|============== Azalea City Model Aeronautics, Mobile, Alabama,
USA ===============|
============== “From the Pits” Field Activities
— Aug. 15 & 16, ’09 ==============
………….....….. All photos and videos
by Frits Jetten unless otherwise indicated …………………..
Remember there will be an ACMA Fish Fry & Nite Fly
on Saturday, September 5. Location: Irvington Field, Irvington, Alabama.
Food items that need to be warmed, fried or cooked should be brought
to the field by 3:00 PM, Saturday, September 5. A food plate will
cost $6.00 a plate, or $3.00 a plate if you contribute a side dish
or other needed items. A discount will be available for families.
Get out your night flying planes and join the fun!
Jon Koppisch showed up with his wife Leigh, his mother Linda, and
his 40% Yak-54 3D
plane. Jon does some smooth
flying. He had a couple of nice flights with the large
plane… Jonathan Festa flew his Edge-540.
He joined Jon had his Yak for some formation 3D
flying. The two giant scale planes looked very nice hovering together.
Roger Hagler showed up with his Lazy Bee on Saturday.
He put it through its paces.
On Sunday he brought his P-38 Lightning, a nice, small twin-engine
model. But something
went wrong with one of the engines, I believe, and Paull Verger, who
was flying it, brought it in hard, bending the nose gear and one of
the main gear struts. That grounded Roger for the rest of the day.
Mike and Ed Callen showed up with a Coroplast
Cub. Mike had wanted to participate in combat, but something had
held him up and he did not make it. He did fly the Cub and it flew
very
well… Paul Verger flew his Wild Hare RC Edge-540.
Paul can do somevery graceful flying!
Now, to me dragging a plane back to the pits like this just doesn’t
look right.
I’m just saying… Check out that PCM receiver mounted behind
the pilot figure.
Did the full-scale Edge have one of those too, but much bigger, Paul?...
Rob Baker brought his daughter Audrey and a Phence Post combat plane.
He had clipped the plane’s wing tips, and later, in combat,
the plane proved to be noticeably faster that others of similar design.
Here are Rob and Audrey.
Paul Kelly had a good time flying three of his aircraft. He had brought
a Lancair, a Four Star 40 and a Corsair. He had never taken off the
Corsair, but he had flown it. This very firstcomplete flight—
from takeoff to landing — went
fine. And he flew the Lancair well
also. His brother-in-law, Craig Robison (I hope I got the name
right), flew the Four Star 40 successfully… Frank Rowell flew
his nice Great Planes Escapade a couple
of times.
Jimmy Kennamer showed up with a colorful plane that he’s used
as a tow plane to pull his glider aloft.
I forgot what Jimmy told me the name was. No glider today, but Jimmy
did fly it. His son-in-law Ramsay Clevenger had brought his electric
ParkZone Typhoon
2. He asked Frits to do the first test flight. Frits flew with
the controls on low rates, and all went well. The plane was very sensitive,
however, and Frits recommended the settings for high rates, and to
use lower settings for low rates.
Last Sunday was the third Sunday of the month, it was 2:00 PM, so
it was combat time! There were only three contenders this time. Robert
Sanderson and his spotter Johnny
Jones. Andrew and his spotter Randy
Bodiford. And Rob and his spotter Esam
Guirges. Robert was ready with his Four Star 40, Andrew Smith
had his Phence Post and Rob Baker had a clipped wing version of the
Phence Post.
In the first round Rob lost his streamer right off the bat and then
dropped his muffler. He didn't finish the first round. His spotter
found and retrieved the muffler. Rob had trouble with that muffler
in the second and third round also. He was clearly the fastest one
out
there. There were several close calls and plenty of action.
In the third round Robert had a midair with Rob that took off the
last three ribs of Robert's left wing and most of the aileron, but
Robert kept flying. Or was that his spotter/backup pilot, Johnny
Jones? The three rounds ended in a 3-way
tie. So Andrew decided to have a tiebreaker round. Johnny and
Robert taped up the busted wing as best as they could to get ready
for the fourth round.
Robert took off kind of wildly with part of his wing missing, and
I heard that his takeoff scared the North Enders! Midway through the
round he turned the controls over to Johnny. Well, I was not watching
and something happened, but I don’t know any details. Either
there was another midair, or Johnny lost control and crashed the plane.
Anyway, Robert’s plane was a mess!
After it was all over, Andrew declared himself the winner. He gets
the $20 cash prize. Congratulations, Andrew!
Andrew acquired a couple of well-used foamy electric planes from
Steve Drake, who had stopped by. This one has twin electric
motors… TJ Rohyans brought his
Cub. He flew it a couple of times. I believe he had a couple of
deadstick landings…
Henry Waltman was still having some trouble getting his CAP-21 started.
He had plenty of help.
The engine finally fired off and ran. Jon flew it, and it did just
fine…
As usual Al Ayler showed up with several planes, and a couple of
them were new. Not NEW-new, just new additions of older planes that
have been around. One was a Dauntless.
Next time you get close to it, check out those thousands of hand-applied
rivets on that plane! No, Al didn’t build the Dauntless. It
was built by Mike Montelban, who some of you may remember from many
years ago.
The other aircraft was a bright yellow Bearcat named “Beetle
Bomb”. Neither the Bearcat nor the Dauntless flew today,
but Al did spend some time with the Bearcat.
He checked the retractable gear for proper operation, and made sure
the doors didn’t get crunched.
It will fly next weekend, I hope. Unless he sells it to Carl
Broughton… Jim Quint (on the right) was back again. Good
to see him up and
around.
Joyce Walker had brought some goodies to the field.
She’s the on the left, of course. Those cookies were in big
demand. Al pretty much pigged out on them.
Henry had a hard time guarding the sweets.
They were wonderful, but I don’t remember what they’re
called…
The cracks in the runway are slowly expanding. I expect that crack
monster to show up soon and start snatching airplane landing gear
with his talons again…
Esam got his AMA so he came prepared to fly his Solo Star trainer.
And he DID fly it this time, after Frits took it up. He’s getting
back into the swing of things and doing very well. He stopped flying
about three years ago, but he’s back now. Esam bought a wrecked
helicopter from Steve. He let Steve fly the Solo Star but there were
some engine problems. Johnny tried to help...
Then Esam locked his car keys in his car, but managed to get them
out with some wire.
According to Esam, with him, “stuff always happens”…
Robert brought his Double
Trouble. He asked Frits to fly it. There were some problems with
one of the engines faltering on the first flight, but Frits managed
a decent controlled hard landing that only busted one propeller.
Did I ever tell you that this plane does NOT glide at all? During
the second flight the engine totally stopped in flight, causing it
to be a handful. But again, Frits managed to control it. He brought
it down in a swampy area of the landfill.
The plane was wet and muddy, but nothing was broken.
Russell Ward did some cooking and cleaning followed up by some resting.
When it started to rain, someone told him that his Avistar trainer
was getting wet in the back of his truck. So Russell quickly crammed
the plane into the cab.
He’s pretty good at this, as he recently had to do the same
thing, although a bit too late. Russell says he knows for a fact that
an Avistar fuselage can hold more than a gallon of rainwater…
I’ll throw in another bonus feature this week… One of
my favorite magazines, Popular Science, is available on the Internet.
Here is something that caught my eye. It’s an article about
a new unmanned combat hover drone — the Aurora Excalibur. It
could soon wing its way to the battlefield and land with the precision
of a helicopter.
First, here is a computer
animation.
The unmanned aircraft can fly at speeds of more than 400 mph, or
hover. The unmanned aerial system (UAS) could pack a 400-pound payload
of four Hellfire missiles, and also deliver weapons or other supplies
to war fighters deep in rough territory. Its design allows it to have
a maximum speed of 460 mph, but also have the ability to loiter overhead
at just 115 mph.
The Excalibur recently completed its first flight to demonstrate those
abilities using a hybrid turbine-electric propulsion system. "It
was a flawless first flight with a crisp takeoff and perfect landing,"
reported John Langford, president of Aurora Flight Sciences Corporation.
"In flight, the hover stability and heading control performance
were excellent." Here is the Excalibur’s first
flight. You can read the complete article here.
When I left the field I caught this bright, rosy sky off the new
road extension near the Interstate…
And remember our event on Labor
Day weekend… This is all I’ve got. 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.
======== 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
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