WITH THE WEEKDAY WARRIORS

Poor old December. It tried, but didn’t make it. You will remember that November achieved 73.3% rainy days to frustrate our flying.

Well, December managed only 67.7%. Not that we got in any more flying; I have almost nothing to report.

I know I missed two flyable days, one to an appointment with a doctor and the other seeing a dentist. There was another doctor’s appointment when the weather was marginal and I may have missed something to report that time. too. To balance that, I did get up to

the field three times only to find myself all alone, so I was trying. Then there was the day I started from Northeast Eugene under overcast, but brightish skies, ran into sprinkles on gg, and had the wipers on full by the time I got halfway up Alvadore Rd.. went on into the strip, just to see how everything was and found several hundred seagulls covering the fields to the north and south of us under the baleful gaze of a llama who looked as though he really didn’t want them there. None of our area seemed to be flooded and the little watercourse that goes under the road was full, but not overflowing.

On the one day I did run across someone at the field, what I found was Roger Winz test-running a new engine in a Skyraider racer. The model he was actually flying that day was an electric ducted-fan F-16, whose performance appeared lively enough to satisfy most. Dwayne Graville had another of the EDF F-I6s, but his was, literally, new-in-the-box. It was interesting to see that the fan and tailpipe come as an integral unit. That should make it easy to take that assembly and build it into something other than a boring old F-16. How about a Supermarine Attacker, which had a tail-wheel landing gear? Or the Dassault Ouragan, trike-geared and simple? Ah me, let’s face it; whatever jet you build, it will be boring.

Dwayne was flying a teeny helicopter with a tail rotor and it looked more like an indoor ship, though most of those are “Mixmasters” with the contra-rotating rotors - like food blenders - aren’t they? The breeze that day was minimal, but Dwayne had a hard time bringing the thing back to the starting point and, indeed, deposited it on the other side of the electric fence. There was some discussion about whether the servo was tilting the rotor enough, but in the end we still weren’t sure whether the blame rested on the wind, the model, or Dwayne.

Mike Robinson had one of the electric “Mixmasters” on the field and it definitely was not an indoor ship. It looked to be about a “30” size and flew well enough. It did, however, seem very teetery (top-heavy?) on any landing that wasn’t on a line perpendicular to the earth’s surface.

In fact, Mike finally did chip one of the rotor blades. Your columnist is no helicopter man, but couldn’t this ship use one of those “training gears” - a big “X” of two dowels with a Whiffleball on each end, strapped to the helicopter’s skids to give a much wider footprint on the ground?

They are still flying at the Springfield Armory. I’m afraid I can’t get excited about Vapors and Embers going around and around in a racetrack pattern. Wayne Wahrmund assures me that he did once fly a figure-eight, but the suggestion of aerobatics is met with horrified gasps. Go have a look; it might appeal to you as much as it does not to me, but check the schedule first. There’s going to be a change of day, so call Wayne, Doug McWha, or Chuck Jenkins before you head over there.

Part of my reading material these days is an aviation- history magazine I picked up in Berlin in July. Okay, I'm wrestling with it - my German is pretty rusty. One article was on the Akafliegs, the Akademischer Fliegergruppen - the student flying clubs that did so much on the development of gliding. The second glider built by the Berlin Akaflieg was designed and flown by an Electrical-Engineering student named Kurt Tank. Not quite twenty years later, he was the head of Focke-Wulf’s Design dept. when they built the 190.

Not sure what you will get next month; I’m going away for a couple of weeks or so. Could he you’ll have a vacation from this column - which I’m not sure that anybody reads anyhow.

C.        O’D.

February 2011

WITH THE WEEKDAY WARRIORS

January - at last a Winter month that treated us correctly! Only 32.2% of its days were rainy and we got a mere 27% of the rain we were supposed to. This was a very un-Oregon January and the State Legislature will probably pass a resolution condemning it.

You’d think that such weather would bring out the fliers and, to some extent, it did. The weekend guys had three or four really fine days and we weekday fliers did as well. I know I missed a few nice days, notably one when I sat sprawled in the dentist’s chair, looking at a beautiful sunlit landscape outside. The appointment was for a time too early for me to go to the field first and too late to go after it was over. What follows is what I did get to see.

Dwayne Graville took advantage of almost-calm air one day to do some test-flying on a teeny electric Stik meant for the indoors. It replaces his Ember which was in dire need of replacement. The Stik started off being rather too twitchy in pitch, but Dwayne was dealing with it. He has also bought a Skyraider from Kent Melville who has decided to go all-electric. This is a red one and you may remember Kent’s yellow one which has an electric motor the equivalent of a glow .80.

Speaking of electric, Mike Vaughan has a large P-51 with that sort of powerplant. It’s styled as the air racer “Voodoo” which has a minuscule canopy and is very purple. Mike’s has retracts and, in keeping with the Eugene R/C tradition, a 300-watt motor instead of the 100-watt-er that the model calls for. He says the plane is very fast (surprise, surprise), but that, with flaps down, it is quite docile on the approach.

Wayne Wahrmund is also flying an electric WWII bird. His is a medium-size Grumman F4F, a Wildcat. It is molded foam, full-bodied, and in Butch O’Hare’s markings. No landing gear, so it’s hand-launch and skid it in on the belly. Seems very solid in the air.

Roger Winz is now flying that new engine in his Skyraider and his son, Mark, down from Washington, had a big Yak 54 out for its first ventures into the air. It’s from a Chinese company (are there any others these days?) called “The Aeroplane Works” and Mark has a DL55 for power. An elevator hinge worked loose on the second flight, but no disaster ensued. It was just loose and there were other hinges to take up the burden.

Mickey Cohen has been busy in the workshop. Chuck Jenkins test-flew Mickey’s new Ugly Stik (0.S. .46AX) as the breeze was freshening one day and all went well. Mickey, bythe way, has donated a large Weber propane grill to the club - a much-needed replacement for the one we have had which was on its last legs. Doug McWha hauled the old one out of the shed and discovered that a family of mice had taken up residence therein. Doug’s first count was five mice, but in the weeks since, with repeated telling of the tale, the count has risen to “six or seven”. By the time you ask him about it, the number will probably be closer to a nice, round ten. Everybody seems to like the new grill, and, most important, Chef Barrington likes it, but do the mice?

We urged him not to do it, but Chuck Jenkins has completed a re-build of Doug McWha’s engine so that he can return his favorite model, “Doug’s Disgrace”, to the air. He had been flying his Super Stik, an aeroplane of thoroughly respectable appearance, but now our aesthetic sensibilities will be offended by that dreadful relic of Short Mountain.

I’m reading a book about the Caproni-Campini N.1, the first Italian jet aircraft. This was the bird that had a compressor fan cramming air into a combustion chamber into which fuel was sprayed and ignited. The resulting jet blast out the tailpipe propelled the plane. The difference was that the compressor fan was run by a piston engine instead of by a turbine at the rear of the combustion chamber, thus none- of the jet exhaust power was us-ed up in turning the turbine. You will sometimes see this plane described as a “ducted fan”, but that is wrong. In fact, one of the first things in the book is a letter from Campini to an official of the Italian Air Ministry.

The official had described Campini’s pride and joy that way in an report and the designer was setting him straight, pointing out that, if you removed the combustion chamber, the plane would have been hard-put to taxi, let alone take off. That got me thinking and I cannot come up with a single full-size ducted fan plane. There have been several barrel-shaped birds, notably the Stipa of which Don Watson had a model, but the props were out at the front edge of the barrel. There have also been schemes for shrouded propellers; the prop turned in a short fairing rather like a ring cowl. The only one I can think of that met with even modest success was the Fantrainer, which was designed in Germany and built in slightly modified form in Thailand. Jim Smith used to fly a ½A model of one down at Short Mountain. Anybody’s memory better than mine?

Now I’m off for two weeks and a bit, not to return until the 24th. I hope the pizza is good and that you can hear yourselves think and have a decent meeting.

C.        O’D.

March 2011

WITH THE WEEKDAY WARRIORS

Granted, I was away for two weeks, but I have been back for over two and still have seen fliers at the field only on one occasion.

Again, I missed one passable day to a doctor’s appointment, the one-year check on my most recent right knee. It’s fine, by the way, and I’ve taken such good care of it that they’re letting me keep it at least another two years.

The one time I did catch some action, it was Wayne Wahrmund who had a new Park Zone Extra 300. This is slightly smaller than what I’d call “medium’. Wayne says the electric powerplant is the equivalent of a .15 glow engine. It’s all made of that smooth, fairly-hard foam, and Wayne was flying it without the landing gear which he says is pretty cheesy and would probably not stand up to the strip as it is now. The plane goes like blazes and, being initially well out of trim, gave Wayne some interesting moments on the first flight, though he got it all sorted out in the end. His verdict is that it will be a challenge and that the thinks he’ll like it.Mel Graham was the other lucky soul who realized that the weather would be flyable that day. He was trimming out his Option, a Pattern ship he built a couple of years ago. Started with a set of plans and a big pile of wood. You may remember that it went straight into the field last Summer; this was its first outing since repairs were finished. He’s now using a YS 140 in the nose and so far thinks the high rate on the ailerons is too high and the low rate too low. It also needs more rudder to do a good knife-edge.

Last column, I reported on Secundo Campini’s tart note to the Italian Air Ministry telling them that his N.1 was not a ducted-fan.

Well, I’ve finished the book and can tell you that it was certainly flown that way many a time. Without the burners going, the takeoff run was protracted and the rate of climb dismal, but, in truth, the latter was still pretty punk even with the jet in operation. And I find that there were two prototypes built at the same time. The one in the Italian AF Museum is the second and it did not do much flying. Its piston engine was most of the time down in Rome as a back-up for the first prototype. They had tons of trouble with the piston engines, Issota Fraschinni V-12s of a nominal 850 hp. They rarely managed more than 730 horses. That first prototype was damaged by the Germans in their zone of Italy, then taken to Farnborough by the Brits after the war. It was thought not worth putting back together and was then scrapped. That fan was a three-stage affair with 45 variable-pitch blades, so it was a pretty sophisticated contraption.

At the RAAF Museum at Point Cook, they put on a one-plane air show at 1:00. The ‘Heritage Flight” has six planes to choose from: An Australian-built P-51 (yawn), a CT-4 trainer (double yawn), a Pup replica, a Tiger Moth, a Harvard, and a Winjeel. The Harvard was scheduled for my day there, but came down with a cold (or the aeronautical equivalent) and the replacement was (hurrah) the Winjeel, a plane I’d never seen in the air. The RAAF used it as an ab initio trainer from the mid-50s until the early 70s, then the Army used it to train Forward Air Controllers for another twenty years. It’s a low-wing, side-by-side ship with a P&W R-985, a fixed landing gear (two mains and a tailwheel, as it should be), and flaps. A nice, neat, clean, well-proportioned ship which I think would make a good model (see below). Oh, and I can also tell you that Moorabin’s DC-2 restoration is coming along fine. The fuselage and fin look new.

I came home with five Australian model magazines, four Airbornes and a Radio Control Model News. I paid for the newest Airborne and the RCMN - bought them on the first day T was there in Sydney. Almost two weeks later, I was browsing through some back issues of Airborne down in Hearn’s Hobbies in Melbourne when the lady in charge told me to go ahead and take them, if I wanted then. One of them had a kit review for a 1/6-scale Winjeel - a nice size for a nice plane. The kit comes with no plans. You get a fistful of exploded views, because this kit is so precisely laser-cut  (with no burn marks) that the pieces lock together in perfect alignment. Since this company’s forte is the laser-cutting of wood, not plastic or glassfibre, the kit also comes with neither a cowl nor a canopy - they’re up to you. Wonder how many of the ARF crowd had to he revived by the Rescue Squad after reading that? Assuming, of course, that any of that crowd would read a kit review.

I’ve been a busy little bee at my reading desk. Read a book about the Siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Some of you may remember reading of the government in Paris keeping in touch with the rest of France by flying balloons out over the heads of the Germans, but did you know how many they flew? I’d figured somewhere between six and ten. 65! Only five fell into enemy hands. Two disappeared, probably blown out to sea, and one intrepid crew of two wound up in Norway - safe and sound, if slightly frost-bitten. You find aeronautical stories in some unlikely places.

C. O’D.

April 2011

WITH THE WEEKDAY WARRIORS

There’s been a lot of complaining about the weather in the month of March. The Weather Bureau’s radio station reported that, of March’s 31 days, only 26 had had measurable precipitation, which means that fully 16% of the month was dry. Well, almost. There were three other days when “a trace” of rain fell, but that still means that fully 6½% of the month was rainfree. Aren’t you ashamed of yourselves for all that griping?

The coming of April has brought a few small - okay, okay, tiny - stretches of flyable weather. Alan Wellentin’s been flying a large, slick-looking biplane called a Miss Wind 50E. It’s electric and the motor is the equivalent of a 110 glow engine. The wings have considerable taper, all on the leading edge, and the interplane I-struts and cabane are held to the wings of the plane by five carbonfibre rods that slide in through the leading edge. These are quite fine and I’d like to see a table giving the equivalent sizes of steel and c/f rods. Alan likes the plane so far, though he finds one of its characteristics disconcerting. When you pull out of a long dive and advance the throttle, there is no roar of an engine revving up, though the plane sails away just as it should. To one used to flying Pattern ships with 140 glow engines, this does bring the heart to the mouth for a split second.

Mel Graham and son JR have also been flying a biplane, a Reactor which you have seen them with before. Power is a YS 110 which had been giving less than stellar service until it was rebuilt with new gaskets, pressure-return line, and fuel tank cap. All seems to be well now and the pair are contemplating a return to Pattern competition.

Oliver Willis has acquired Doug McWha’s old Tango. It came via Chuck Jenkins who had a Saito .82 4-stroke in it for (over) power and didn’t like it. Oliver is using a K&B .46 (45?) of slightly ancient vintage. Its mild performance must come as a relief to the Tango after that .82. The pilot is getting used to the plane and, after initially being reluctant to roll it, tried one, liked it, and decided it was a good idea after all. Being a high-winger, there’s nothing to shield the plane from the muddy runway, so the bottom, sides, and even the top of the Tango were pretty liberally doused with the stuff. Fortunately, Oliver employs a serf (reportedly for mere room and board) who is so efficient that it took him only 20 min. to clean the plane at the end of the day. If you are planning to fly off the runway in its present state, you might check with Oliver to see if he rents him out. Name’s Pat.

Another flier battling the mud on that day was Mike Vaughan, who had an electric, trike-geared Knockabout.

You’ll remember that Mike Farr, our V.P., has the same plane, but with a tailwheel and a glow engine. Mike V’s electric motor is the equivalent of a .46 and pulls 250 amps. The model used to have a .51 glow and is, so help me, nearly as loud now as it was then. Yes, yes, I am exaggerating a little, but this ship really is louder than many of the far-larger electrics. It has to be prop, doesn’t it.

Mike had an odd crash with this one. He got it out to the East; the sun flashed on it; and he lost not just orientation, but the whole plane. By the time he picked it up again, it was doomed. All fixed now, however. Mr. Vaughan is flying another electric, a T-Rex 600 helicopter. All the latest high-tech stuff like a flybarless head. (They’ve cheated him out of his flybar and he’s happy about it!)

Alan took the T-Rex and tuned it all up, so Mike’s on his own now. He’d done no more than hover it, but that was a week ago and I’m sure he has progressed miles since then. Other, more routine, flying has seen Marty Wittmann in the air with a Skyraider Pylon ship and using a Spectrum DX8 transmitter. Is that DX8 new? Wayne Wahrmund brought out his Skyraider for the first time since October and he found it just as satisfactory as it was when he put it away.

Wayne and Doug McWha went out and flew at the Springfield Sports Center a week or so ago, but not, as you might think, Indoor. They went out on the fake-grass soccer field to fly, among other things, Wayne’s foam De Haviland Mosquito twin. That carpet has a nap short enough to allow takeoffs by such modest-sized electrics as Wayne’s Mossie.

Your columnist has not been able to work up much enthusiasm for playing in the mud, so the Cavalier Std. remains stacked in the corner of the shop. The Bird of Time sailplane is now on the work table. The kit was bought at an estate sale and one always approaches such kits with some apprehension. What, if anything, had the late owner removed from the box and did he put it back later? I’d planned on thickening the all-flying stabilizer, so it wasn’t a disaster to find that the only vestiges of the stab were the outlines where the trailing edge and tip had been punched from the die-cut sheet. Big lightening holes were planned for the rudder, a big slab of 3/8” sheet, but that wasn’t there either, so a form has been traced from the plans in aid of laminating a t.e. for a built-up rudder. And the widening of the fuselage had been contemplated so as to give more scope for choosing servos, but how do you do that when all the parts are already cut out? No problem. Ready-cut they may have been, but present they certainly weren’t. Hey, all that easier to build that wider fuselage! All the wing parts were there and I’ll have one 59” panel built by the time you read this, as well as the (thicker) stab, but I really should have looked more closely at that kit, shouldn’t I?

C.        O’D.

May 2011

WITH THE WEEKDAY WARRIORS

A guy I fly Freeflight with is one of those poor souls who have to go to work every day, putting money in the Social Security fund, so you and I can buy new engines, radios, and the like. He’d like to get in some test-flying, as well as some work around his house, but he threw up his hands the other day and asked, “In Oregon, what follows two days of rain?” and he then supplied the answer, “Monday.”

Being, as he is, cooped up in the mill all day, he may not have realized that Monday often turns out to be rainy, too. I am not sure we Weekday Warriors have been making out any better than the weekend guys, even if we do have more days to choose from. The Weather Bureau’s radio station informed me the other day that only 63% of April had measurable rain, but they failed to observe that much of that other 37% was rather windier than we like it, especially with those winds generally being across the runway.

That 5-2 edge we have over the weekenders did yield a bit of flyable weather and it was taken advantage of by some of us. Roger Winz has been tuning up his Skyraider for the upcoming Pylon season as has Dwayne Graville. Roger’s also been flying what he terms a “T-34”. This one has been handed down from son to father instead of t’other way ‘round and Mark has told him to “fly the covering off it”. The vertical tail is pretty T-34-ish as is the canopy, but strip ailerons? There are two little chin intakes which leads me to believe that a T-34C is intended, but, on the whole, I don’t think Beech would claim ancestry. Flies like the devil, though, with a GMS .47 up front.

Dwayne’s other plane has been a Twist, a 40-size model, in which he has (remarkably for this field!) an O.S. 40. This is the one he broke in half on its very first flight last Fall, then put back together in the wee hours and flew the next day. Wayne Wahrmund is another flier of Twists, though his, being ex-Doug Deveraux, is in modified form. Wayne is true-blue; he follows the fine old Eugene R/C tradition of putting a .71 4-stroke in this 40-size ship.

Wheel pants not only make a plane look good, but their extra streamlining improves the model’s handling, right? Mel Graham took the pants off his Venus II to install bigger wheels, the better to cope with the soggy runway. Both Mel and his son, JR, think that the Venus handles distinctly better with its pants off. There’s probably a vulgar remark I could make here, but I will not - and neither should you. This is a high-class publication.

Ron Hokinsen boasts dual citizenship: He’s from Florence and is in that club, too. Ron’s all-electric and was flying a Magpie. This bird has a foam-slab of a fuselage and a foam wing. The wing has a real airfoil section. Not so the tail feathers, whose leading edges are uncompromisingly square. 220 watt motor, full-house, but no landing gear. Ron had one of those foam SR-9s, too, and they do fly nicely, don’t they?

Mike Vaughan, who fled Florence for Cheshire last year, heard a funny noise while flying that big P-Si Voodoo racer. He not only took out the motor, he took it apart, but found nothing wrong. Then he probed a peculiar mark on the motor mount and the mount came apart in his hands. I guess there would be funny noises from a model with that big a motor running in a cracked mount. New mount built; no more funny noises.

Your columnist spent 3½ days down near Sacramento at the Northern California Freeflight Championships. Yes, my friends, there is a sun, and I spent 3½ days sloshing on the suntan lotion in carload lots and enjoying the 73 - 80 degree temperatures. Not everything was perfect. For 2½ of those days, the wind blew - 22 to 35 mph. Sunday, the last day, was beautiful. 800 and about a 2 mph wind. I had models for four rubber-powered events. Of course, I had left all of the props at home. You can’t just borrow a prop from someone else.

These are parts of assemblies that include a noseblock which fits an individual model. So I was reduced to throwing Old-Timer Hand-Launched Glider, something I can go back to doing now that I have two good knees under me. Still have to work on getting back my coordination. I was throwing as though my arm, torso, and legs belonged to three different people who had never even met. I got 2nd.

Yes, there were only two of us entered. But it certainly was beautiful sitting out there on those sunny, warm days. And the rain didn’t start until I was almost 30 miles back into Oregon on the way home.

C.        O’D.

June 2011

WITH THE WEEKDAY WARRIORS

My friends at the Weather Bureau tell me, via their radio station (“KEC 42 in Eugene”), that a mere 45% of the days in May had “measurable precipitation”. That does, however, leave out the days when it drizzled and sprinkled all day - not enough to measure, but enough to put the kibosh on flying. We made the most of the good days that did occur and there was a fair old amount of flying done.

Of course, to be able to get off the ground, one needs a well-mown runway, the sort usually provided by Doug McWha, but Doug’s favorite Ford mower went sour. The gears in the differential were devouring each other. Up steps Craig Canaday with a dead Craftsman mower whose rear end looks suspiciously “Ford”. Jim Corbett, the clever fellow, took the Craftsman rear and grafted it onto the Ford. Well, why not? The medical profession showed the way with heart transplants; why not take it up a step to mower rearends? Doug says the gearing is a little different and the Ford is now slower, but pulls itself out of the soft spots much more easily. See all the people it takes to provide you with that runway?

When he isn’t mowing, Doug has been flying a small foam T-28 with the gear off. At least once, the hand-launch resulted in a bounce off the ground, but the Trojan kept flying. Yes, Doug has also been flying something else, but aesthetic considerations prevent me from mentioning it. Just to show you how calm it’s been on those good days, Chuck Jenkins was flying a tiny P-51, also l.g.-less.C.J. was also the test-pilot for Donnie Krcnz’s Deniqht Special, which is powered by a Saito .82. The first flight found the model rather nose-heavy. A couple of days later, the second found it just a bit tail-heavy. The Denight, called DDT, first showed up in 1949 and lasted until at least 1967. Donnie’s is in the ‘65 color scheme, by which time it was called “Miss Dallas”. Another from the Krenz stable is a Katanna with a YS 140 on which Mark Winz was doing a little tuning. Of course, Donnie has had the faithful U-Can-Do in the air as well.

Mickey Cohen has had his Ugly Stik for a while, but he now powers it with a new O.S. .75 - one of the new breed with the trapezoidal head. Chuck Jenkins (who else?) made the first air trials, but he really wasn’t needed as the 0.S. ran fine.

Dave Symington came out for the first time since the Fall. He brought the Ultra Stik with the Magnum .90 4-stroke which he says is the right model to brush offf the cobwebs with. Ken Springate thinks the same of his O.S. .90 2-stroke-powered Razzle - it’s the season-starter.

In the moments he gets away from shuffling our money around, Treasurer Al Barrington flies a Radian Pro. This very-high-aspect-ratio foam bird has flaps, ailerons, and a folding prop for its electric motor. The earlier Radian had a large measure of elliptical dihedral, but no control surfaces on the viing. The Pro’s dihedral is still elliptical, but rather suppressed by comparison to its earlier stablemate. This ship is sleek enough to handle a pretty stiff breeze.

Ex-Prez Khoi Tran was teaching his son to fly, sans buddy box, on a 90”, high-wing ship powered by a Saito 100. The plane is ex-Carl Henson and shows a good deal of Sig Sr. Kadet influence, especially in the empennage. Frank Blain had it for a while, then passed it on to Khoi. The thing certainly seems to handle well.

Dwayne Graville has acquired a Sperry Messenger from Bob Daniels of the South Lane Club. Never flown and with an 0.S. .60 which has, apparently, never been run. Various teething troubles kept it on the ground on the only day I’ve seen it out. The Messenger was designed at McCook Field by the Air Service and Sperry built 42 of them, 12 as radio-controlled bombs. Power was a 60-horse, inverted-yen, Lawrance T-3, the great-grandfather of the Wright J-5 that took Lindbergh to Paris. In 1925, one of the 20-footers was used to launch from and hook onto a trapeze slung below the Army blimp TC-7.

The Usual People Flying The Usual Things Dept.: Alan Wellentin and his electric Miss Wind bipe. Wayne Wahrmund and his two Skyraiders, along with that Extra 540 he has the 0.S. .94 in. The Extra flopped to the runway most ungracefully one day and took the gear off. “My approach was ‘way too slow”, said Wayne, an honest man.

Your columnist cleared the table, assembled his Berkeley Cavalier Std. and set about balancing the beast. 2½ oz. on the stab and it was still nose-heavy. I’ll switch places with the receiver and battery pack, but that will have to wait for a couple of weeks.

This column is being turned in to your editor that two weeks early, because I am off to see old aeroplanes fly. And some sitting on the ground, indoors and out. Some nice old motor vehicles, too, and a few bits of railway rollinq stock. I’ll already he back just about the time you are reading this, if not a day or two before. See you then.

C.        O’D.

July 2011

No Column

August 2011

WITH THE WEEKDAY WARRIORS

Yes, we finally have been getting some very nice days for flying and, yes, people have been out flying on them. One of those people is Frank Blain who has had several models out at various times. Of course, he’s been flying his Obsession, which, at one time, had a Saito 1.80 in it, but Frank is an obsessive (hmm) switcher of engines and who knows what’s in it now.

Another one of Frank’s machines is an Ultrasport 1000 -an Ultrasport 1000 that the Great Planes people would never recognize. They don’t turn out things that pretty. Frank squared off all the tips, but generously rounded the corners. The nose looks like that of a Goodyear racer and the canopy’s been moved back as well. Saito 1.80 in it. The one from the Obsession - or does Frank have two such Saitos?

And still with that man Blain, this time a full-blown Pattern ship. When he died of cancer several years ago, club member John Nosier was in the process of developing his own design, called “Zeus”, for all-out Pattern competition. He left a partially complete example and another in kit form. How serious was he about this? The kit has a molded carbonfibre fuselage, among other features. Frank finished the first one; installed a YS 140; and turned it over to JR, the younger Graham, for test-flying. It appears to be a winner.

JR has been wringing out the Zeus and likes it. The YS is not, by the way, your Aunt Clara’s YS 140. It’s a “Special” optimized for Pattern competition. He has been flying his Reactor Bipe, too, and it is now powered by a 20cc (that’s 1.20 in real measurements) sparker. Sad to say, not something like a Forster 99, but something awfully modern and whose name I did not write down. If you look closely at the Reactor, you might notice that the fuselage has been completely rebuilt. It was an ARF (pardon the language) and was thus put together with a hot-glue gun. JR took a heat gun to it and, presto, he had a fuselage kit, which he put back together with improvements. The problem-atic YS 110 has been reduced to its individual components while JR tries to come up with some reason why the gaskets all blow, one-by-one, in the course of a distressingly few flights.

Mel, the far more ancient Graham (he remembers R/C ships I remember), has been juggling engines at blinding speed. Actually engines and motors, because Mel has taken a feet-first plunge into Electric - Competition Pattern style. He first put a 160-size motor into his Revolver whose flight characteristics on glow he knew. Then the Revolver reverted to internal combustion and the electric found its way into the Spot On where it’s getting a workout. It should solve that plane’s peeling-covering problem or, at least, arrest it at the point where it is now.

Either Doyle Cook is catching. on very quickly or Wayne Wahrmund is a heck of an instructor. Doyle has made his own landings with the LT4O (O.S. 52) (52? Good Grief!) after Wayne had him do approach after approach until he was ready to cry.

Chuck Jenkins could use the help on the instruction end of things. One of his new students is a fellow whose name I didn’t get, but who has a very slim, nicely-proportioned trainer that neither he nor Chuck could name. They did know that the engine was the ubiquitous

Thunder Tiger 40. Ed Watkins is C.J.’s other new student and he has a Right Flyer 40 with an O.S. 46 up front. The plane was given to him and has been in an attic for 15 years, so he and Chuck are finding little things that are not quite - well - right and I’m not sure how much actual airtime has been achieved. Whoever put it together joined the wings with a noticeable anhedral. You can get away with a little in high-winger, but Chuck said, “It flies a little funny.”

Ever hear of an MCR 50? Mark Winz describes it as “a cheap Chinese 50” and you can see one in the Extra that his dad, Roger, is flying these days. The Extra itself is old-hat, ex-Pat Willis and Marty Whitmann. Mark is flying a rather more expensive 50 in an Sbach (Steinbach?). If you don’t know the Sbach, just think Extra-Edge-Giles-Lazer-etc. and blur them all together. Of course, if you don’t know the Giles, just think Extra-Sbach-Edge-Lazer-etc., let them blur together and Yet another Sbach is in Donny Krenz’s hands, this one being hauled along by a DLE 30 (it’s smaller than Mark’s). Donny also has a rather larger Yak from the Pilot company. Pilot did not vouchsafe to supply us with the exact Yak model number, but we suspect a 53. Or maybe an amalgam of all the Yaks which Pilot thought was better than being pinned down to just one. Whatever it is, Donny’s been flying some neat inverted patterns with it.

Stop Press. I don’t think your Editor’s Optical Reader is up to putting a heavy black border around this paragraph, but it should have one. Or maybe one trimmed in roses and bluebirds. The news is: Doug’s Disgrace is dead. Dead as the Wicked Witch of the East. As the proverbial doornail. A knife-edge did not go at all as planned and “I dumb-thumbed it”. (You know Doug’s an honest man). Disturbing Thing: At the end of your favorite horror movie, when the monster has been dispatched and all is tranquil, there is the nagging thought at the bacic of your mind that there will be a sequel - the monster will return. The wreck is in the hands of Chuck Jenkins, a known rebuilder of hopeless cases. Indeed, a serial-rebuilder of hopeless cases. You have been warned.

                                                                        C.O'D.

September 2011

WITH THE WEEKDAY WARRIORS

It seemed to your columnist that the way Donny Krenz was flying his big, green Yak resembled that of a man who was practicing for aerobatic competition. Some in-depth investigative reporting was called for. So I asked him and, yes, Donny is contemplating a stab at competition next season. He hasn’t gone as far as shanghaiing some poor soul as a caller, but he is practicing with the plane.

The Grahams, pére et fils, were putting even more Pattern practice into the skies along Alvadore Rd., getting ready for the Emerald Air Corps meet at Walker Field. JR was, of course, using the ex-John Nosler Zeus, but Mel had to do some changing of course. He’d intended flying the newly-electric Spot-On, but there was a recall issued for the electronic speed control he was using. That required a switch to the Venus II, but Mel was confident that the change would cause no difficulty, because the Venus “flies as well as I can”.

Chuck Jenkins continues instructing all corners. He was on the buddy box while Connor Wilson was flying his Nextstar. This is the electric version and the manufacturer has taken the opportunity to, in the absence of a bulky glow engine, clean up the nose and make an almost-pretty aeroplane out of the Nextstar. And this model is doing double duty. On a Friday, with Connor tucked away in school, father David was C.J.’s student with the same Next star.

As long as I have mentioned Friday, let me add that it is a good time to come out, if you want company at the field. Or want an instructor, for that matter. Not only was Mr. Jenkins working the buddy box, but Wayne Wahrmund was putting his student, Doyle Cook, through the paces on that Friday. What is it that has suddenly made that particular day of the week so popular? Oh, while speaking of The Wahrmund Himself, you may be aware that he bent his vast, gas-burning T-6 a couple of weeks ago. It is again in an airworthy state and, indeed, has been in the air, so all’s right with the world.

Al Barrington continues to get a lot of airtime on his Radian Pro, though it has not been all clear sailing. On one flight, he throttled up to go back to altitude and got no response at all. As the ship glided closer, the reason became obvious: The whole folding-prop and spinner assembly was missing. A five-man search was initiated and - impossibly - Roger Winz found it in the grass.

There was a nut missing, but Al found a replacement and tried again. At around half-throttle, the whole shootin’ match dissolved into its component parts and not all of them have been found to date. Al has a replacement installed and is back flying.

Jed Orme had been flying a straight Radian and was impressed by the Barrington Pro - despite the occasional shower of odd parts - impressed enough to buy one. Jed has an after-market aluminum nose on his and he and Al have heei dialing in all the transmitter buttons, switches, and knobs to get the best from the bird. They ran into an odd situation where the battery packs (yes, plural) couldn’t handle takeoff power and actually spluttered until the throttle wa~ retarded to cruise rpm. A spare pack of Al’s, smaller (I think), solved the problem and noticeably improved the climb.

Chick Foster is flying a Kaos, one of the originals with the sub-fin and mostly-open engine room. He built it for someone else ten or more years ago and has just reacquired it. Magnum .61 for power. Chick came to the rescue of Mike Burgess. Mike got an old trainer for his soi from Craig Canaday, but an awful lot of the thing was PINK -not the color of choice for a young guy’s trainer. Chick has it recovered in a couple of shades of green and some yellow. For the Fighting Clucks of Oregon. (I’m a Notre Dame man)

Another of Craig’s old machines is in the hands of Dwayne Graville. It’s a Funtana 90 and Dwayne is powering it with a Magnum 91 which will surely earn him a reprimand at the next club meeting. Eugene R/C requires at least a 1.40 in a 90-size aeroplane, doesn’t it?

Mickey Cohen is in the clear; his Pulse 60 is pulled along by a Saito 100 and his Yak 54 has an O.S. .95AX. Dave Simmington may be cutting it a little fine by having only a Saito 180 in his Twist 150.  Dave’s having a little eye trouble and says he likes flying the nice, big models like the Twist 150. While he loops and rolls and does the usual maneuvers, he vows, “No more experimenting”.

The Labor Day Fly-In was a weekday affair, but was suci a mob scene that it deserves its own column. Somebody will give you the whole story somewhere in these pages. Suffice it to say here that your columnist managed five launches with his Aquila sailplane, but batted only .400 in finding some lift.

And on the day after that, a fine, sunny day with only a breath of a breeze, Ron Hokenson and I had the field to ourselves. Ron had had to come in from the seashore to run an errand in town and just happened to find that he had three electrics in the car. I was trimming out two Old-Timer Rubber jobs for the contest on 9/10-9/11. We weren’t the least bit lonely.

Once again, this column is being handed in early. On the slim chance that I live through two days of chasing Freeflight models down the field in 90-degree temperatures, I plan to leave for distant parts on Monday, not to return until a couple of days after the next meeting. I’ll give the Air Force Museum your best wishes.

C. O'D.

October 2011

WITH THE WEEKDAY WARRIORS

My sources inside the Weather Bureau tell me that September had only three days with measurable rain. I don’t need anybody to tell me that October is trying to make up for it. Oregon has ceased pretending it’s another state and is back to being dank, dreary, dismal Oregon, the Mildew Capital of the World. Still, we have managed to do a fair amount of flying so far this month.

Wayne Wahrmund knows just how long his AT-6 will run on a full tank. Oh, he did not plan to acquire that bit of knowledge when he took off one day, but sometimes these things simply fall into your lap. The throttle linkage came adrift and Wayne had no choice but to fly the thing around until the tank ran dry, at which point he pulled off the ensuing dead-stick landing with aplomb. This Texan has a sturdy pair of landing gear legs, but the full-sized ship had retracts. Wayne says that he’s not going to spend money on retracts “just to make the model look good”. I know that you are reeling from shock as I did when I heard that statement myself. I am hinting to Wayne that he should convert the plane into one of the many versions which did have fixed gear. The BT-14 was exactly the same, but had a P&W R-985, a smaller engine which had a tapered cowl. The Canadian Yale had a Wright R-975 whose cowl was slightly smaller, but of a constant diameter. Other models had variations in the empennage and even fabric-covered fuselage sides. You can put German markings on the latter, because the Luftwaffe captured a bunch from the French and ran a flying school with them until the supply of spares ran out. What’s that? The time? Oh, a good 23 mm. ‘til the tank ran dry.

Doyle Cook, Wayne’s student, has been coming along apace and is making all his own landings. I’d make a big thing here about how Doyle ought to move up to modern times and replace his thoroughly-passé 72 mc. radio with a totally 21st Century 2.4 gig set, but he’s already gone and done it. He had been on Channel 38 and, well, yes, that is my channel for the sailplane. Now, if I can convince Mel and JR to switch all the way,...

Another guy working on his landings is David Wilson who was doing approach after approach with his (and son Connor’s) electric Nexstar. Who says that electrics haven’t progressed right into the mainstream of modelling? David’s Nexstar is as noisy as any other 40-size ship and Mike Vaughan’s Christen Eagle will convince you it had at least a .25 in it. For years, the engine gurus have been telling us that propeller noise is a large part of the sound our models make and this seems to back up their argument. Wayne Wahrmund tells me that there is available a gadget you can put in your electric plane to make it sound like a gas ship. Boy, we really needed that!

You remember the trouble Mel and JR Graham had with their gasket-eating YS 110? By contrast, Frank Blain is flying the same sort of engine in his Funtana with not the whisper of a problem, so don’t get down on all YS l10s. Frank’s also been trimming out an Ugly Stik (and a taildragger at that, by gosh!) with a Saito 100. This one’s for his grandsons to learn on. And speaking of Stiks, Mickey Cohen’s now sports an 0.S. .95 up front in place of the .75 he was using before. Puts him more in line with the prevailing standards in the ER/CA.

Doug McWha’s had his Super Stik in the air as well as his two different-size T-28s, though I’m not sure his heart’s back in it yet after the demise of Doug’s Disgrace last month.

I gather that Donnie Krenz had more than a little trouble one day with his Sbach, because the DLE 30 is now in a new ship. The new one is an MXQ or MXR or something like that. Whatever it is, I believe it to be the abbreviation of a Chinese phrase meaning, “Oh, no, not another one of those!”, because it looks pretty much like a Giles, an Extra, a - well, you get the idea. But Donnie says it flies fine and he likes it, so who cares?

Scott Feliman (and Elizabeth) brought a helicopter out to the field on one of the nicer days and it was a helicopter with a difference. Down deep inside, it was an Hirobo Sceadu (I’ll grant you my spelling there is open to question), a machine Scott has been flying for a while, but it had a scale body wrapped around those innards. This one was a Hughes 500 in Army markings and I can’t think of what the Army calls its 500s. The full-size bird is turbine-powered and the tailpipe exits halfway down the rear of the body. Scott’s .51 has its exhaust ducted to that pipe where it produces rather more smoke than the Hughes does in “real life”, but looks pretty good just the same. Let’s have more Scale helicopters. Anybody for an R-4?

Len Stolfo was out one day with another of his camera birds. This one had foam wings and tail and a profile body made from a very thick slab of the stuff. Here and there, in strategic spots were strips of what looked like 1/32 ply reinforcement. There were some technical difficulties that day, but I’m told that Len’s gotten some good pictures from the two cameras on board.

C. O'D.

November 2011

WITH THE WEEKDAY WARRIORS

No sooner had I ranted a bit about the rain in October than it stopped. We had less than half of what is normal. November is following in the same vein; we have had only about 1” when we should have had about 3” by now. That’s not to say that we have been overwhelmed by good flying weather. The fog has been down around our ears all through many mornings and fliers unable to forget the balmy airs of Summer are standing around with chattering teeth when it’s still a mild 48° and the breeze is less than 15 mph. Get out and fly, guys; it will only get worse until 7/1/12 comes along.

Craig Canaday came out with his out-sized Yak 54 and made only a couple of flights before fleeing to his fireside. Mike Vaughan brought out a small, electric Fokker D.VII, but retired to someplace calmer and warmer after but one flight.

Made of sterner stuff (and blessed with a somewhat nicer day), Mel and JR Graham were trimming a Super Sportster, built from an old Great Planes kit. Covered with silk and doped, too - you’d almost think Mel was as old as I am. Power is an 0.S. .91 tilted to starboard which lays the muffler down along the fuselage side and gives the model a sportier look. This one is not for Pattern competition, just for quotidian sport flying.

JR is still flying his Reactor Biplane. You’ll remember that it began life with that problematic Y.S. 110 in the nose, then received a 20cc Chinese gas-burner. Alas, the ignition system on that one went haywire and is off for repair. JR now has a Y.S. 120 for power and the most interesting thing is that all these engines pretty much drop into the same mounts.

Wayne Wahrmund’s AT-6 has again come a’cropper. It bounced upon landing and Wayne poured on the coal to go around again. The bounce must have put the nose just a bit too high for that sort of treatment and, instead of a go-round, there was a snaproll. Thin-winged Scale ships are not nearly as forgiving of coarse stick-work as are sport ships. The cowl is cracked, the firewall pushed in a bit, and the tailwheel torn off. Definitely not the first time for that tailwheel. Wayne may he able to fix that part in his sleep. “All repairable”, he said. This is the time to convert it to one of the French or Canadian fixed-gear versions, right?

Scott Fellman had an odd thing crop up in his Army Hughes 500 helicopter. On the first flight with the new, Scale, body, he needed a bit of left trim. Scott put it down to some “weird aerodynamics” associated with the new body. Certainly that’s an easy call to make - helicopters are the embodiment of weird aerodynamics - but as time went on it got worse, requiring more and more trim. Scott was awake; he brought the Hughes in to land. A good look revealed a bent pushrod in the rotor system - call it an aileron pushrod. Scott thinks that, in wrestling the Scale body into place, he bent that pushrod slightly. There is a lot of load on a pushrod that moves one of those big rotor systems and the load on this one was now off-center. That made it easy to bend the rod a little more and that, in turn, made it even easier to put even more of a bend into it, thus the ever-increasing need for trim. Scott is of the opinion that he got it down just in time.

I’ve been reading a book about the Nieuport company which you probably know from its WWI N.17 fighter, of which there have been dozens and dozens of kits. Like several other French companies, it was started by two brothers, in this case, Edouard and Charles. The former was a real nut for speed and set out to find the best streamline shape for the nacelle of his first plane. He had no access to a wind tunnel, so he towed a block of soap behind a motorboat on the Seine and observed the shape it was carved into by the flow of water. Both the brothers had been killed in crashes before WWI had started, but the company lasted until 1950.

And that’s it. I am retiring from journalism, though I won’t promise to stay that way. It’s just that I’m getting tired of trying to come up with something every month and then typing it up. With me, typing takes on all the aspects of hand-to-hand combat (in school I never did get a positive number on a typing test), so you regular readers of this column will have to find something else to do - both of you.

C. O'D.