Volume 5 Issue 5 Pages 6 AMA #530 District 11 www.eugenerc.com May 2009 Club Mailing Address: Eugene R/C Aeronauts, PO Box 26344, Eugene, OR. 97402 ERCA News and Information Next CLUB Meeting - May 19, 7:00 pm at the EWEB Community Room. If you have a building project, bring it with you for "Show and Tell". At the April Meeting - We had a guest speaker from the Cottage Grove hobby shop. His name is Drew. He asked for membership input for the items he may stock Our flying season is fast approaching, and club events are coming right around the corner. We have club BBQ's at the June, July, and August meetings, Big Bird Fly- In July 18th, Club Fun Fly August 15th, Labor Day Fun Fly in September. We assigned field marshal Marty to make the reminder calls to members that have not paid their club dues. This will be the last reminder. Newsletter needs input! - Your editor is again requesting your input. If you have something that you would like to share with the club, PLEASE pass it along to me. Stories, tips, pictures or things you have for sale. Deadline is one and a half weeks prior to the next club meeting. 2009 Meeting dates May 19 7:00 pm. Community Room At the flying field: June 23, July 28, Aug 25 7:00 pm. ERCA CLUB CONTACTS President: Khoi Tran - 685-0086 - kmtranmd@hotmail.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 Marshal: Marry Wittman - 968-2094 - wittmanm@msn.com Newsletter Editor: Jim Corbett - 344-5022 - james.corbett@comcast.net Meeting minutes are ONLINE at: http://eugenerc.com/meetings.html Presidents Corner At the time of this printing, our wood storage shed has been assembled at the field. We ended up with a 10'x12' shed to accommodate the bigger lawnmower we got from John Bowhan's father. The shed looks great, just needs a fresh coat of paint. I want to give Jeff Engel many thanks for putting it together for the club, and also to John Bowhan for getting the big mower up and going. I saw firsthand how the big mower can cut the grass down to golf course level. Doug now has the better resources and storage solution for long term field maintenance. We're grateful to have those 3 dedicated club members. Finally, I received the Certificate of Insurance from AMA to provide coverage for our Oakridge Big Bird Fly-In event on July 18th. We now can move to logistics planning. At the next meeting, I will present the wishlist of items to have available at the event and appoint a Contest Director. We hopefully will get membership input to help make this a well presented, fun event. Please roll up your sleeves and participate at the next meeting. At the last meeting, we had a guest speaker from the Cottage Grove hobby shop. His name is Drew. He asked for membership input for the items he may stock on hand if we will buy in bulk for good discounts. I advised him that giant scale may be the niche for his consideration in this competitive RC market. Otherwise, he has to compete with the direct from China distributors and Tower Hobbies for the standard size planes which would make it very difficult. For instance, I'm willing to drive down to Cottage Grove to pick up an airplane if he does not charge me the $100-150 shipping fee that I otherwise would pay to another distributor like TBM, Chief Aircraft for a giant scale bird. Several club members also indicated interest in buying glow fuel in bulk. He will investigate the bulk prices for YS 20/20, standard 15% nitro, and heli blend fuels. I will get his response and present the info at the next club meeting. At the last meeting, we assigned field marshall Marty to make the reminder calls to members that have not paid their club dues. This will be the last reminder. Our flying season is fast approaching, and club events are coming right around the corner. We have club BBQ's at the June, July, and August meetings, Big Bird Fly-In July 18th, Club Fun Fly August 15th, Labor Day Fun Fly in September. There will be fees charged to nonmembers at these events so please remember to pay club dues. Regards, Khoi Tran ERCA President 2009 Treasurers Corner Treasurer Al Barrington reports - As of April 20, 80 members have paid their 2009 dues. WITH THE WEEKDAY WARRIORS May 2009 Well, I've now heard Pat Willis's side of the story and it is, indeed, different. He flew the Cessna 421 on the day in question, but Khoi had already left, thus missing out on the historic event. Pat has flown the 421 several times since and has even rolled it, something that would cause heart attacks among the Cessna sales staff. The technical guys would probably be okay with it, but then technical guys are made of sterner stuff. Pat's not entirely happy with the model's canopy and, the last I heard, was contemplating a change of props. There was also some problem with the landing gear. The mains dutifully retracted, but the nosewheel leg remained sticking out like a sore thumb. That's been taken care of. Joe Kizer says he has not flown in a year and a half, but he was at the strip one day recently with his old Pizzaz. It used to have a .46 in it, if I remember correctly, but there's now a Magnum .52 up front. Joe says he likes the extra power and he seemed to be knocking any rust off his flying skills with no trouble. In fact, Joe felt so confident that he trimmed out a Nexstar for a new guy, Mickey Cohen. Mickey is new to us, but he has flown before. In the "I haven't flown since." category, he's got 15« years on Joe, so he has, wisely perhaps, started in again with the Nexstar. As I figure it, Mickey was flying in Chicago when I was flying down in Bloomington. That's 150 mi. away, so never the twain did meet. He has an Extra 330 in storage and a partially-built ¬-scale Cub. Now I have to convince him to finish it as an L-4 or an NE-1 - anything but another d------ d yellow J-3. By the way, Mickey has a lot of experience in full-size aircraft - big full-size aircraft - so he knows how an aeroplane flies and he'll be back to the Extra before long. Wayne Wahrmund is adamant that he is not about to become a new instructor. He has, however, just bought a buddy-box which is fully compatible with his own transmitter. His story is that it is just for flying Vein Wells around on the LT-40 and for helping his neighbor who is going to get into R/C. I'm not at all sure I'm convinced. Another pool? This one on when Wayne is up with his first ab-initio student? On that first weekend this month, when you were all at home, staring gloomily out at the rain, your columnist was down outside of Sacramento, also staring gloomily at the rain. But he was doing his staring up close, because he was out in that rain flying models in the Northern California Freeflight Championships. Granted, he had models for four events and flew in only two, but he did fly. He won both events, but honor forces him to admit that he was the only one to fly in both. Scores weren't bad, so I feel it wasn't highway robbery. Now I will tell you John Pratt's sad story. First, understand that when Waegell Field is not being the center for aeronautical activity in Northern California, it is a cow pasture and during the contest a few dozen of the permanent residents had gathered well to the north of the flightline. The wind wasn't much and shifted around. My flights all went northeast, but when John launched his Old- Timer Large Stick, it went due north and landed between 400-500 yards away. When he got to it, one of the ladies had eaten the tailsection and both outer panels of the wing. In fact she had the model in her mouth, possibly taking it off to store away for a midnight snack. John had to chase the cow to retrieve his model. The prop and fuselage didn't look bad and the two inner wing panels seemed okay, but the tail, a big one with twin fins, was unrecognizable as were the wing outer panels. Now when was the last time you heard of a cow being so interested in an R/C ship that she ate the tail surfaces? WITH THE WEEKDAY WARRIORS continued I'm not sure about this column for next month. A week after the meeting, I go off for two weeks and don't get back until three days before I have to submit my copy to your editor. You may have to endure "What I did on my Summer Vacation" or, who knows, I may get nothing typed at all and give you a real break. C.O'D. Completed Projects (see the web site for more Projects info) Pat readies his Cessna 421C Twin. And puts it in the air! I started this project because my dad used to own a Cessna 421 and we went on a few vacations in that plane down to Mexico, California, and southern Oregon. I realized it would not be a 3D plane, to be sure, but I wanted to break from my recent traditions and try a little fun-scale project. Right before taking off, after playing with the engines most of the day trying to get them to run somewhat reliably, I just went for it. The 421 leapt off the ground with ease and then had an easy climb while I made some trim adjustments. The time came to try some aileron rolls, and it handled them very well. I did some four point rolls, stall turns, and a very mediocre loop. The engines groaned and complained at the top of the loop, so I decided I would keep it upright for the rest of the flight. I did some low passes with the lean toward the pits for effect, and then it was time to land. The flaps worked well, slowing it down considerably, until I was ready to flare and touch down. The only problem was that the left main gear never came down and the otherwise perfect nose- high touchdown ended up stopping the left prop and making the taxi back very difficult. Subsequent flights have been equally as eventful with one retract being stubborn once we resolve the issue with the other retract! I have become comfortable enough to try low inverted passes right over the runway to the point that the tail fin is nearly scraping the taller blades of grass. The two K&B's have come around nicely. The new one is running near perfect but is much stronger than the "slightly used" on, which may be getting some work done on it in the near future to help its power output. Overall, it has been a fun project, and the airplane itself was quite a bargain. Completed Projects (see the web site for more Projects info) AgWagon takes to the air, ready to dust. Marty celebrates a good flight and landing. As most know by now the AgWagon does fly!!! Boy what a project it was to get it to this point! I had fun building it and flying it. This was a project that Carl Hansen started many years ago. I got it last July and started on it in September. When I got it, it was somewhat built. The fuss and the tail feathers were on and the wing was just ribs. The wing was to be built in 3 sections and then bolted together to make a one piece wing measuring 126 in. Well a 10ft 6in one piece wing was not guna work. So I decided to make the left and right wings so they could plug in. So I had to design the slide ins and build the boxes for them and that was a big worry because I didn't know if I mad them strong enough to hold in flight!!! Yes that was on my mind when it lifted off. With that modification I also had to make the struts removable, so I cut a 1/8 in slot and epoxied in a 1/8 aluminum plate to the struts and bolted them to the wing and fuss. Now the struts are removable. Also the strut supports had to be made so they can come off and on. One other problem I had was balance. The plans called for a balance point 4 in from the leading edge. Well with the servos I put in the back and a lighter engine on the front. I had a problem!!! The first time I checked the balance (to get an idea of what I have) I found out that it balanced 7 ¬ in from the leading edge. Well this is not guna work. WAY TO TAIL HEAVY.. I was a flight instructor for many years and I new that all airplanes have a forward and aft limit. So I new there had to be a balance range for this one. So I got a computer program that computes the CG range. In this case after all the measurements you input. The CG had a range of 4.01 in to 6.5 in.. Now I'm getting closer to what I actually have. But, I didn't want to go to 6.5in. because it would put the CG to far to the aft position. Most airplanes don't fly very well with a heavy tail. After moving the 3 batteries (yes three) up behind the firewall and still not achieving my goal I had to add weight. So I got some steel shot and set up the plane on the balance machine and started adding weight to the nose. (Yep the very front of the cowling) ended up with 3lbs up there to get a CG 5in from the leading edge. That's what it flew with and did great!! I thought that I should have someone else fly it for the first time but, I said to myself. I fly a lot of first flights and I can do this. The only difference it them other planes are not mine!!! Nerves , nerves, nerves. But if it fails, I want it on me. So yes, after spending so much time and prop. It was time to go. When it came off the ground I was elated!!!! Now it flies!!! But it has to land also.. The wind caught the bottom of the wind on landing but it was a success!!! Can't wait to fly it again. This time I'm guna put stuff in the hopper and dust the field!!!.. --- That's All Folks --- Eugene R/C Aeronauts Newsletter Editor 1618 Gilham Rd. Eugene, OR. 97401 May 2009 Name Street CitySTZip EVENTS May 2009 Helicopter Event - Othello Fun Fly - Othello, Washington May 15, 16, 17 Control-Line - Northwest Control-Line Regionals Eugene Airport Fun Fly-in - Saturday May 23rd, - Myrtle Creek Modelers are going to have a Fun Fly-in at Myrtle Creek Airport. There will be hotdogs, chips, soda, brat werst. $5. for a meal. Come 9 am and fly through the afternoon Warbird Meet - Saturday May 30th - Hello all! Since our first annual Warbird and Vintage Scale Fly-In at the RAMS field in Sumner last year was such a success, we have decided to do it again this year! Helicopter Event - Hotstart Helis Fun Fly - Lacey/Olympia, Washington May 30, 31 June 2009 Helicopter Event - June Brooks - Brooks, Oregon June 19, 20, 21 Next CLUB Meeting - May 19, 7:00 pm at EWEB. Newsletter ONLINE at: http://eugenerc.com/NL/CURRENTNEWSLETTER.pdf May 2009 2