2011 JR Indoor Electric Festival
Well it isa golf facility. Terry organized a friendly contest to see who could hit the golf ball the farthest, the Horizon crew or the Hobbico crew (above
During Micro time the dome was filled
with some of the smallest models. Joe Mal- inchak, a perennial at this show was back, and brought along his ¹⁄₇₂ scale EDF MiG-15. The tiny little jet really moves and one has to have good eyes to really keep it in focus. The little brushless motor and shroud as- sembly is barely bigger than a dime! Joe’s small MiG wound up winning the “Best Jet” award. Not to be outdone, Joe’s wife, Cindy, also designed a micro model. It was a scale mod- el of a monarch butterfly! Cindy got the idea and sat down one night and drew the model out. Cindy was more than happy to fly the giant scale model of the monarch for me. In the end, she won “Best Micro” award. The outreach in micro models has cer-
tainly changed in the past few years. Once a segment dedicated only to serious scratch- builders, the category really opened up, thanks in part to Bob Selman and later Horizon and Hobbico each offering their form of ready to fly micro aircraft. Another segment that your author really
enjoys, is that of the light scale and built-up. That translates to a time dedicated to those
left). In the end, Hobbico’s Frank Noll would win. Matt Andren’s Blohm & Voss BV 238 flies gracefully over Spektrum Lake (above right).
who have built their models of balsa. No foam aircraft are allowed at this time. The creations that can be seen at this time can vary from intricately scaled early Pioneer and WWI, all the way to old freeflight mod- els that have been modified to fly with mi- croelectronics. It’s fun watching a small model originally designed for freeflight per- form spot landings and touch and goes off the small runway or Spektrum Lake. Saturday at noon, everyone took a break
as the manufacturers were allowed to give a show at the noontime demos. This gives everyone a chance to see the latest and greatest items in action and usually re- quires me to update my list of wants and needs.
Horizon showed three airplanes featuring
new revolutionary technology called AS3X, the updated Beast, 3D Hyper Taxi and the Gee Bee R3. The Beast looks the same as be- fore with just a subtle trim change, the gold stripe changing to silver, but the 3D Hyper Taxi and Gee Bee were all new. Anyone who has admired the Granville brothers creation has probably guessed that the “flying barrel” is somewhat touchy to fly
and rightly so. However, Horizon modeled this plane to be scale, nothing enlarged or changed to allow it to fly “easy”. The AS3X takes care of that. What is AS3X? Briefly, if you have ever
flown a giant scale airplane, you can appre- ciate the large solid feel an aircraft like that has. It is not herky jerky, and slight breezes do not move it from its intended course. Now remember what happens to our fa- vorite small and light models when we fly in a breeze? Yeah, they tend to fly wherev- er the winds of change blow them. They also tend to fly sometimes in a bumpy fashion. What if you could have the handling of your large-scale bird in a convenient, fly-in-your- backyard size? Well, that is exactly what AS3X technolo-
gy does and quite frankly is a huge leap for- ward in small micro models. All of the mod- els flew amazingly solid, despite their size and looked as if they had successfully cheat- ed the laws of physics. Up next, Hobbico showed some fun coor- dinated aerobatics with their new Citabria foamie and flew their new Micro Fokker Dr.1 Triplane. Rabid Models featured a
Terry Nitsch takes a break from his duties and performs slow motion touch and goes (above) on Spektrum Lake with his Night Vapor complete with Joe Malinchak designed floats. Jim Ryan has his own kind of fun over Spektrum Lake, making waves with his Lockheed AH-56 Cheyenne (at right).
34 MARCH 2012
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