|============== Azalea City Model Aeronautics, Mobile, Alabama,
USA ===============|
============= “From the Pits” Field Activities
— June 14, ’09 ============
………….....….. All photos and videos
by Frits Jetten unless otherwise indicated …………………..
By the way, this is John Talmage, the newest member of Azalea City
Model Aeronautics. He’s working on that first trainer, an Avistar,
and hopes to come out soon…
Max Needels, wife Nikki and son Dale were back with their YAK-54.
Max managed a couple of nice flights.
It was hot, and after his last flight, Max got comfortable and took
off his shoes.
He made sure he was at the North-most end of the pits and the wind
was coming from the South. How considerate of you, Max!…
Jeff Lee flew his new HK-450 electric helicopter. But the heli lost
its tail rotor control and crashed.
Something about a tail rotor servo horn screw that might have been
left out? Oops! Jeff had better luck with his Mini
Ultra Stick… Johnny Turner showed up with his big Raptor
and the much smaller electric Align T-Rex 250 helicopter.
Unfortunately there was a problem with the Raptor, Johnny did an auto
that was not perfect because of low altitude and it went in. Damage
was not severe...
Larry Rogers brought his electric T-Rex, his Hughes MD-400 civilian
helicopter, and his Hawk "Saphira 2" helicopter. He flew
the Saphira 2.
Not sure if he flew the
other two… Tony Beckham was back with his Ultra Stick Lite
again. He did
some nice flying with that big plane… And Roger showed off his
wild side with his Mini
Funtana.
TJ Rohyans flew his Lanier Stinger 60. I guess Joe Krebs resolved
the engine problem a week earlier and I think TJ made a couple of
good flights on the Stinger.
Things would have been great if he had just stuck with his Stinger,
but as this report progresses you’ll see that things went horribly
wrong for TJ…
Bill Slagle has a Pulse 40 and a Pulse
60. He’s been flying the 40 and he loves it. Bill asked
Frits to do the first flight on the Pulse 60. He got it ready while
Gary and Rhonda Johnson watched.
And the maiden flight went very well. Frits thought that he heard
Bill groan a couple of times when Frits did some wild maneuvers with
the Pulse.
But Frits explained that when he feels comfortable with a new plane,
he does that. Besides, Frits added, “It’s not MY plane!”
Bill was very happy when Frits finally landed…
Andrew Smith, was back with his electric Lite Machines LMH-120 Corona
helicopter. He also flew his Gnat and his Synapse… Randy
Bodiford flew his small electric foam Cub and his Ur-Star 40…Roger
Hagler had one of his small planes with him, a Taylorcraft…
Jon Koppisch showed up with wife Leigh and his small Piper
Cub…
Actually there were several Cubs present. Joe Krebs also flew his
small Cub… We all missed Henry Waltman. People were asking about
you, Henry!… John Walker showed up with the Cub that Al Ayler
had abused just a weekend earlier.
Did anyone notice anything wrong with John’s Cub? Whatever happened
to the wing’s dihedral?.
But Al appeared pretty nonchalant.
And Al had brought his Cub. He flew it around and managed to make
a mighty poor landing.
There was no damage, and Al should have just put the Cub in his trailer.
But no — he had to fly it again. And the next landing was not
pretty either.
He scraped the wing tip up. He should have put the Cub away then!
But NOoooo…!
So Al took it up again and this time he was showing off to the crowd.
He put the transmitter down as the Cub was flying overhead. He does
that sometimes to impress Henry Waltman. Then TJ tried to grab the
transmitter.
But Al finally did let TJ fly the Cub. Well, he shouldn’t have.
He really, REALLY shouldn’t have! TJ somehow stalled the Cub
while making a pretty tight turn close to the ground and the Cub went
in. Right there in the midst of the pretty Black-eyed
Susans (notice they are Cub yellow in color. How fitting!…)
So sad! Al
was not too happy, of
course. But he kept his cool.
He was mumbling bad things as he walked toward
the pits. Well, who can blame
him? After all, how hard is it to fly a Cub? It’s something
you look forward to flying when you get up in age, and other planes
seem just a little too sensitive and fast, right? Poor TJ was not
happy either, but he tried to look at it from the bright
side…
Elton Sullivan jad also brought his Cub 40, and his Extra-300SP,
an E-flite mini Pulse XT and a new CAP-232.
Not sure if he flew the Extra.
He should soon be running out of room in his trailer…
Jeff Foster gave Elton some mental support while Elton Dremeled away
on the Extra-260.
The CAP made a strange sideways landing that bent the main gear strut
a little. …
Glen Teasley and his wife Helen showed up with Glen’s yellow
Tiger 2. He
had a couple of nice flights while Helen looked on.
Wayne Miller flew his Gee Bee and his “Neville’s Devil”
Fun Fly plane.
Wayne had a nice flight with the Gee
Bee. The flight started with a nice takeoff.
And nothing broke during the landing!
Robert brought his TV — there must have been a NASCAR race
on — and with the help of Jon Koppisch and Randy Bodiford he
got the satellite dish hooked up. Or was it dishes, you know, for
stereo? It took
some tuning and tweaking, but finally, success!
… Randy had a good time with his Ur-Star 40, and flew it more
than once…
Tal Fowler (remember him?) showed up and visited a
while. He’s into experimental aircraft now. Oh, yeah, the
full-scale kind! He’s thinking of getting an ultra-light soon!…
I found this at the North
End. What kind of “medical” experiments iare going
on there? I don’t even want to think about that…
Robert Sanderson showed up with three planes, and set up his thriving
fruit stand.
He got his Coroplast night plane out, but without the chemical light
sticks, and let Alvin fly
it. That went pretty
well. The takeoff was perfect.
Even the landing was acceptable.
Robert had also brought the battered Double Trouble, the twin Webra
.32 powered plane that Frits flew so well a couple of weekends ago.
But this time it stayed grounded.
Alvin got his Raptor Titan helicopter out late in the afternoon.
But he waited until it was dusk. Well, he shouldn’t have! He
started out okay.
But then, the dim light got the best of him, and he zagged when he
should have zigged.
The Titan went in very hard, as Alvin was in the middle of a zig-zag
maneuver of some
sort. And he didn’t have the altitude that possibly could
have saved the Raptor.
The chopper was crushed pretty
badly. So was Alvin.
The heli was crumpled up enough to fit in a small box!
A week earlier Robert had taken the Double Trouble to North Dakota,
to an annual SPAD Fest and also for a speed test. That test was cancelled
due to wind. Wind? What wimps! Well, it was probably a good thing,
because Robert had gotten one of his knuckles into one of the spinning
props earlier. He spent five hours in a hospital emergency room. “Any
stitches?” I asked him. “No,” Robert said, “There
was not enough skin left to stitch…” Yikes! Yeah, that
Robert is bad to the bone…
Robert and Frits dropped several whistling Nerf bombs from his converted
trainer plane, which now has an external servo to release
things. The bombs worked well, even though we were unable to make
a direct hit on Alvin with them...
And Robert has come up with ANOTHER bright idea! He wanted to take
an airplane up, kill the engine in flight, and lower the whole airplane
with a parachute! So he did. He made the chute out of a plastic painter’s
drop cloth. It was about eight feet in diameter and young Dale Needles
had trouble dragging it upwind!
Triggering a servo from the transmitter would release the chute.
Frits recommended that Robert cut a hole in the center of the chute,
but Robert didn’t want to do that for the first
flight. Of course folding the chute was critical. You couldn’t
get it up against the muffler, as the heat would melt the chute!
So Frits took it up and all went well. The chute released and it
billowed out as planned. There’s no video of the first flight
because Frits was flying. The plane floated slowly from the south
end of the runway toward Half Mile Road! The drop rate was way too
slow, without that air bleed hole in the chute!
So, after he retrieved the plane, Robert cut a hole in the chute.
That made it much better! The drop rate was much faster.
Too fast in fact, so Robert taped a couple of pieces of wide tape
across the hole to restrict the air flow. That made it much
better. The following tests all went okay, sort
of. The plane’s tail got tangled up in the chute wires a
couple of
times.
Out of seven flights, only two drops failed.
One because the chute wouldn’t release, and another, because
the plane couldn’t get enough altitude. And one time the plastic
did melt and the heat welded a portion of it together, messing up
the unfolding of the chute, so the plane dropped much faster than
normal.
But overall, Robert’s system works
fine!... It’s not a novel idea. Full-scale aircraft have
been saved with this BRS (Ballistic Recovery System) for two decades.
The system was first shown in 1984. And between 1989 and 2007, 251
people have been lowered, plane and all, in 201 recoveries. This sequence
of pictures shows one of the test recoveries.
Beats the alternative…
This blimp showed up recently and slowly moved over the area. It’s
a full-scale…
Oh, it’s high time for Russell to go on a diet, it looks like.
While relaxing in the late afternoon he suddenly dropped through one
of the chairs...
He needed help getting
out… About Robert’s
Fruit Stand. I wonder if he has a permit?...
I’ll see you at the field. Fly safe!
============ 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..
=========== 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.
========= 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
