www.eugenerc.org Volume 9 Issue 3 March 2013 Club Mailing Address: Eugene RC Aeronauts, PO Box 26344, Eugene, OR. 97402 ERCA News and Information President Mickey Cohen Vice President Mike Winklepleck Secretary Al Barrington Treasurer Al Barrington Safety Roger Dahl Flight Training Marty Wittman Webmaster Jim Corbett Newsletter Jim Corbett Field Maint Doug McWha COMMITTEES Events Brad Werneth Noise Frank Blain AMA# 530 District 11 GOLD LEADERSHIP CLUB Next CLUB Meeting – Thursday March 21, 7 P.M at EWEB. If you have a building project, bring it with you for "Show and Tell". At the February meeting - 21 members and guests attended. Pizza was good, donations just about half covered the pizza cost – Thanks. 50/50 could have been better, some cans of food collected, we could do better on that as well. "Show and Tell" Two members displayed projects. Upcoming ERCA Events Memorial Day Fun Fly – May 27th, Swap and Fly – June 29th, Big Bird Fun Fly – August 10th, Labor Day Fun Fly – Sep 2nd. Web site update and additions The web site has joined the 21st century thanks to Mike Winklepleck and JR Graham. See the VP’s report in this newsletter. If you have not registered on the forum, PLEASE do. Other than being informative it will be used as an information gathering tool and possibly a way to VOTE for officers if any of the offices are contested. Field Projects New pit tables, spectator bleachers, a second solar kit and new pit cover tarp are some of the field upgrades planned for this year. NEEDED – Someone to donate a partial gallon of exterior paint for the bleachers, and someone to paint them. AMA’s Leader Club award 2012 ERCA Members - If you have not received your official gold level of the AMA’s Leader Club award pin Talk to AL Barrington, Sec/Treas., ERCA. NO Indoor Flying during spring break (March 27) See the indoor action at: http://www.eugenerc .org//EEF/EEFindex. htm "PLESE BRING A CAN OF FOOD FOR LANE COUNTY FOOD BANK" At The February Meeting New member. Show and Tell Bipe. Show and Tell Warbird 2013 Meeting Dates - Time 7pm January 23 Wed - EWEB February 26 Tue - Roaring Rapids Pizza March 21 Thurs - EWEB April 22 Mon - EWEB May 29 Wed - EWEB June 25 Tue - Field July 23 Tue - Field August 27 Tue - Field September 23 Mon - EWEB October 22 Tues - Roaring Rapids Pizza November 25 Mon - EWEB December NO MEETING Newsletter / Web editor - Jim Corbett Change – Our Newsletter has a new look and so has the Web site. Mickey has suggested some changes to the front page of the newsletter as well as adding mug shots to the officer’s reports. Also he is responsible for a “Name the Plane” contest and added a bit of humor to the newsletter. Web site moves into the 21st century! Mike Winklepleck has put in a LOT of hours redesigning our web site and several hours retraining yours truly. The OLD web site will be going DORMANT, many of the files on it will become “Archive” links from the new site. Yes, you will still be able to get to a 1975 newsletter to see that ERCA’s budget was a little over $600 for that year. JR Graham has installed a “Club Forum” system on the web site. This was not a simple undertaking. Please contact JR with any questions / suggestion relating to the FORUMS. More change coming As the glitches that occur are dealt with and suggestions from ERCA members are analyzed, and some implemented, both the newsletter and web site will change some more. If you have suggestions relating to the newsletter or web site, please make them to any of our officers or me. My thanks to Mickey, Mike and JR for the efforts they have put forth. New – Updated – GONE It is spring and change is everywhere! New at the field – Thanks to Mickey and Jim Field table – more coming Bleachers - Need paint Updated on the web Web site now using Word Press – 21st century stuff! Thanks Mike Winklepleck New on the web Club Forums on web – Thanks JR Graham GONE - Trash and Trailer - Wood recycled, metal and trailer sold. Before After Name the Plane Contest - Win two 50-50 tickets for the next meeting Email Mickey Cohen with your answer. The first to respond by email (with the correct answer) wins two 50/50 tickets at the next meeting. mcaviation@comcast.net President’s Report – Mickey Cohen Spring officially moves in this week and even though we had a fairly mild winter it will be welcomed with open arms and visions of many great flying days. Much hard work with great results has taken place since we last met. I want to thank JR Graham for the creation of a super forum for club members to share information and communicate. If you haven’t signed in and investigated this site I encourage you to do so. A big thanks goes out to Mike Winklepleck and Jim Corbett for the creation and implementation of the new look to our club website. It’s GREAT! Out at the field changes include a major cleanup of scrap material that had accumulated at the entrance to our field near the mower shed. A big thanks to Jim Corbett and Doug McWha for their work. It’s been hard for me to imagine but Mike Winklepleck sold the old trailer for $300 and it’s gone. Thank you Mike. Some other changes include: A set of bleachers that were built by Jim Corbett with wood donated by Wayne Wahrmund. A new flight line table is currently at the field and six more were built waiting to be delivered to the field. Frank Blain not only donated the material but also built a table. Mel Graham and Jim Corbett took advantage of a damp Saturday and assembled five more tables made from material purchased with the money from the trailer sales. Once again THANX to all! There has been a lot of activity taking place in an effort to change the language in the proposed Oregon Senate Bill 71 to eliminate any reference to model airplane enthusiasts. An alliance made up of myself, Retired Senator Bill Fisher, Van Moore, Bill Fisher Jr., Rich Dunn, John Stroup of the Salem R/C Pilots Association, Gregg Marshall of the Sky Nights R/C Club and Randy Henry from the Mt. Silverwood R/C club have been working on letter writing campaigns and writing testimony that will be presented at the public hearing on the 20th in Salem in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. There has already been some success as the bill presently in at revision 4. I feel confident we will prevail and will report more at the meeting on the 21st. That’s it for now, take advantage of the good weather and get the cobwebs off of those thumbs. FLY SAFE. Mickey Safety Officer’s Report - Roger Dahl I'd just like to once again pass on something that I recently did that pertains to safety. A couple of weeks ago, I had forgotten to turn off my transmitter after flying a plane, and it ran the NiCad batteries down. Upon finding my mistake, I recharged the batteries, thinking that everything was fine. What I did not realize was apparently when the battery loses this much charge, the settings for a particular plane may, or may not be affected. A couple days later, I took one of my small electric planes out to a park just on the outskirts of town to fly. I checked the elevator. I checked the rudder. I checked the throttle, and then I wiggled the ailerons to check them. All looked great, so I took off only to immediately realize that my ailerons were reacting backwards! I tried to fly using only rudder, but I knew it was going to be a matter of time before I did something really bad, so I managed to crash in an open area to avoid any dangers. The plane is destroyed, but I learned from it something that I would like to pass on to others. When we check the controls on our planes, it is important that we not only verify they are "hooked up, and move", but that they are correct! I have thought of a simple reminder for ailerons that I will use from now on. "Roll Right, Left Lowered", which means if I put the stick to the right, I will look for the left aileron to be lowered. Simply wagging them back and forth, as I have learned, can be dangerous! Happy Flying! It’s a bird, it’s a plane, no it’s some old DRONEs in the air! Treasurers Report - Al Barrington The last of the membership renewals are trickling in. As of this report ERCA is at 72 members. We welcome new youth member Tyler Morris. He joined us at the February meeting, sponsored by his dad, Robert Morris Jr. We received a new member application from Kevin Buss. We hope to see him at the next meeting to make his membership official. Again, welcome to all our new members. We look forward to flying with you. According to our Constitution and By- Laws, the March meeting is the deadline for membership renewals before being moved to the inactive members roster. There are 11 members from 2012 who have not renewed yet. ERCA is required to make this official notification to each member of this pending action. I have already made contact with some who have confirmed their intentions to not renew. We wish them well and thank them for their contributions and support. If any member wants to give reasons why these members should be retained as active and not transferred to inactive status, please contact me or the membership at the March meeting. Mike Baker - ? (not confirmed) Ian Berner - ? Lucas Broich - ? Hal Fasig - Not renewing, moving Jon “Todd” Goss - Not renewing Robert Haley - ? Jeff Harris - Not renewing Bill Hastings - ? Rod Madison - With CRCF Bill Schneider - Not renewing, with CRCF Haik Terzyan - ? Business: We recently received our Federal Tax ID number. So, now I will be able to complete the process of getting our nonprofit organization 501c(7) status determination letter. Then the fun part begins, the tax filings and reports. Arrrgh! Are there any CPAs in the house? Treasury: The Treasury stands at $6,597.59 as of this report. This is thanks to membership renewals and generosity. At the February meeting many members donated a total of $85 toward the $161.00 cost of the pizza meeting. Dave Bennett won the 50/50 raffle but donated his half of the $34 pot to the treasury. Jim Corbett and his elves took on some spring cleaning at the field. They hauled off an eye-sore of scrap metal by the tool shed to Schnitzer Steel for a gain of $23. Thank you all for the generosity, dedication, contributions and support that really makes the club work. There are also some unsung heros working behind the scenes who deserve a heap of recognition for their tireless efforts on our newsletter, web sites, forum, events, safety, maintenance, etc. We have a great core of members that all of ERCA is proud of. Seen on a button, “Please don’t yell at me, I’m a volunteer.” Until next time, happy landings. AL Barrington Sec / Treas, ERC Vice President’s Report I would like to talk about the technical side of our club in this edition of our monthly newsletter. First and foremost I would like to mention that Jim Corbett has spent countless hours building and maintaining our website and I for one would like to thank him! As you all are aware if you own a cell phone, a computer or anything electronic things change very quickly. Website technology changes just as fast and with that Jim and I thought it was time for a major website overhaul. We have designed and created a new site that will have replaced the old site by the time this newsletter has been published and mailed. We hope that you enjoy the new format and it’s one you can be proud to show your friends and family as you talk about this awesome hobby. We also are hopeful that it will show the public that we are an active club and we are keeping up with the times. Please take the time to look at the site and send us your comments and feedback. Along with that JR has lead a major effort to keep the club connected through the use of the new ERCA Forum (http://www.eugenerc.org/forums/). I have enjoyed using the forum and look at it every day. If you have not registered for the forum yet please do so. I consider it pure joy to talk with other members of the club all week long about RC topics. Thank you JR for all the hard work and continued efforts! Mike At the field in March Forum Administrator’s Report At the last club meeting we announced our new club forum. I have spent a lot of time putting this forum together for our club website. I am aware of how the feelings of public forums can be different from one person to the next. Some of you may be more than willing to register and start posting, while others just enjoy browsing them for reading purpose only and do not care to post anything personally. This is where I would like to try and give a second thought on the matter. First of all, this is OUR forum. We own it! That means that should anyone outside the club register and start posting crud that is insulting, disrespectful or anything else that would be considered intolerable treatment to our club members, we can have them removed! That does not mean we will not welcome outsider's to join and post comments just the same. We will simply have the ability to moderate what go's on in there. Second, and maybe the most important thing to consider, is if we have all the club members at least register to the forum we would then have one of the best methods there is to holding POLL's that all club members may cast a vote on the whatever subject matter at hand. This can be done by having all of our true club members assigned to a specific forum member group. Once we have this set up, we can create voting topics that only those within the forum group can access! This will mean that even if you miss a meeting, you will be able to vote on any subject matter that comes about. This will make our club meetings much smoother since we will not have to worry so much about how many people actually show up to voice an opinion! When we have a voting or POLL started, a simple mass email to the registered club members go's out, and you will have some time (days or even weeks) to log on and vote! That's it! If nothing else, this should be the most important reason for you to register! Third, with our club members joined/registered, we can all be able to share information with each other, stay in touch, post images of our projects as we see fit, and everything else that go's along with a web based forum, all at the comfort from home! (or wherever you may be at a computer) With my installing a nice blog system as well, you now have your own personal forum within the forum to create whatever topic you feel like creating! No need to find the right category to post your subject matter! You have the power to create your own category, and as many as you want! Start your own build thread, create a product discussion, make a thread about your flight reports, or just rant about anything that's going on in the world that you feel like discussing with others! On top of that, with the blog system, you will also have the ability to choose who CAN and CAN NOT access it! Maybe you only want a certain member to see it, or just our club members.. or maybe even nobody at all! I could continue with more reasons why you should register, but I think you can get the idea! So with that said, I URGE all club members to register today! Also, should anyone have any issues or concerns, of just plain questions about how to use the forum or anything else at all, please do not hesitate to send me an email. Or better yet, send me a Private Message through the forums! Thanks, and see you on the forums! -JR Graham aroura420@hotmail.com Club Deals http://www.eugenerc.org/clubdeals.php ServoWires – Use coupon code ERCA for a 10% discount. Due to mailing costs will ask for a minimum $10.00 purchase RCFoamCutter - For a 10% discount and free shipping, mention that you are a member of the "Eugene RC Aeronauts" when ordering. TruTurn - to provide prize awards for our events. At the field in March --- That's All Folks -- Newsletter Editor 1618 Gilham Rd. Eugene, OR. 97401 March 2013 «FirstLast» «Street» «CityStZip» 2013 ERCA Club Contacts - President: Mickey Cohen - 541-953-9902 - mcaviation@comcast.net Vice President: Mike Winklepleck - 541-729-5894 - heidisman1@gmail.com Sec/Treasurer: Al Barrington - 541-935-4960 - albarrington@msn.com Safety Officer: Roger Dahl - 541-579-5959 - roger@artistry-in-motion.com Groundskeeper: Doug McWha - 541-741-3326 - flyduke@comcast.net Newsletter Editor: Jim Corbett - 541-344-5022 - james.corbett@comcast.net Next CLUB Meeting – Thursday March 21, 7 P.M at EWEB Newsletter ONLINE at: http://eugenerc.org/NL/CURRENTNEWSLETTER.pdf December 2009 2 March 2013 9