Terry McKienzie took this photo (at left) of the happy gang at Fast Freddie Mulholland’s Florida Winter contest this last January. Some of the contestants were from Canada and Chicago and obviously enjoyed the winter sunshine. Frank Allen, of San Diego, did this electric R/C Puffin (above). The original Puffin design was a 22-inch wingspan CO2 model kitted by Andrew Moorhouse in England. Mike flew his little CO2 Puffin for years—and sure likes the looks of Frank’s larger version.
their models to a “tech inspection” on the first day. I was not able to make the two-day flying session this year, but did thoroughly enjoy the excitement and energy shown on tech inspection day.
A lot of the entries were brought to the contest untested and unflown. I watched a young man completing the wing of his
team’s entry in the hotel lobby—20 minutes before tech inspection was due. Come on out there gentle reader—you can fess up. Can any of you claim that you never ever showed up at a contest with an uncompleted and untrimmed model? I thought not. Now the Widener team had flown, and crashed, its model several times before leav-
ing Philadelphia to come to the contest. I asked a few other contestants whether they’d flown their model at all before bring- ing it to the contest. Some folks confessed, “No, but we taxied it once!” There were other entries where it was quite apparent the model hadn’t even been taxied, much less taken off. While I missed the flying sessions, I expect a lot of balsa was splattered over the landscape on the contest days.
I saw one team seeking help in Smith Brothers Hobby shop, the local hobby store. Dave behind the counter knows a thing or three about balancing aircraft, and when you couple Dave’s advice with that of Tony Naccarato, well the team had a fighting chance. That said, I watched later in the day as they put up an early trim flight—and splattered the plane on the runway. But there are several lessons here for model- ers—and for young engineers. The first is that if you built it, you can fix it. Every old time modeler knows that one.
Gale Wagner of Oakland holds his own design Scooterrubber model (above left). It looks old timey, but is of recent vintage, and was designed and named in honor of Gale’s Manx cat! Dale Tower (above right) holds his Chuck Hollinger designed Floater. Dale has campaigned the Floaterat many contests in both the Electric LMR and Electric Texaco events. Dave Harding (below), in the white shirt, advised the team of senior engineering students at Widener University who built this plane for the Society of Automotive Engineers Aerodesign West Contest. The photo was taken as the team prepared for the “tech inspection” of their aircraft.
The second one is that it doesn’t matter how much engineering knowledge you have, new airplanes don’t always “fly right off the board”. Team Widener described their crashes and “teething problems” in their oral presentation and got knowing nods from experienced aviation engineers who’d been through real life development of new full scale aircraft.
Champs up to speed
The 2013 SAM Champs at Eldorado Dry Lake south of Las Vegas is rounding into shape. SAM President Ed Hamler and Con- test Manager Mike Clancy are having a par- ticular focus on special events this year. They’ll be flying the new “Electric Replica” class being promoted by Mike Moskal and Bob Galler out of Albuquerque. Ron Boots continues to promote his Compressed Air Event. There will be at least a demonstra- tion, if not an actual contest, using the new altitude limiting equipment switch. It’s called “Sky Limit” and is available from Winged Shadow Systems.
Registration for the 2013 Champs will start on Sunday, October 6. We’ll fly through the week and finish with an awards banquet on Friday night, October 11. The contest headquarters hotel is the Boulder Hacienda. Champs management has negotiated a special room rate of $29.95 per night. You can make reservations at 800 245-6380. Refer to “Booking # 2177” to get the special rate.
FLYING MODELS 31
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