaaawwwwwwwwww _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ .
One of the old timer guys had the audacity to ask me if I did that on
purpose. I wanted to kick him right in the butt. Evan walked back to get
his flight in and I took off on the dirt bike cursing a blue streak and
saying "what a dumb ass" over and over again. Luckily for me the model
came down after 5 minutes and landed in the middle of a HUGE field of
tumbleweeds, the kind where there are more weeds than dirt. Have any of
you ever tried to get your towline out of and untangled from 50 million
tumble weeds? It was not a pretty sight and I came back looking like a
pin cushion. Not exactly a world class performance but at least I got
the model back. Oh how I love this sport!
Thermals and cat tails going up!
Jon Davis
[Jon - You may not have considered your third place at Eloy a world
class performance - but you beat some world class flyers!.
The reason I chose the Palm Pilot for my e-timers was because
the monochrome screen is easy to read in sunlight. I happy that all
I had to do to clean my timer after going to Eloy was blow the dust out,
now the prop hub, tool box, come to think of it everything else was
another story.]
Peter King
==========
Author : This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
( Peter plays alto )
Peter,
Why don't you tell all. These friends of yours have just seen the tip of
the iceberg.
Hardy
[When I look at how so many of my fellow modellers are musicans,
may be not at Peter's level but none the less not too bad
{Andy Crisp, Dave Roundsaville, Don Zink, Chuck Dorsett, John Pratt,
Bob Norton, Norm Furutani, Toshi Hatazawa, etc} -
I wonder if only I could make music I could make my models fly.
I take some hope in that I have never heard Alexander Andriukov
involved in any musical activity !]
Re: aluminum airplanes
======================
Author : This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Can-Du Publications
115 Highway W
Ironton, MO. 63650
Joe and Beth Barker
Tel: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
URL: http://www.modelflight.com/can-du.html
.....................
Roger Morrell
