Volume 4 Issue 8 AMA #530 District 11 www.eugenerc.com August 2008 Club Mailing Address: Eugene R/C Aeronauts, PO Box 26344, Eugene, OR. 97402 ERCA News and Information Next CLUB Meeting - August 26, 7:00 pm at the field. If you have a building project, bring it with you for "Show and Tell". At the July Meeting - There were 21 members and guests at the meeting. Rules clarification: any AMA member may assist another AMA member with flight instruction (buddy box etc.) but all non AMA members must only be instructed by an AMA Intro Pilot. New member Levi Mosley was welcomed into the club and Jim Sherlock was welcomed back. Jeff Engal announced the east Springfield property discussed as a possible backup site will be changing hands soon and will not be available to us. Our own Al Barrington announced he, and other members of the Lane County Sheriff's Office, will be walking in the Relay for Life cancer fundraiser at LCC on July 25th and 26th. The club voted to sponsor his efforts to the tune of $100. Several members stepped up with personal donations as well. There was much discussion over improving our flying site by adding a north/south runway, of approximately 300 feet in length, to allow more flying with the strong northerly prevailing winds. The new surface would begin at the road, adjacent to the current "electric" runway and extend to the NNE, crossing the existing runway at just less than 90 degrees. A rough estimate of $1800 to fill, grade and seed the needed area to match the condition of the current runway. The consensus of the membership - those present - was the projected outlay of $1000 - accepting that the gravel and sand had already been green lighted by vote - was worth the added benefit of a n/s runway. A motion was made and the vote carried with a stipulation that the project not exceed $1800. More next month, hopefully. FUN Fly - Our annual FUN Fly is scheduled for August 16th and 17th, 2008. Food will be available both days beginning at approximately 11:00 am. The two day prize theme will be "Poker Fly". Get a card for each flight you make, best hand at the end of each day will be a winner. Khoi volunteered to approach Eugene Toy & Hobby for gift certificates to be used for Fun Fly prizes. Carl Henson Field -On a sad note we received word that our field's namesake, Carl Henson, is in very poor health and will likely never visit the field again. He is currently in hospice care. Our thoughts and prayers go with the family. Meeting minutes are ONLINE at: http://erca.home.comcast.net/%7Eerca/Meetings.html Presidents Corner Our annual Fun-Fly event is August 16-17 and could be our biggest and best yet. There is sure to be a lot of fun and a lot of potential new members will be there with questions and interest, so let's make them all feel welcome! Please do your best to make it to the event. It is especially important that all club safety officers be there to assist in making sure that we have a safe event. I look forward to seeing you all there. I actually got the day off from work on Saturday, so I'll be there both days to help with the event and hopefully have some fun. The official flying season is almost over, believe it or not! It seems like we've been haunted by the wind gods this summer, because almost everyday we've had gusty, blustery conditions that keep a lot of planes grounded. I encourage you to seize the opportunity to practice flying in the wind and get as much time in it as you can. It will make you a more skillful, more confident pilot, and you won't be so nervous about it as you get used to flying in those conditions. Don't be afraid to spend your entire flight practicing landings and approaches. My apologies once again for not being at a meeting. I always swore to myself that I would never miss a meeting while I was your president, and now I've missed two! This time, the meeting fell on the day after I had surgery on my throat to get rid of extra tissue that was causing sleep apnea. I had hoped that I could at least make an appearance, but I was in absolutely no condition to do so. Regardless, I apologize. At one of the meetings, there was a discussion about the officers of the clubs that don't pay dues. If we can afford the luxury, I believe that we should comp the dues for all officers, because the amount of time and effort they put into the club is worth much more that the cost of a year's dues. Unfortunately, with six safety officers on the roster, that did hurt us a little bit. Perhaps in the future we can resume the practice of exchanging dues for labor with those folks. In the discussion, the Vice President was put into that same group. This part I don't agree with. I have witnessed the amount of time and energy that our current VP has put into the position, and he has truly earned his keep. Did you know that in our by-laws the VP is also the contest director? It has been Mel's job to organize events this year, which can be a daunting task. He also keeps track of the minutes and meeting attendance. He prepares a written summary of both for me and the newsletter editor. I can't help but feel like we have inadvertently, unintentionally minimized Mel's efforts this year with that discussion. I submit my sincere gratitude to Mel for everything he has done. I had the opportunity to attend the Oregon International Air Show up in Hillsboro on August 10th. Among the full-scale demonstrations, there was an R/C demonstration by two skilled pilots and their 40% Extra and Edge aircraft. It was a great display and I imagine their club will benefit from all the attention, (the club was the Oregon Miniature Aircraft Squadron in Banks, where yours truly learned to fly R/C 21 years ago). I think our club could benefit from having an aerobatics team as well. If anyone is interested, please let me know. If nothing else, it could be a lot of fun. That's all for now. As always, if you have questions, concerns, comments, etc. about the club, meetings, policies, or whatever, please come talk to me. Patrick Willis ERCA President 2007-2008 Treasurers Corner Al Barrington reports as of the July meeting we have 102 members confirmed. He also reported that the monthly rate for the clubs sanitation needs (porta-potty) are going up again due to increasing fuel costs. Florence Airport Event Florence Airport Appreciation Day August 30, 2008 09:00 - until ? ( Full Scale Airplane Rides ( R/C flight Demos and Display Buddy box flying available after demo ( B.B.Q and Social gathering Come on over Directions: Take highway 126 to Florence, cross highway 101 travel about 4 blocks, turn right on Kingswood travel another 6 blocks and you are there. (2001 Airport Way) Contact: Russ Peterson 997-3202 KUDOS Al Barrington brought his bar-b-que skills to the field and showed them off to us all by superbly cooking burgers and dogs to perfection. Thanks to Al for giving up some flying time to feed us. WITH THE WEEKDAY WARRIORS - August 2008 Here we are, in the middle of those few precious weeks when this place tries hard to pretend it is some other state rather than the damp, dank, dismal Oregon it really is. The good weather has brought out the Weekday Warriors in force. Some days we have so many you'd think it was a weekend. No sooner did I write last time that Wayne Wahrmund's landing were bumpy, but serviceable, than he begins making very good ones as matter of course. I gather that he did deck the LT-40 while I was away, but, with the assistance of Chuck Jenkins, it was again airworthy in short order. Wayne's been getting a lot of time in on it and there is said to be a U-Can-Do in the offing. Chuck Jenkins doesn't even have to pay any attention to Wayne nowadays and he's concentrating on Vein Wells and his Super Stik. Things were progressing until late last week when the Stik refused to level out from the initial turn after takeoff. Neither Vein nor Chuck could do anything effective and the plane went in very hard at full throttle. The fin remained recognizable and the landing gear didn't look so bad either. Your columnist once lost a Sweet Stik that way when the switch simply came to pieces, but I haven't heard the verdict on Vein's mishap. The Twist is marketed as a model for that utterly graceless flailing about the sky called "3-D flying". Doug Devereaux has one he's modified with view toward flying it in a smoother manner. Results have not been entirely satisfactory to date - "I'm trying to make it fly in a way it wasn't intended to" - but Doug persists. "The usual suspects" have been flying the usual planes. Doug McWha, Jim Corbett, Ken Springate, Frank Blain, Dave Simmington ... . Ken was flying a real Frank-Blain model -an Excelleron. Ken's has a Magnum 120 4-stroke for power and he is finding the combination quite satisfactory. (But tell me, why does Ken so steadfastly refuse to post his card in the impound when he takes the frequency pin?) Frank himself has been favoring his Edge 540 in recent days, the one with the Fuji 43 gas-burner. "Very stable and gentle" is the pilot's opinion. No "3-D" flier is our Frank. El Goodman is flying his "very last season" (he says) with his faithful Kadet Senior. The very-well-worn Saito 50 4-stroke only just gets it off the ground, but after that all is well. Okay, "well" up to point. The Saito quit one day when the Senior was too far out to get back to the strip and it settled into the deep, deep grass. Chick Foster volunteered to retrieve it and he did, but it was hard slog. know how he felt. The dethermalizer on my Fubar 36 did not deploy fully that same day and I had to go a good 300 yds into that field and back. I was ready to crawl on my hands and knees by the time it was over. Rich Richardson's 12' Giant Rider doesn't show up on the field too often, probably because it is a bit of a pain to erect and rig, but it was present last Thursday (8/7). The muffler blew loose in flight, but the unkind among us were opining that the engine was just as noisy with as without. This one swings one of those big, expensive wooden props and, when a tip broke off, Rich succumbed to the temptation to glue it back on. It held for some time, but let go on that Thursday - up in the air well away from us all, luckily. (Have you noticed a mean tendency in this column to name-and-shame?) Marty Whittman's been helping Gary Brewer with an 0.S. 40-powered low-wing, trike-geared ship with a longish, square-ish canopy. It looks familiar, but I can't remember the name. Neither can Marty or Gary, so there! And while I think of it, I call your attention to the fact that Gary is another single-sticker, like yours truly. WITH THE WEEKDAY WARRIORS - August 2008 continued His is a JR which I do not think was produced for very long. Very fine fellows though we single-stick types may be, we are no longer catered to at all by the radio makers. Yet another sign that Civilization is on that slippery slope to Oblivion. Marty has also had a young student (Josh?) flying his Kadet Senior and that model flies so well that it had Jacob Blewett waxing nostalgic for the days of yore (last year) when he flew his Senior. He was even moved to consider building (!) a new one. You will remember that I set out to England in July with the goal of seeing a lot of nice civil aircraft in the air. Alas, almost all the real lightweights were kept on the ground by the blustery, turbulent, even rainy weather. Not that I didn't see some interesting machines in flight for the first time: Curtiss P-36 and P-40B, Hawker Nimrod, Messerschmitt Bf108, deHaviland Dragon, Bell P-39, a Griffon-engined Spitfire with contra-rotating props, and a late-model (1918) Bleriot XI. Photos? Need you ask? I have heard an otherwise respectable member of this club say that his newer generation does not read; it looks things up on the "Internet". Consider the following: I went down to The Aviation Bookshop in Tunbridge Wells and bought a stack of books. The proprietor put them into a large, red, plastic bag marked "Spitfire - Fine Kentish Ale" and I remarked that I'd heard the stuff was pretty good, but that I'd never tasted it. "Thee this is your lucky day." he replied, "We have a promotion going with them." With that, he slipped a bottle of the fine Kentish ale into the bag with the books. Tell me, has your "Internet" ever netted you a free bottle of beer? And, yes, it's not bad stuff at all. C.O'D. A Tuesday at the field At one point during the morning there were 12 vehicles in the parking lot. There was flying also! A few of the aircraft that flew Tuesday. Community service Our own Al Barrington and other members of the Lane County Sheriff's Office, walked in the Relay for Life cancer fundraiser at Lane Community College on July 25th and 26th. The club voted to sponsor his efforts to the tune of $100. Several members stepped up with personal donations as well. Good JOB Al!! The above are some of the photos our team took during the American Cancer Society "Relay for Life" event on July 25-26. Many thanks to the club for the sponsorship. ACS expressed their appreciation for the ERCA club's donations. - Al Barrington Big Bird Fly In March 1st More pictures on the web site. FUN Fly 2008 August 16th and 17th Eugene R/C Aeronauts 3rd Annual FUN FLY Everyone invited - No entry fee! August 16th and 17th, 2008  Bring any and all airplanes ... do any kind of flying!  Every flight gets an entry in the "flying raffle"  Flying raffle prizes will be awarded after a drawing  BBQ Saturday and Sunday at NOON Contact: Pat Willis - 541-543-8999 p-willis@msn.com for information. Academy of Model Aeronautics membership required --- That's All Folks --- Eugene R/C Aeronauts Newsletter Editor 1618 Gilham Rd. Eugene, OR. 97401 AUGUST 2008 Name Address City, ST Zip ERCA CLUB CONTACTS President: Pat Willis - 543-8999 - p-willis@msn.com Vice President: Mel Thompson - 746-5699 - met324@comcast.net Sec/Treasurer: Al Barrington - 935-4960 - albarrington@msn.com Groundskeeper: Doug McWha - 741-3326 - flyduke@comcast.net Field Marshals: John Bowhan - 607-5752 - jbowhan@epud.net Frank Blain, Jim Corbett, Bill Hollingsworth, Khoi Tran, Alan Wellentin Newsletter Editor: Jim Corbett - 344-5022 - james.corbett@comcast.net Next CLUB Meeting - August 26, 7:00 pm at the field. Newsletter ONLINE at: http://erca.home.comcast.net/%7Eerca/NL/ CURRENTNEWSLETTER.pdf ?? ?? ?? ?? August 2008 7