Arizona Jet Rally
Buck Garza’s 11-year-old King Cat (above left), painted in a pseudo Soviet camouflage pattern, looks like something out of a movie as it streaks across the desert landscape. A 15- or 16-year-old AMT Pegasus engine provides the thrust proving that “older” is a relative term. Starting the older air-start engines (above right) requires a compressed air source (the scuba tank) to spin the engine, propane to get things started, and an off-board glow lighter to ignite it as well as three hands to flip switches and modulate the start sequence. James Lashmett
brought this fantastic ViperJet (below left) from Taft Hobbies. With a 57-inch wingspan, this 6S 90mm fan unit foamy really rocked the skies and its performance was stunning, especially since it was box-stock. The Change Sun 12-bladed fan unit coupled with a 6S-5500 mAh battery provided quiet and long flight times. This is a hard to obtain but fun to fly model that comes with LED navigation lights (below right) in each wing and James used them to good effect in the cloudy skies over Mesa.
Mike got in time on his own airplane, a bet-
ter than 15-year-old BVM Maverick which he has used as a flying test bed for high-power edf systems. Currently, it has a Schübeler DS 77/HST (which is a 120 mm diameter fan) running on 12 cells, which has a very pleasing sound. The vertical performance is amazing, and having seen more than a few Mavericks fly over the years, I think that the electric ver- sions fly better than either the glow or turbine versions and Mike’s is no exception. Add in a
colorful paint job and the familiarity of many years of flying this airframe and it’s no won- der Mike put so many flights on it over the weekend.
Since I am talking about high powered edfs, CD Bob Ruff needs to be mentioned, having traded for a 17-year-old Trim Aircraft (from Australia) F-20. Powered by a Hacker A50-12 “electric turbine motor” spinning an XPS- modified Dynamax fan unit, this venerable airframe flat out gets up and goes! As far as I
could tell, this was the oldest flying airplane at the event.
Not to be out done with the “age” thing, Buck Garza brought out his 2002 BVM King Cat which is pushed along by a 1997 or 1998 AMT Pegasus engine. Since Buck is a retired Marine fighter pilot, he just had to do up his King Cat in a semi-Aggressor Squadron scheme, which looks great against the backdrop of the Super- stition Mountains. Do I hear a movie theme song playing in the back ground?
PHOTO: DAVID REYNOLDS
Jim Winters’ venerable Multiplex Twin Star (above left) modified to twin edf was first flown at this event in 2001. Since then it has been re-motored, but a twin 70mm plane just seems to look, work and fly “right”. Unfortunately it went
52
off-runway when his battery sagged while attempting a go-around. Greg thinks the pilot might have gotten hungry since the piece of local greenery (above right) is being munched on inside the canopy.
JANUARY 2014
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