Volume 4 Issue 9 AMA #530 District 11 www.eugenerc.com September 2008 Club Mailing Address: Eugene R/C Aeronauts, PO Box 26344, Eugene, OR. 97402 ERCA News and Information Carl Henson – Passed away. We learned some very sad news prior to the meeting: Our field's namesake, Carl Henson, passed away on 8/25/08. Several members shared memories about Carl and his contributions to their R/C experience and to the club. Next CLUB Meeting – September 23, 7:00 pm at EWEB. If you have a building project, bring it with you for "Show and Tell". A RAFFEL for gift certificates will be held at this meeting. Attending members will be given a ticket, additional tickets can be purchased for $1 each or 6 for $5. At the August Meeting – There was a good turn out of members at the meeting. It was our last meeting at the field for this year. (Food seems to bring out more folks that work parties.) Al presented the Treasury report, listing 103 current members. The Fun-Fly this year was a success but turnout was a little low, possibly due to timing. It was decided that July will be the new month for the event, most likely in the middle of the month. The members present expressed gratitude to Doug McWha and Jim Corbett for the amount of work they have been doing and decided to purchase them each $50 gift certificates to a local restaurant as a way of saying "THANK YOU!!". The members also wanted to buy a gift certificate for Mike Burgess to thank him for being such a good landlord and suggested we also purchase one for Al Barrington in recognition for all the hard work he has done as the Sec/Treasurer. Club trainers have been found dirty and sloppy after not being cleaned by the last users. The club trainer planes are for introductory flights only, with a limit of three flights suggested. Introductory flights are only conducted by the club's designated Intro Pilots and a buddy box must be used. The club trainer planes are not for teaching others while they learn how to fly, they are for promoting interest and trying to get newcomers "hooked". Once again, believe it or not, folks are leaving their trash lying around inside the clubhouse. This is unacceptable. Clean up your own garbage and take it with you, please. The members present decided to use the Labor Day holiday for a flying event to use the rest of the gift certificates we have leftover from the Fun-Fly. Chuck Jenkins put together a detailed, bound packet with several different types of contests that can be held at our events. The members expressed their gratitude to Chuck for putting that together. Meeting minutes are ONLINE at: http://eugenerc.com/meetings.htm Carl Henson 11-01-1932 08-25-2008 A Celebration of life was held at 2 p.m. Friday, Sept. 5 at Buell Funeral Chapel in Springfield. Carl died Aug. 25 of Alzheimer's disease. He was 75. Please send any Remembrances donations to Sacred Heart Hospice. Carl was born Nov. 1, 1932, in Mission, Texas, to James and Elsie Willis Henson. He married Joyce Mullins on July 15, 1956, in Eugene. He graduated from Eugene High School in 1952. He served in the U.S. Navy from 1953 to 1957, aboard the minesweeper U.S.S. Carl visits the field Pluck in Japan. He retired from the U. S. Postal Service in 1989, April 3rd, 2008 after 33 years. Survivors include his wife; two sons, Russell and Brian, both of Eugene; a sister, Joyce Tissedal of Sisters; a brother, Kenneth Henson of Florence; and three grandchildren. Remembrances Carl served as club President from 1989 through the late 1990s, then he served as Treasurer until 2003. He built a fair number of Kits, but loved building from plans. Club meetings often included a "Clinic by Carl". My favorite was his "Cowl Clinic", how to carve a balsa block to the shape you needed and then using fiberglass cloth and resin create a great looking cowl. One of his tricks was to make a mold so you could make a second cowl that was exactly like the first - a must for scale twin engine aircraft builders. Jim Corbett Labor Day Fun Fly 2008 September 1st More pictures on the web site. Limbo, balloon bust and spot landing were some of the events. Fun Fly August 16th & 17th We had a few dozen pilots show up for both Saturday and Sunday this year and a handful of guests and potential new members each day as well. Overall, it was a great success because everyone seemed to have a really good time despite the excessive heat on the first day and the crosswind from the south on the second day. My gratitude to the members that helped make the event such a success More pictures on the web site. KUDOS Al Barrington brought his “FLAME” skills to the field and showed them off again. Thanks to Al for giving up some flying time to feed us. Doug McWha again made sure the field was ready. Doug McWha and Chuck Jenkins got the food and the cold drinks there and cold. Chuck also took away the can of trash. Pat Willis, Mel Thompson and a couple other members put in some effort that made it a great weekend. Treasurers Corner Al Barrington reports as of the August meeting we have 103 members confirmed. Florence Airport Event August 30, 2008 Florence Airport Appreciation Day Pat Willis and Alan Wellentin flew some demo flights. I do not know the estimated attendance, but when I arrived just before 11 am, it was hard to find a parking spot. The Florence RC Club had a great static display, general aviation had several aircraft displayed and also were giving free rides. Visit the web site for more pictures. At the north end of the airport you will find the Florence RC Club's flying field. It is improving and their club is growing. Contact club president Gene Wobbe (999.6110) or Doug Devereaux (999.1844) if you would like to visit their field. WITH THE WEEKDAY WARRIORS - September 2008 Human nature, I guess. No way around it; everybody seems to like a good crash story. So, catering to that base instinct, herewith are three of them. The most spectacular must have been the one that put paid to Dave Simmington’s veteran U-Can-Do. After some intentionally wild gyrations at altitude, all control was lost and the model came down in a steep spiral at full bore. Wayne Wahrmund estimated that it took 20-30 sec. to come down all the way. Four guys were out there gathering handfuls of small pieces - all except the battery pack which had vanished. Speculation was that said pack had come loose in flight and, of course, that plays hob with radio reception. Dave’s got a Hangar 9 Ultra Stik flying now. This one differs from the usual Stik configuration in having quite an angular vertical tail. Power is a Magnum .91 4-stroke which Dave recalled from a five-year retirement. Doug McWha chose his old, faithful, incredibly ratty, EasySport for the Limbo event on Labor Day. After a couple of routine passes, Doug took three or four inches off his left wing by hitting one of the poles that held up the line. The EasySport staggered on, even completing a 180, before striking the strip a mighty blow. The strip survived. I am afraid there was some quiet celebration going on in the pits, now that that old eyesore had finally met its end. Enter your Editor who could not bear to see this club icon die. Jim did most of the repair work and the blasted thing is back in the air - looking, it must be said, a little better. But only a little! For a new guy, Shawn Ashton is flying pretty well. He had to overcome a problem of bubbles in the fuel line of his LT-40 (One of those vivid-blue 0.S. .46s in the nose), hut then began to put in a lot of flight time. Even managed a couple of respectable landings in a 15-mph crosswind. Alas, on 9/9, his perspective played him false and, on a wide sweep around the field, he flew the LT into that tallest of the trees to the westnorthwest. Flew it full-tilt into that tree, I’ll have you know - no half measures. He found it all save the largest part of the left wing, but the other part had the aileron servo in it. All the radio gear was there and the engine, too, though that had continued on into the next field along with the firewall, nosegear, and tank. This was a real crash; even the tail surfaces were torn to shreds. Bill Hollingsworth and Larry Nielson teamed up on a Balsa Nova. Rex Lesher had given Larry the kit and Larry contracted with Bill to build it in exchange for a new receiver. Both are sharing the flight time which is proceeding apace after the addition of three or four ounces of lead to the nose. You have all probably been. wondering whether Bill’s profile Sort-of-a-Mustang would fly with two balloons, their string, and the wood the string was wrapped around tangled around the wing and fuselage. It does. Alan Wellintin borrowed the model for the Balloon Bust event on Labor Day and got it entangled just that way. Brought it around in a normal traffic pattern and made a pretty routine landing. Alan flies fixed-wing stuff quite well, you see. Labor Day brought out a number of people who are not ordinarily weekday fliers and thus are never mentioned in this column. Now they finally have their moment of journalistic fame. I think it was Greg Knecht who was flying the electric. This was not some fluttering “park flier”, but a 40-sized Pattern-type bird which could hang on its prop with the best of them. It surprised a few people when they discovered that it was an electric. Levi Mosley had an Ugly Stik with a Magnum .61 for power. This is your plain- vanilla Stik down to the red finish with the WITH THE WEEKDAY WARRIORS - September 2008 continued black crosses on white fields. And how nice it was to see somebody not overpowering the poor beast. I’m trying to remember how long that design has been around - 40 years at least. Labor Day was a nice sunny day, but occasionally the sun would be blotted out when Bill Hastings flew his enormous Robin Hood. This monster has a Super Tigre 4500 engine and the ST has been converted to capacitive-discharge ignition, enabling it to run on gasoline, that dirt-cheap fuel. The Robin Hood carries the markings of a Curtiss Robin used in one of the many endurance- record flights back in the 30s. And this big horse will loop, roll, and even do outsides. Not gracefully, mind you, but they are recognizable. The last of the Robin endurance flights was made by Fred and Al Key who spent most of June 1935 circling Meridian, Mississippi, where they were the fixed-base operators. They were refueled and reprovisioned in the air and twice a day, one of them had to edge along a catwalk beside the nose to grease the rocker arms on the Wright J-6-5. They landed on July 1 after 27 days aloft. The plane, “Ole Miss” hangs in the Smithsonian’s downtown air museum in D.C.. Your columnist was out on the field, making trimming flights on his Casano C Champ in preparation for the Old-Timer meet 9/13 & 14. In his lonely perigrinations, he came across a muffler extension which turned out to belong to Vern Wells. You’ll remember that Vern, last month, suffered the total loss of his Super Stik and then had to undergo the indignity of having his name changed to “Vein” by the editor’s God---blessed spelling program. Despite all this, he is now flying an Avistar. Power? An 0.S. .46 “A-something or B or” according to Vern. On the same day, under the same circumstances, the same lonely wanderer came across an orphaned battery pack. Could it be the infamous pack blamed for Simmington’s Spectacular mentioned early in this column? It is now in the hands of Chuck Jenkins, because the finder is off to see what else they’ve moved into the new museum at Dulles and to look in at some nice little airstrips in N.J.. C.O'D. Presidents Corner The big news right now is that our very own Frank Blain had his workshop, located in the River Rd. area, burglarized. Several airplanes were taken and several sets of wings were taken, leaving almost all of his remaining fleet without wings. They took both of his JR radio systems, his flight/tool box, and numerous other things. The planes had engines in them. His P-51 that he built from a kit had about $2000 invested in it alone. The total loss was well over $10,000. I am asking all of you to keep your eyes open for people trying to sell things that could have belonged to Frank. I would also like you to keep an eye out for airplanes flying in the more rural areas, if you happen to live outside the city, that may be the stolen planes. I have been feverishly checking all the places you may suspect to find such things for sale with no success as of yet. If we all keep our eyes open, we may just be able to find the bad guys and recover some of Frank's treasured planes. As I approach the end of my second term as your club President, I am hoping that I can encourage YOU to take on a position on your club's executive board. I have thoroughly enjoyed my time in this position, but I am going to pass the torch on. Please consider running for a position. The elections are right around the corner. If you have any questions on what the posiitons entail, feel free to ask me, Mel, or Al. Thank you. Patrick Willis ERCA President 2007-20 Letters to the Editor 9/4/08 Let me see if I’ve got this right, the club has six safety officers (Presidents Corner, August 2008 issue). The question I have is where were these Safety Officers when the fool was gluing the broken tip back onto his propeller, and then running his engine with this “repaired” propeller? (With The Weekday Warriors, same issue) The next question is, where were the rest of the flyers and why didn’t one of them put a stop to this potentially lethal foolhardiness? Not to mention the possible safety hazard of the plane and engine coming back to ground as separate items! Both would have the glide ratio of a locked toolbox! ‘Aww, shucks, that wouldn’t happen’, guess again, it has happened, I’ve seen it happen. I’ve seen that and many other such things in almost 50 years of R/C flying. Come on folks, safety is (should be) discussed at club meetings, safety officers are at the field to prevent this sort of tomfoolery, but each member is responsible for safe conduct and flying practices. Be aware of what is going on around you, if you see an unsafe practice, SPEAK UP, don’t joke about it. Death, or the loss of eyesight is so permanent! Regards Henry A. Barckley AMA 7892 LMAA 11944 VRCS 589 --- That's All Folks --- Eugene R/C Aeronauts Newsletter Editor 1618 Gilham Rd. Eugene, OR. 97401 SEPTEMBER 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 – September 23, 7:00 pm at EWEB. Newsletter ONLINE at: http://eugenerc.com/NL/ CURRENTNEWSLETTER.pdf September 2008