DCRC Club Meeting November 21, 2008 7:30 PM Montgomery County Council

To view this page ensure that Adobe Flash Player version 9.0.124 or greater is installed.

Please login or register to make a comment!

District of Columbia Radio Control Club Montgomery County Maryland AMA Chartered Club 329 Established 1951 www.dc - rc.org DCRC Club Newsletter October/November, 2008 Volume 54, Issue 7 Jim Cokinos and a some of His helicopters See full story on page 4 DCRC Club Meeting November 21, 2008 7:30 PM Montgomery County Council building 100 Maryland Ave Rockville, MD 7:30 PM Membership Meeting program: Ed Leibolt Trash Can Specials Raffle by Nir Schweizer THINGS ELECTRIC An Occasional Column on Topics of Interest to Elec- tric Flyers BY R OY D AY I became interested in electrics back in the late eighties. I was flying glow airplanes but thought it might be interesting to try an electric powered model. The first electric powered plane I built was the Curtis Robin from a kit.

I think it had a wingspan of about four feet. I powered it with the popular As- tro Flight 05, brushed motor. The bat- tery was NiCad, probably seven or eight cells.

It was a good flyer, very stable. Here 9s a picture of the Robin. An article by Keith Shaw in one of the magazines described how to hook up the electric power system for a twin.

That sounded interesting to ... more. less.

me and I decided to build a scale model of a twin. That meant I needed another Astro 05 and a bigger battery pack. I was looking for something a little unusual in a twin and, as I remember, Ron Bozzonetti sug- gested I look at the Dornier DO-28, a high wing utility airplane. It was in- deed unusual in that the engines were mounted on stub wings projecting out from the bottom of the fuselage. I was interested and obtained some three view drawings and set out to design a plane with a 70 inch wingspan. It turned out to be a docile flyer but it had one struc- tural weakness. The main landing gear loads were taken by those same stub wings where the two motors were mounted. I had not designed a strong enough carry-through for the stub wings and a hard landing broke one of the stub wings. A little reinforcing corrected that design flaw and gave me many sat- isfactory flights. Here 9s a photo of the Dornier. A construction article of my DO-28 was published in the January, 1991 issue of Model Builder magazine, which is no longer in publication. I still have the Dornier, stripped of its motors which I used in another twin. Perhaps some day I 9ll make it airworthy again. I designed the plane so it could be easily broken down for transport. I took it along with me on vacation trips, neatly packed in a box. The breakdown is shown in the photo below. In future columns, I plan to deal with topics such as: " Sizing the power system for your airplane " Design tips for electric airplanes " Safety considerations " Power measurements &&&.and other topics that come to mind or are suggested by others. This will be an occasional column, not every month. Volume 54, Issue 7 Page 2 P RESIDENT : Andy Kane V.P. Dave McQueeney County Liaison: Jim McDaniel B OARD OF D IRECTORS Scott Davies 301-770-9150 Mike Dooley 301-843-8818 Andy Finizio 301-983-8557 Allan Hoffman 301-845-8485 Andy Kane 301-785-3022 Jim McDaniel 301-916-0366 Dave McQueeney 301-330-9385 Mike Peizer 301-589-8299 Nir Schweizer 301-972-2248 T REASURER : Scott Davies M EMBERSHIP S ECRETARY : Andy Kane 305 Natick Court Silver Spring, MD 20905-5875 R ECORDING S ECRETARY : Doug Harper S HOW T EAM M ANAGER : Jim McDaniel & Allan Hoffman N EWSLETTER E DITOR : Andy Kane 301-785-3022 dcrceditor@aol.com M EETING P ROGRAM C OORDINATOR : Dave McQueeney The DC/RC Newsletter is published monthly by the District of Columbia Radio Control Inc. Deadline for submitting materials for publication is the last Friday of each month. Any part of the newsletter may be re- produced for non-profit purposes unless other- wise noted. Please credit the Newsletter and Author if named. Articles may not reflect the opinion of the club, but that of the author. Visit us on the web: www.dc-rc.org Did you know that any airplane brought in to the model shop will receive 3 free raffle tickets. Bring in your models each month for your free tickets, and to share ideas. T HINGS ELECTRIC PG 2 C LUB M EETING M INUTES S EPTEMBER PG 3 B OARD M EETING M INUTES S EPTEMBER PG 4 C ALENDAR OF E VENTS PG 5 C LUB MEETING MINUTES O CTOBER PG 6 B OARD M EETING MINUTES O CTOBER PG 7 Cover: Jim Cokinos, at the first Annual Helicopter Fun Fly DCRC. The meeting was called to order at 7:38PM by President Andy Kane. Andy asked for introduction of guests or new mem- bers. Guests Samantha and Gad Schweizer were in attendance. Vice President : Dave McQueeney gave a brief overview of the AMA Gold Leader Club criteria that DCRC recently accomplished. We are now official and have the plaque to prove it. Each member will also get a gold pin to wear. We anticipate that we will con- tinue to qualify for this very high award in subsequent years. Old Business : Dave Drazin reported on one final piece of business for the Summer Camp. He expects an article to be published in Model Aviation. Jeffrey Clark was awarded his certificate for attendance and received a warm round of applause. Events : Andy Finizio reported that Oktober- fest is next weekend and food will be pro- vided for all. Lunch will be served at 12:30. Andy is working on a fun fly and general flying will be open to all. On Saturday, October 11, the field will be closed for a helicopter event that day. Bealeton : Jim McDaniel reported that this event was a great success in spite of the washout on Saturday. We had 35 or so pi- lots on Friday and the weather was beauti- ful. We had our usual evening meal in the woods, raffled off a Garmin GPS and a mini- helicopter. Thanks to Jay Stargel for mow- ing the field. We were able to keep expenses under control by coming in well under budget. Bliss Teague, our AMA District IV VP, was in attendance and presented the Club with the Gold Leadership Award. County Liaison : There will not be a deer hunt this year. Treasurer 9s Report : Dave McQueeney re- ported that two checks over $100 were writ- ten. Flight Instruction : Mike reported that the program is moving along well. We have lost one trainer this year but we still have plenty of equipment. He expects to certify the usual number of students this year. The next session is Sept 27. There will be two sessions in October. The final session will be in November. Field Maintenance : Alan reported that we have finished the resealing of the runway which should carry us for at least another two years. See Alan if you have any mainte- nance issues. Upcoming Events in the Area : PGRC is having an IMAA flyin tomorrow and a war bird flyin Sunday. NVRC is having a pat- tern meet this weekend as well. Rod Jaeger is sponsoring a war bird flyin in Gretna, Virginia on Oct 3-4. Roy Day announced that Maynard Hill has launched his airplane to try set the time-in- air record. Board Nominations : The three current Board members whose terms are expiring are Dave McQueeney, Andy Finizio, and Scott Davies. All three were nominated for reelection. Nominations were then closed. Raffle : Tonight 9s prizes are a Real Flight Simulator and a Twin Synch. Samantha Schweizer pulled the winning tickets. The winners were Walt Gallaugher and Paul Bastek. Walt already had a copy of Flight Simulator so decided to auction the new one. Russell McQueeney was the winning bidder. Model Shop : Bill Garner presented his Sweet Tater which was originally designed in the early 870s. He found the plans in Model Aviation News and decided to order the plans. He found a place called Eureka Aircraft who provided the cshort kit d to help him build the kit. He finished it in yellow and red monokote and powered it with an OS 61. It flies well. Walt Gallaugher presented his cfirst foamy d, a T28 Park Flyer made by Hangar 9, which is powered by an Eflite 480. He says it flies well and he recommended everyone get one. There were four others exactly the same. Andy Finizio claimed it took less than 10 minutes each to build these planes (as long as Nir didn 9t help). Program: Ron Bozzonetti presented the proc- ess he uses to make foam wings. He starts with white foam that is readily available at building supplies in sheets. It is a very eco- nomical way to make a wing. He cuts the foam with a hot nichrome wire that is sus- pended across a cbow d or frame. He powers September Club Meeting Minutes BY D OUG H ARPER the wire with a transformer and variable resistor to create heat. He makes templates out of various materials including plywood, Formica, or phenolic. He likes Formica since it is easy to find. He starts by making templates for the root and the tip. He uses a computer program, called Compufoil, to layout the template. The program has many features to accommo- date various needs of the builder including tapering, spar placement, etc. Ron prints the desired airfoil and makes a template from it. Ron then uses his homemade power source to heat the wire and cut the wing. He uses a machine to help guide the wire to make a more uniform cut in the foam. He sands the resultant wing to get rid of any cwhiskers d. Ron sometimes will cut a clattice d pattern to make lightning holes in the wing. Ron usually sheets the wing with balsa, starting with 1/16 d for a .40 size model. He has used both contact cement and epoxy. He prefers epoxy which gives him some working time. He uses a playing card to remove most of the glue for light weight. Ron uses a homemade vacuum pump and a vacuum bag to apply pressure to his newly skinned wings. About 2 d of mercury is enough to apply a lot of pressure to the wood and cause good adhesion. There were a number of questions from the audience. Ron received a round of applause for his lecture. The meeting was adjourned by Andy at 9:05PM. Volume 54, Issue 7 Page 3 Volume 54, Issue 7 Page 4 The meeting, held at the home of Jim McDaniel, was called to order by President Andy Kane at 7:30 PM. In attendance were Alan Hoffman, Andy Finizio, Andy Kane, Nir and Gad Schweizer, Scott Da- vies, Mike Dooley, Doug Harper, Jim and Joe McDaniel Old/New Business : Royal Flush has been bought out by Don 9s Johns. The name on the portapotty should change but the rate should stay the same. Nir Schweizer has been appointed to manage the meeting raffle. The Board wishes to thank David Fepel- stein for his efforts running the raf- fle in the past. Andy Kane received an email from a school in Virginia asking for a mod- eler to share our hobby with them. Andy will send this email to NVRC for their action. Oktoberfest : Andy Finizio is plan- ning several activities for Sunday 9s fun fly including a fun fly (if interest is there) and a T24 Trojan fly. There will be plenty of food. Andy Kane was empowered to select the menu since he is cooking. Meeting Programs : Last year 9s ex- periment to get club members to provide the programs worked pretty well. We will continue this ap- proach as long as club members co- operate. Budget : Scott Davies presented a proposed budget for 2009 that was based on historic data and also in- cluded input from Don Gray. Don was asked to assist with the budget process and the Board wishes to thank him for his efforts. After a lengthy discussion among the board members, it was decided to propose the budget as published in the No- DC-RC's 1st annual Helicopter Fun Fly BY M IKE Y OUNG October 11th 2008 marked the 1st annual DCRC Heli Fun Fly and the weather couldn't have been any better. We had sunshine with temperatures in the 70's and abso- lutely no wind. 25 or so pilots were in attendance and came from as far away as Cum- berland, Maryland and Wiley Ford, WVA. The gates opened at 8:30 AM and the first of the pilots started arriving shortly there after. We had 6 clearly marked flight zones, 3 on the Plane side and 3 on the Heli side of the field, and they were in use all day long, with as many as 6 Helicop- ters in the air at any given moment during the day. Lunch was served around 12 noon and there was plenty of food, which consisted of Cheeseburgers, Hot Dogs, Bratwerst, BBQ Chicken, Baked beans, Potato Salad, and many other dishes and we served food for most of the day including a quick dinner time cookout. The event went off very well with about 100 people in attendance and all seemed to have a good time. The Montgomery County Gazzette sent a reporter and a Photographer out to DCRC to cover the event and they interviewed about 10 of us and the story was on the front page of the Olney edition of the Gazette the fol- lowing Wednesday. A special thanks to all that helped put the event together and espe- cially Andy Kane and Andy Finizio for getting the event sanctioned by the AMA. We are very much looking forward to the 2nd Annual DC-RC Helicopter Fun Fly in 2009 September Board Meeting Minutes BY D OUG H ARPER vember newsletter. The Board feels this budget is achievable based on our membership projections as well as provide the funds necessary to ad- minister the club and provide fund- ing for the many events we would like to sponsor in 2009. The Board unanimously approved the proposed budget. Treasurer 9s Report : Scott reported that there were two checks in excess of $100 written in September. Field Maintenance : Alan reported that the runway sealing has been accomplished. He plans to call the contractor back to retreat a couple of spots. Andy asked the Board members to think about and propose any capital improvement projects they think would improve the field. Jim McDaniel proposed we give thought to an improved bathroom facility that would include water and sewer facili- ties. Andy Finizio proposed that we add 200 feet to the length of our run- way. Events : Andy Finizio asked that a Board Member be present at the up- coming helicopter fun fly scheduled for October 11. Jim McDaniel is in the process of scheduling the County meeting room for the next year. The meeting was adjourned at 9:05PM. I am currently working on the 2009 calendar please send me any of your upcoming events for next year. Andy Schedule of Events Also on the web www.dc-rc.org Then click Events 2008 DCRC FLIGHT TRAINING SCHEDULE October 4 & 18 November 1 Certification: Often, an instructor can remain after the training session is over to certify a new pilot. Other times for pilot certification can be ar- ranged with any qualified certifier. See the list of certifiers posted at the field. Calendar of Events Volume 54, Issue 7 Page 5 HEY, GUYS!! A few months back we had a discussion at the DC/RC meeting about the Newsletter. Don Gray noted that there was no newsletter for that month. And Andy replied that he needed arti- cles to make it worthwhile to put out an issue. Don then asked how many would be willing to write ONE article a year and many hands went up. Well------ I'm not seeing articles and I'm not seeing a newsletter, either. Come on, guys. Put out a little effort and share some of your talent, experi- ence and a few photos. Let's not let Andy down and let our- selves down by sabotaging the DCRC Newsletter Roy Day 24 Oct '08 November 2008 Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 Volume 54, Issue 7 Page 6 The meeting was called to order at 7:41 PM by President Andy Kane. Andy asked for the introduction of guests or new members. Ildus, a Rus- sian, has been a control line pilot for many years and is now going to try to learn RC flying. He is in the DCRC training program and making progress. Gay Hill, spouse of Mr. Maynard Hill, was attending as a guest. She an- nounced that she was looking for some- one to speak Czech to help her translate a book of airplane pictures she received for Christmas. Dave Littleton indicated that his wife is fluent and available to help Gay. Kevin Jackson has moved back to the Washington area and is re- joining DCRC. New/Old Business : Don Gray reported that DCRC had its first helicopter fun fly last Saturday. It was a great success and reported in the local Gazette paper. Mike Young organized the event and had 21 pilots in attendance. They even did some night flying using lights on the copters. Treasurer 9s Report : Scott wrote six checks this month in excess of $100. He had a copy of the treasurers report for anyone who cared to look at it. Elections : Andy Kane announced that we have three members running for three positions. Therefore, we will elect Andy Finizio, Scott Davies, and Dave McQueeney by acclamation. Announcements : There is a large fly in in Danville, VA, this coming weekend, Oct 24-25, that will use the proceeds for a cancer fund. It is called the Fighter Flight Against Cancer. Scott Davies wanted to publicly thank Andy Kane for his hard work at the re- cent Oktoberfest. Raffle : The raffle tonight is a Twist 150 ARF. Ira Glickman had the winning ticket. He was hooted roundly for win- ning. Model Shop : Jim Bonbright wanted a sport airplane so chose an Ultra Stik 60 from Horizon. He also stepped up to an Airtronics 2.4 spread spectrum radio. He put a YS 91 on the nose so has plenty of power. He plans to fly it in the near future. Don Gray showed a Vapor by Park Zone from the Etomic series of ultra- miniature airplanes. It comes ready to fly with everything you need. The wingspan was under 12 inches and it was constructed mostly of film, weighing around 12 grams. It has a flying stab and flying rudder and uses a 4-channel spread spectrum radio. The battery is a one-cell lithium. Don pro- ceeded to fly the Vapor successfully around the meeting room. Program : Tonight 9s program is pre- sented by esteemed club member Roy Day on 60 years of personal experiences in his life. He called his presentation cAirplane Tales d. His first slide was a German V1 Buzz Bomb (that happens to be in the Air and Space Museum). This was the forerunner of today 9s missiles. The Germans lost 40% of the ones they launched from aircraft. They were much more successful using a catapult to launch. The power was provided by a pulse jet engine and the missile weighed about 5000 pounds including an 1800 pound warhead. It had a range of about 150 miles but had very poor accuracy. It flew subsonic at around 390 mph until the engine was cut off by the guidance system at which time the missile de- scended and exploded. The people on the ground knew that danger was immi- nent when the engine quit. It flew low enough to make it hard to shoot down. More success was achieved using fighter aircraft to shoot down these bombs using a 20mm cannon. They had to stay far back to escape the ensuing explosion when the warhead was hit. The British also had some suc- cess using fast fighters which could catch the V1 and tip it over by putting a wing under the V1 9s. The Germans are thought to have fired as many as 10,000 of these weapons with perhaps 2,500 making it to the tar- get. In 1946 Roy was a young naval officer in California and became involved in a program to test whether an American copy of the V1, manufactured by Repub- lic, could be used against the Japanese. The Navy continued experimenting with this weapon even though the War had ended. Most of the work was done on improving the guidance system and to see if it could be used on submarines. This lead to the development of a rocket- assist to get it off the sub. The Navy used the Douglas A26/JD1 medium bomber as a chase plane in these tests. Roy was able to get a ride in one of these planes. Roy experienced a few Gs as the plane did some severe S curves and really enjoyed this experi- ence. The A26 was a great airplane and used all the way up to the 1960 9s. In 1979 Roy went to Alaska to visit his son and was able to fly to a remote cabin to do some salmon fishing. This cabin was very basic and right off a river from the Cook Inlet. They flew to this cabin in a Cessna 207. They had to take all the food they would need for several weeks of fishing in addition to three people, two dogs and their gear. The 207, with balloon tires, could land al- most anywhere. The also had to take some roofing material to fix a leak in the cabin roof. The pilot landed on the beach but had to be careful not to hit driftwood or other obstacles on the ground. They stayed for three days and caught lots of fish. The nearest people were at least 10 miles away. The pilot was set to return on a given day based on the weather. The tides on this inlet were 15 feet so pilots had to be very careful to land at the correct time. Next, Roy talked about visiting New Zealand for 30 days in 1991. Roy and his wife had a great time and found the people to be very friendly. He was fortu- nate enough to come across a billboard advertising a vintage aircraft facility that restored and flew old aircraft. Parked out front of this place was a Dragon Rapide biplane from the 1930 9s. Inside, they were working on Tiger Moths which seemed to be plentiful in the country. They flew these aircraft every weekend so Roy made arrange- ments to fly with a pilot who also was a dairy farmer. Roy asked if they had a Gypsy Moth and was surprised to find that they did. Roy decided to take a ride. He found this airplane to have a great feel and be very stable. Roy wanted to take the stick so he shook the stick to signal the pilot that he wanted it. The pilot agreed and let Roy fly for a few minutes. Roy quickly realized that all he saw were (Continued on page 7) October Club Meeting Minutes BY D OUG H ARPER Volume 54, Issue 7 Page 7 sheep and green fields so he gave the stick back to the pilot. He later found out this particular air- craft had been used in the King 9s Cup Race in 1930 in England. It had placed second at the blazing speed of 124 mph. It later had been flown to New Zealand via Australia by a female pilot to set a distance record. In the mid-70s, Roy went to Mt. Vernon, Ohio, with his brother (who was a pilot) to visit a Waco reunion. Many old, beautiful craft were taking off and land- ing thru the day. It was easy to hop a ride with one of the pilots. Roy and his brother had a great time riding in these vintage aircraft. Roy has another son in Honolulu who suggested that Roy come out to take a ride in a vintage plane that was flying out there. This airplane turned out to be a Fleet biplane that had some modifi- cations. The pilot gave Roy an aerobatic ride. The Fleet was a popular trainer aircraft in the 40s. Roy worked for NASA for many years includ- ing 12 years in the Shuttle program. In 1973 the program was firming up but there was still one open question concerning power for a cgo-around d since the Shuttle was designed to land cdead-stick d. The Air Force was not happy about flying dead stick and wanted power. It would have taken considerable space and caused a weight penalty to provide engines for the Shuttle during landing. In the meantime, tests were being run at FRC located at Edwards AFB to test the idea of landing a similar configuration with no engine. Roy decided he would like to take a ride in this vehicle which was based on a F104 built by Lockheed. This craft had very small wings and had characteristics much like the Shuttle in glide. The pilot flew the plane to 19,000 feet from down on the deck in no time and then flew to 30,000 feet. At this point the pilot gave Roy the controls and even went supersonic for a bit. The pilot then went to idle, put the gear down, and proceeded to glide down at around 170 knots. The pilot flared out at around 50 feet and then powered up to go around. Roy was now completely convinced that the Shut- tle could be landed with no power. Roy received a resounding round of applause for his very interesting presentation. The meeting was adjourned at 9:40 PM. (Continued from page 6) DCRC Board Meeting 10/22/08 The meeting, held at the home of Andy Kane, was called to order by president Andy Kane at 7:10 PM. In attendance were Andy Kane, Alan Hoffman, Nir Schweizer, Mike Dooley, Scott Davies, Andy Finizio, Jim McDaniel, Dave, McQueeney, Tom Pfarr, and Doug Harper. Election of Officers : Andy opened the floor for nominations for President. He was duly nominated for another term in 2009 as was Dave McQueeney for Vice-President. The same people as 2008 were again named to fill all the other positions for 2009. Jim McDaniel reviewed the board meeting dates and meeting sites for 2009. Budget: Scott Davies presented the proposed 2009 budget to the Board for approval. It was unanimously ap- proved by the Board and will be printed in the next newsletter for the membership. Dave McQueeney will conduct an au- dit of the club books in the near future and report his findings. Club Meeting Room : We have secured the County Office location for another year. Andy asked Jim to evaluate other lo- cations that meet our needs to see if something with the same or better facilities could be found at the same or lesser cost. Jim will report back on this. Events: Heli flyin was a success with 25 or so pilots. There will be an arti- cle written for the newsletter. Also, there were newspaper articles in sev- eral local newspapers. Octoberfest was also a success in spite of the iffy weather. The food was fabulous and plentiful. Andy Kane opened a discussion re- garding additional events for 2009 to include potentially some indoor events at the Soccerplex (as sponsored by Nir Schweizer). Andy would like to tie these events to club meetings. The Board found this idea to be worth pur- suing. Jim McDaniel will talk to the Soccerplex people to see if such activi- ties are possible. Meeting Programs : Andy has three people signed up for next year but is looking for more. The idea of having club members take a date has worked very well. Andy asked Dave McQueeney to take responsibility for getting more people signed up for pro- grams. Membership/Training Program : Andy kicked off a discussion about member- ship and ways to perhaps get it to grow. Our training program is a ma- jor factor in getting new members. Andy encouraged each Board member to try to attend at least one training day during the season to show sup- port. Andy also will encourage Mike to upgrade the club equipment. Nir Schweizer suggested that we con- sider taking a croad show d to various schools to create interest in the hobby. Web Master : Andy asked the Board to help Tom keep our website up to date by providing him with material such as pictures, information on events, and other club news. We need to keep the content fresh. Newsletter : Andy made yet another appeal for articles for the newsletter. Sound and Safety : Nir recommended that we ensure a CD be in attendance at all club sponsored events at the field. He also emphasized that all Board and regular members of the Club should continue to be watchful that all flyers at the field obey the rules and fly safely. Nir will reinforce this at the next Club meeting. The Board had a lengthy discussion regarding the potential flying of U- control models at the field. Due to safety issues, there will be no U- control flying on the aircraft side. There can be U-control flying how- ever, as long as the safety rules are followed, on the helicopter side as long as there is no concurrent helicopter activity. Treasurer 9s Report : Scott reported one check over $100 this month. The meeting was adjourned at 9:11PM. First Class Mail October/November 2008 Andy Kane/Newsletter Editor 305 Natick Court Silver Spring, MD 20905 E-mail: dcrceditor@aol.com One of the oldest and largest RC clubs in the US. And now an AMA Gold Leader Club District of Columbia Radio Control Club www.dc-rc.org Just another day at our wonderful flying site. Montgomery County Model Air Field Walt Good R/C Field l to r, Andy Finizio, Bob Hale David Fepelstein, Bob Violet, Marvin Napier, Dave McQueeney, Andy Kane. Photo by Eric Monig

less