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Le Journal d’Escadrille - June 2009 Online Edition
President's Message I would like to thank everyone that made it out to the field for the Saturday field repairs. A lot was accomplished in a relatively short period of time. Dave Symank was hard at work long before the scheduled 8 am start. A lot of dirt was moved to fill in ruts secondary to settling and low spots near the old road. I talked to several of the airplane flyers today that could already see a significant difference in the smoothness of the runway. Gene Perry was able to spread Bermuda grass seed over the larger areas prior to the rains we had later in the day. Sheldon Timmons and Bob Hubbard have started work on a break in the sprinklers at the east end of the field.We have several events coming up. The 3-D Hobby Shop Fun Fly will occur the weekend of June 5-7. The busiest flying day will be Saturday. This is a Fun Fly where flying is the emphasis. However, there will be demonstration flights, raffle prizes and food. Night flying will occur and is worth hanging around for. Please welcome our out of town guests. Come out and have some fun. Buy some raffle tickets. If you stick around long enough, you have a great chance to win something. All proceeds from this Fun Fly go to the club.The First Annual 114th RC Club Float Fly will be on Sunday, July 19th. Dewey Walker has put a lot of work into coordinating the event with the Corps. Wendell Hubbard sanctioned the event and arranged the insurance for the alternate field. Sheldon Timmons is bringing a safety boat in case you are wondering about the fishing arrangements. That gives everybody about 6 weeks to put something together. Mine should fly by meeting time. It should be a fun event and a great break in the summer routine. 72 and 50 MHz radios will be allowed at the float fly but not at the regular runway for safety reasons. The regular field will be open to 2.4GHz spread spec-trum radios only during this event.Please be attentive to the flight areas to the west of the field. There have been at least 2 recent noise complaints from a common source. The aircraft involved appear to meet our 100 dB limit. We need to fly inside the western tree line. This means no long low straight in approaches over the trees. If this is a problem for any club members, come out on a Wednesday and get with one of our instructors. This resource can also be helpful to those flyers having difficulty with left or right hand traffic patterns. Utility construction over the next several weeks may make the Carroll road access to the field difficult. Kimball road thru Meadowmere Park should be a better option until the construction is complete. The program for the June meeting is the video produced about our hobby and some of the flyers in our club. This short movie is well done. A lot of the filming took place at the last Santa Cops Fly In. Pay attention. You might be a movie star. We will run the business portion of the meeting first to improve viewing conditions. The next meeting is Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 at 7:00 pm.See you at the field. Vice-President's Message The next couple of months are going to be extremely busy for the club. We have two major events coming up during this time. The first event is the 3D Hobby Fun Fly which will be held the weekend of June 6th & 7th. This event is surely going to be a blast for everyone who attends. Due to my work schedule last year, I wasn’t able to attend that event, but I’m not going to miss this one. Wendell Hubbard tells me that this event is not just for electric flyers, but is open to any member whether they fly gas, nitro, or electric. He also tells me that this event will be attended by pilots from all over the Texas and Oklahoma area.The First Annual 114th RC Aero Squadron Float Fly is coming up on Sunday, July 19th. Our planning is well under way, but we do need additional volunteers to help out with this event. If you can help out, please E-Mail me at vicepresident@114thrc.org.On Sunday, May 17 th, the Weatherford Aero Modeling Society held their float fly out at Cartwright Park just northwest of Weatherford. This event was a lot of fun, and quite a few members of the 114th were there to enjoy some great float flying. Special thanks go out to all the WAMS club members, and volunteers for putting on such a great event. See Page 5 for pictures of this event courtesy of Martin Chorley.
Flight instructor Bill Rutledge is also a full scale commercial instructor pilot. On the afternoon that Patrick solo’d, he underwent the rituals of what full scale students get to go through when they solo for the first time. They lose the back of their shirts, and have their name, and the date of their first solo imprinted on those shirt tails. Where in the world are we going to hang Patrick’s shirt?That’s about it for this one. See you at the 3D Hobby Shop Fun Fly. Model of the Month
This particular one is a joint venture and was picked up at the hobby shop for recycling. I powered it with a OS .25 four stroke glow engine. It is covered in Pink Sig Aerokote and Black and White Monokote over Balsa Rite (to help in covering adhesion). The black checkers on the white wingtips are cut and hand applied (with the help of my kids). I downloaded the Playboy logo and transferred it to Monokote via hobby knife and applied it to the vertical stabilizer. It uses three micro servos for elevator, rudder and throttle controls. The balance point is a little past 50% the width of the main foil. To fly it I have a mix programmed in to apply about 3/8" of down thrust on the elevator when the throttle is on and the elevator sits at zero while the engine is at idle. I also slaved the rudder channel to the aileron channel which helps me to deal with it having only three channels to control. It has been up about 6 times and it has proved to be a nice slow flying stable airframe. As promised, since the meeting, a chair has been added to the subsequent flights, which makes it a bit easier to track it during that time up there. Congratulations John! Other Entries:
21 Years in the Making- A Cub Story
Basically we were looking for the perfect day and finally in Captain King’s judgment it came on Thursday, May 28th. This Cub has been a work in progress for 21 years and finally made its maiden flight. To our delight, Danny says that it had no flaws with the exception of two clicks of elevator trim. Other than that it flew perfectly and has excellent stall characteristics. Thank you guys for voting it Model of the Month. If you are interested in building a ¼ scale Cub, I’ll be happy to share my experience with you. I think you would find it an interesting project.
R/C Report Makes Online Comeback Submitted by Dick Lessard It is good to see R/C Report back. If you go to their website you can browse through the current issue. If you care to sub-scribe they offer two options. I subscribed with the premium option and downloaded the issue. If you do the same, make sure you turn off your pop-up blocker before attempting to download. You can then print out any particular articles that interest you. Check it out even if you were not a subscriber in the past. It is a great, honest publication. Dick Lessard Buy 12 Standard Months for $24.95 Standard users may post user comments and view all pages online, but may not download the full resolution PDF files. Buy 12 Premium Months for $29.95Premium users may post user comments, view all pages online, and download the full resolution PDF files. In addition, Pre-mium Users are eligible for periodic online contests and prizes.
Thank you Tony "Sparky" Coberly
This thing is a jewel for servo setup. It has three modes: 1. Manual mode- Turn the knob and the servo moves. It will also check ESC’s reaction time for Electric Flyers. Yep, works with ESC’s too. 2. Neutral mode- The servo moves to it’s neutral point. Great for setting up linkages. 3. Automatic mode- This makes the servo move like windshield wipers as the servo tracks continuously from its widest angles and back again until you stop it. Now if you think that’s cool, wait, there’s more. You can also connect 3 servos simultaneously. Oh yeah, up to 3 servos at the same time! Great for checking consistency between servos. And if you have a multi-engine Electric, you can connect up to 3 ESC’s and test them for reaction and consistency as well. But wait, there’s even more...the price. It’s $6.95. Uh, yeah, that’s right...$6.95! Delivered to your door it’s $12 from HobbyCity or $13.90 from Swang Hobby. Yes, it’s made in China but it has a solid aluminum case. And before you ask, no, this won’t replace a $100 Servo Tester. In fact, it does have one shortcoming in my opinion. The LED’s indicating which mode its in are just too darn bright. I get blinded! But, I am saying that for the bucks, you get a whole lot of tester. And if you build or assemble a lot of planes, there’s no reason not to have one. My 2 cents worth. Weatherford Float Fly 2009 in Pictures! Courtesy of Martin Chorley
There’s one matching Plane/Heli Tail for each Pilot Tail. Guess the right Pilot Fanny with the right Plane/Heli Tail and you win. Write the pilot number next to each picture. The Grand Prize is…………………………………………………….braggin’ rights!
June 2009 Newsletter
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Our
fixed wing flight training is in full swing. During the month of
May, we have solo’d five students. Congratulations go out to
It's
an Old Timer Powered Free Flight plane called the Playboy. It's
origins date back to the 1940's when modelers would set them up with
escapements attached to timers to work the elevator and rudder
during flight. After which they would chase them until they landed.
With the addition of radio control, the plane takes on a whole new
outlook in that you can land it from the same place you launched it.
The plans to build a new one are available through the Bob Holman
plans website.
In
September 2007 the club awarded Model of the Month to my vermilion
red J-3 Cub as a result of Danny King’s finishing the project
which I began in 1988. Since then we’ve been waiting for favorable
winds, not too many puffy clouds, few witnesses, a moderate
tempera-ture, a scarcity of birds, and (without a doubt) no rain!
RCReport
is back in a new Online version. The economy forced Gordon Banks to
close the doors on the hard copy R/C Report magazine after more than
22 years. The backlash from readers caused me to formulate a plan. I
talked to Gordon and he agreed to allow me to use the R/C Report
name and I created the new Online version. I was able to talk to all
the former authors and they are onboard with the Online version;
even Gordon is writing for us. We are upholding the values that he
created with honest reviews and informative monthly columns. Please
visit our website and have a look at what we are offering. 
Many,
many years ago I discovered Servo Testers could save lots of
time when building or assembling. In-stead of powering up the Radio
system and all the associated pieces, it was simpler to hook up the
tester to set linkages, trim throttles or just make sure servos were
working properly. Servo Testers vary in functionality and some
Testers are pricey and others cheap, but once you own one it seems
like a no brainer. Which brings us to the subject of this article. A
few months ago I came across a GT Power "Servo Consistency
Master" Tester which seemed too good to be true. It had
functionality and value. Hmmm, now we all know the alarms go off
when we see those two words used in the same sentence. But my old
Tester had croaked and I was in need of a new one so off went my
online order and the rest is his-tory. 
