============== Azalea City Model Aeronautics, Mobile, Alabama,
USA ===============
============== “From the Pits” Field Activities
— Apr. 26, May 2/3 & 9/10, ’09 ===========
………….....….. All photos and videos
by Frits Jetten unless otherwise indicated …………………..
Slowly but surely I have been trying to catch up. This report will
finally have me back in the groove again!… The day after our
Azalea City Model Aeronautics Spring Scale Fly-in things at the field
went quiet. Mostly people sitting around. Eating was back to normal
for some people, although many of us would not consider what Alvin
eats normal.
He carried on his usual foolishness, of
course. But Jeff was not in the mood…
Henry conducted an impromptu meeting. What about, I don’t know…
And Joe Krebs had some of them spellbound with his stories, and he
knows many…
Not too much flying going on lately. Roger Hagler flew one of his
little planes (he has no large ones…) and he let Al fly it.
I think it was the Lazy
Bee… Frits took new club member Bryan and his Mustang trainer
up for some lessons. Jim’s doing really
well. During one flight things almost went to pot when Frits accidentally
flipped one of the transmitter switches with his pants, (yep, with
his pants), and he didn’t know which one he had flipped!
Well, it was the flaps switch, and while Frits was looking at the
transmitter, it put the Mustang on a downward slope that took Jim
by surprise. Fortunately he didn’t panic. Jim reached over and
flipped the flaps switch back, while Frits saved the plane from destruction
at the last moment. It was the only excitement at the field that day…
Alvin flew his Titan Raptor helicopter, doing some nice and smooth
flying… Dewey Brown flew his P-51 Mustang. The landing was
interesting.
But there was no damage…
Elton Sullivan showed off his new Citabria.
It was all for show, because he never took
it off. Elton also played with his Align T-Rex 500 helicopter…
Guest pilot Russell Horsley flew this small Extra. Here he is with
Joe. And
Joe flew his small Cub.
Joe also assisted Jack Smith, who was there with wife Carolyn and
a new Beechcraft
Bonanza . But, things went awfully wrong rather quickly. Later,
after I e-mailed Jack to find out the gory details, Jack said that
he had checked the balance several times, but at takeoff the plane
looked tail-heavy. He struggled to keep it airborne but the wind rolled
it over as he was trying to bring it back for a landing. The plane
apparently stalled and crashed.
The wing was a total loss, but the fuselage can be restored.
Jack said he’d have it “flight-ready by next May”.
Jack must not get into too much of a hurry…
Jade Taylor showed off his newest airplane, a giant scale Sukhoi.
Impressive!
But he didn’t fly it. He hung out with the other lazy pilots
in the pavilion.
We may soon see that Sukhoi fly at Irvington Field though… Paul
Verger flew his Extra-300S.
Nice aerobatics
plane. The next day he was back with another Extra, the one by
Aeroworks. Lee Carroll also showed
up. Paul had some nice, smooth, aerobatic flights, his “flight
desk” firmly planted in his belly…
Frank Rowell showed up with his Great Planes Escapade.
He had a couple of nice flights too, with no incidents…
Henry Waltman finally got his CAP-21 going. He had help from most
of the large scale pilots at the North End, namely: Wayne Boudreaux,
Joe Krebs, Al Ayler, Jon Koppisch, Frank Madison, John Walker, and
possibly others. To that Scale Advisory Group (SAG) we can now add,
Joe Ward.
Joe is one of our newest club members. Jon flew the CAP and did some
maneuvers.
Bill Slagle flew his Avistar trainer several
times. He also showed off his new Pulse. He asked Frits to take
it up on its maiden flight. That went well, and Frits had a ball flying
this excellent aerobatics plane. But just before landing they noticed
that one of the wheels had come off. Frits made a perfect landing
anyway…
Hey, you heavyweights! And you know who you are. Try not to lean on
the fence too hard…
Jonathan Festa flew his 35% giant scale extra-260 3D
plane. Jonathan is an IMAC pilot (IMAC – International Miniature
Aerobatics Club). I’m not sure if he competes.
Jonathan is also one of our newest club
members… Raymond Murtha flew his Banshee, a competition
aerobatics plane of 1971 vintage, according to Paul Verger, who should
know…
Speaking of newest club members, here’s another one —
meet Max Needels, wife Nikki and son
Dale. They recently moved from Ohio to Dauphin Island. Besides
this YAK, Max also flies an Edge-540.
Oh, Russell Ward’s sink project is almost complete. Frank Madison
donated some sink counter tops, and installed them. They look nice
and shiny. I hope the moisture will not swell that particle board,
but I know it will. Soon! Nice installation, though. Now all we need
is a drain that doesn’t dump onto your feet when you use the
sink… Hey, who donated those four nice new chairs a couple of
weeks ago? To
whomever dropped them off, thank you very much!
Roger Hagler could also be seen flying his Dazzler Citabria and Mini
Funtana. Roger
tried for some Harrier landings in the gusty winds…
Carl Broughton crashed his Jerry Bates Sport-240 aerobatics plane
when the horizontal stabilizers came apart in flight.
The engine appeared okay, according to Carl.
But the plane was a total
loss. Or was it? The remains were being closely examined by the
two Wards, Joe and Russell…
Last weekend Jon showed up with wife Leigh, mother Linda and a large
Sukhoi. He flew the Sukhoi, but somehow I didn’t get any pictures
of the plane. Here’s a photo of Henry and Leigh.
Oh, yeah, that new digital camera still leaves Henry flabbergasted…
Bill Bryan asked Frits to take up two of his newest acquisitions,
an AT-6 Texan and a Me-109.
The flight of the Me-109 went just fine. But Frits had a problem taking
off the Texan. Even though balance fore-to-aft and wingtip-to-wingtip
checked out great, the plane jumped up quickly, turned hard left and
stalled. Probably not enough airspeed. The wing tips got scraped up,
the propeller broke and one of the retracts was bent.
David Etheredge came out with an RCM Funster, an Ultimate biplane
and his trusty U-Can-Do.
The old Funster flew just
fine. The biplane was a bit touchy a week or so ago, but this
time David had things well under
control. Here’s his landing.
On a different day he also flew his Matt Chapman CAP-580…
Al Ayler didn’t fly much at all these last two weekends. He
did eat, though. Here’s trying to hide his pork
chop… And everyone ate plenty of ice
cream.
Randy Bodiford flew his small, all-foam, electric Cub and his yellow
Slow Stick.
He added some after-market wheels to the Stick…
Andrew flew his old Mid Star 40, dressed up in chrome
(not Andrew — the plane…). He also had a Slow Stick, which
he converted from a tail dragger to a tricycle
gear. He made the gear himself. Dean Ritola took this picture
only seconds before Andrew tried to drop that bomb on
him. He missed! Here’s Andrew showing off his impeccable
grace while launching his Phence Post combat
plane.
Alvin Reed flew his Thunder Tiger Raptor 50 Titan helicopter, trying
to impress several onlookers at the South End. He did some nice auto
rotations. And some flying that was smooth and graceful.
He even brushed the moon with his heli’s main
blades. I think he scared himself once!
But nothing bad happened…
He settled his nerves by eating some chicken.
Justin Peacock is no slough when it comes to flying his Align T-Rex
600 helicopter. He can do some wild
stuff. He flew inverted to within inches of the runway surface.
And did some accurate autos.
Here he’s chatting with Larry Rogers, another rotor
head… It’s pretty tough for me to take pictures of
everything, although I keep
trying. Thanks to Alvin for letting me steal many of his pictures
from his Mobile Area Model Aviation Forum…
I caught Dean taking some high-fashion photos of Justin.
Dean was using a remotely operated fill-in flash.
That setup produces some really pretty effects. I thought I heard
someone say that we may see Justin in next year’s Victor’s
Secret catalog…
Robert Sanderson showed up with a couple of boxes full of Phence
Posts, normally used for combat planes. The Phence Post is made of
foam core wings and Coroplast tail-feathers.
Is Robert going into business selling these? I don’t know, but
he had JC Day help him put them together…
Robert finally got his Double Trouble twin-engine speed plane ready
for its first flight.
He had contracted Wayne Boudreaux, local well-known scale model builder,
gas engine expert and general RC know-it-all, to double-check the
balance. Wayne made some recommendations.
And Robert made adjustments accordingly.
Then Robert fired up the engines.
The two Webra .32s tended to overheat when Robert ran them before,
and that worried Frits, the test pilot. Because if one should stop
in flight…
And then it was time! Robert was so nervous he was shaking as he fired
up the engines! Not Frits. It wasn't his plane, after all! Robert
tweaked and tached the engines and they sounded great when they synchronized.
Great launch by Robert. The plane flew right out of his hands. Plenty
of power. Balance was almost perfect! It wanted to go right a bit.
A couple of clicks on the ailerons would have done it, but Frits decided
to live with it for fear of losing control of the fast-moving plane.
Here’s the video of the
launch. (The last two videos of the Double Trouble were taken
by Jon Koppisch. Thanks, Jon!)
So, what happened? Well, after Frits got over the shock that this
thing was actually flying, he wanted to get some altitude, but quickly
realized that he was already flying with the elevator stick at maximum
up-elevator position, and there was no more up! In the turn the plane
dipped and yawed, and Frits thought he had lost it, but recovered,
but then, because of the plane's attitude and loss of lift in the
turn — and no more UP, remember — it was on a down slope,
and he just wasn’t able to recover from that...
Before the moment of impact Frits thought "Throttle down!"
Too late — he was already down... The damage? Less than any
of us expected! One broken engine mount and two broken props. That's
all! Both Frits and Robert were happy with the flight, short as
it was. Total flight time was 30 seconds. Back in the pits Frits repeatedly
told Robert not to redesign the plane, as Robert always likes to do.
Just a little up elevator is all that’s needed, Robert! Oh yes,
and a new motor
mount!
That’s all I can remember… Don’t forget Armageddon
Fun Fly, May 30. Details farther down.
I’ll see you at the field. Fly safe!
=========== Keeping those videos for sharing with others
===========================
Several people have asked me about this… The videos that I
take are stored on my computer. The files are large, and that’s
why I always make short videos, usually less than a minute, but always
less than two minutes long. It’s normally too impractical to
share them by e-mail.
But once a video has been posted on YouTube, it’s there “forever”.
You can always go back to it. Just copy that string of characters
in the browser window right above the video, and save it in a text
file on your computer. That string looks like this example > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5QpxUdZFYU
.
By clicking on it later, or, if that doesn’t work, by placing
it back into your Internet browser and hitting the enter key, you
can see it over and over again.
If you want your own copy of videos that features you and your plane,
let me know. I can put them on a DVD for you. They’ll be in
.MOV format. The quality will be much better. The image will be much
sharper, that is. The way I video taped it will remain the same!…
E-mail me > fjetten@aol.com.
======= Upcoming Flying Events - Azalea City Model Aeronautics
======.
May 30 (Sat) — ACMA’s Armageddon Fun Fly.
Rob Baker — owner of HobbyTown USA in Mobile and Daphne —
will again be the organizer of this fun fly. This will be our 12th
annual Fun Fly! Get a plane ready now. Nothing fancy! It needs to
be a plane you’re not too fond of, but one that can perform
in a variety of competition events, fast and slow. The same plane
must be used for all events, unless you crash it beyond repair. In
that case you can substitute another plane.
You’ll perform in simple events like: Aircraft Carrier
Landing - a precision landing event; 3 Loops, 3 Rolls,
1 Touch-‘n’-go, 3 times - a timed event; Egg
Drop - a precision “bomb” drop; and Limbo
- flying under a stretched ribbon, with extra points if you can do
it inverted or knife-edge!
On Armageddon day Combat is an optional and separate event around
noon, but you can use a different plane for that. Armageddon is an
all-day fun event with a lot of action! Plan to come to this one!
Better yet, participate in it! Here’s the Armageddon
flier.
If you need a map to a flying field — either to Irvington Field
or to another club’s field — go to our ACMA Website and
select Field Maps. Or select from main menu
on the left side of this report.
========= Advertising Your For Sale Stuff in the Swap Shop
===========
You know you can advertise your For Sale items with photos in the
Mobile Area RC Aviation Forum’s Swap Shop.
Go to the main menu shown on the left of this report
and select Swap Shop. First-timers must register
with a username and password, but that’s free and it is very
easy.
If you have questions or need help with this, just e-mail me >
fjetten@aol.com..
======== If You Have Any Comments About These Pits Reports…
=====
I welcome any comments regarding these Pits Reports — good
or bad.
E-mail me > fjetten@aol.com.
Azalea City Model Aeronautics Website > http://www.acma-rc.com/index.html
Frits Goes Hollywood - Click For Details
