WINE COUNTRY FLYERS
2001 CLUB OFFICERS
Triad Leadership: Rob Jensen 544-2827 Board Members:
Steve Cole 838-6315
Larry Childs 794-8487 Dino House 894-7878
Secretary: Larry Miller 577-0496 Website Coordinators:
Treasurer: Dale Chiaroni 585-0476 Mike Beito 408-379-6929
Newsletter: Tom Nowelsky 836-1037
Events Coordinator: Larry Frank 546-875 |
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Next Meeting: Tuesday, December 18th. 7:30 pm Veterans Memorial
Building, across from fairgrounds.
IMPORTANT
REMINDER
It is time for us
all to pay our 2002 club dues. Remember that the Dues are $80.00 for adult members.
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GENERAL
MEMBERSHIP MEETING, NOVEMBER 20TH
By: Larry
Miller
The meeting was called to order by Rob
Jensen, at 7:30 pm. There were 22 members present.
The first order of business was to hold
the monthly door prize drawing. Gil Delagnes was the lucky winner this time.
The Treasurer gave his monthly report and
informed us that the annual dues statement is in the mail. Those members who helped out
during the year, will receive a reduction in their dues according to our dues structure.
If anyone has any questions concerning their statement, contact the Treasurer.
It was reported that the lock at the
entrance to the field had been run over by a vehicle. These locks are expensive, so please
be more careful.
The election for club officers for 2002
was held. The results of the election were as follows:
Club Officers |
President: Kevin Riecke |
Treasurer: Dave Higgins |
Vice President: Larry Childs |
Newsletter Editor: Tom
Nowelsky |
Secretary: Lewis Makeepeace |
Events Coord.: Ron Amrein |
Board of Directors |
Rob Jensen |
Steve Cole |
Gil Delagnes |
Larry Miller |
Joe Olson |
Stevo Smith |
Gary Child |
Phil Leech |
Gary and Phil are the designated cooks. |
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The Name-the-Plane
contest winner was Dave Higgins. The answers were the Chipmonk, the Tiger Moth, and the
engine is the Gypsy Major.
The winner of the 50/50 raffle was Stevo
Smith. Other members won many other prizes.
For Show and Tell,
Mike Simon brought in his Sig Rascal Electric Plane. He hasn’t flown it yet, but they
fly well.
He also brought in his Rodent glider. This
is built for speed. It is very heavy, and can fly over 200 mph.
Larry Childs brought in his Kyosho F-86
ducten fan jet ARF. It is powered by an OS .15 engine. Larry feels it is under-powered, so
he is planning on putting a K&B .45 into the airframe. That should make it scream.
The meeting was adjourned at 8:30 PM.
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HOLIDAY
PARTY, SATURDAY JANUARY 12TH
The annual party
will be held at Los Robles Lodge, 1985 Cleveland Avenue, Santa Rosa, at 7:00 PM on
Saturday, January 12, 2002. The cost is $25.00 per person.
This includes a Buffet dinner, featuring
New York Strip Steak, Grilled Chicken Breast, Filet of Salmon, Garlic Roasted Potatoes,
Vegetables, Sourdough French Bread, Cheesecake, and Truffle Cake. Those who attended
either of the past two years know that this is a delicious meal.
We will also have many fun events,
including the annual awards, door prizes, and some surprise entertainment.
Invitations with return envelopes have
been recently mailed. Reservations must be received by December 27th.
Don’t delay, plan to enjoy a
memorable evening with your club buddies.
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BOARD
MEETING MINUTES
The meeting was
called to order by Rob Jensen at 7:30 PM.
There was a discussion regarding the
holiday party to be held at Los Robles Lodge, on Saturday, January 12th.
Invitations, with details will be mailed to all members, immediately. Reservations must be
received by December 27th. Awards were discussed, as well as entertainment. The
party is shaping up great.
Members need to remember that, in order to
fly at the field, they need to display current club membership badges, and these badges
cannot be issued, until the club has received a photocopy of the member’s current AMA
card.
The board is about to begin the process to
renew our lease with the County of Sonoma. In order to help protect our rights to the
field, the board unanimously decided that we will strictly enforce all County rules. This
includes NO SMOKING AT THE FIELD, and ALL DOGS MUST BE KEPT ON A LEASH. Board members were
instructed to ask any member who is in violation of any of these rules, to please leave
the field.
There being no further business to
discuss, the meeting was adjourned at 8:30 PM.
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FIELD
HAPPENINGS
By: Tom
Nowelsky
We haven’t had a lot of good flying
weather during the past month. The only day I can report on was Saturday, November 17th.
And what a disaster it was.
Doug Boucher totalled his Edge 540. This
was a beautiful quarter-scale model, with a twin engine OS power. Doug indicated that the
plane suffered from some serious CG problems, throughout its life. He said he was never
able to resolve the CG, and controllability contributed to its demise.
John Reade seriously damaged his Something
Extra, when he lost the radio out over the woods at the North end of the field. It appears
that he may have had a fuel tank failure, because he found the receiver and its padding to
be completely soaked with fuel.
And I stupidly crashed my World Models
Rambler.
In my case, I was practicing slow flight
and got too low, too slow, and was also
down-wind, (although winds were very light
at the time.) In any event, it dipped a wing,
and fell below the horizon before I could
power up. I will have to re-build part of the wing, re-attach the empennage, and repair
some of the fuselage covering.
Easily, one of the most interesting, (and
unfortunate) happenings took place on Saturday, December 8th. Steve Cole
arrived with a beautiful new Top Flight Spitfire, finished in camouflage markings, and
powered by an OS .91 fx. The plane also sported Rhom Air retracts.
Anyway, after spending some time getting
everything set up, Steve taxied out and took off. It was immediately clear that something
was terribly wrong. The plane was almost totally uncontrollable. Although the CG was set
correctly, it flew as if it were very, very tail heavy.
Under power, the plane kept porpoising.
When power was reduced, the plane immediately wanted to drop a wing and snap roll. Steve
tried just about everything to get the plane on the ground, but every approach was
nerve-wracking, and resulted in a wave-off.
As this was a new, great looking warplane,
there were quite a few observers, and all of us were equally horrified by what we were
watching. It’s doubtful that anyone with less experience than Steve could have kept
the plane in the air, at all.
As the fuel supply became short, a
decision was made to attempt a controlled crash in the soft earth, to the east of the
runway.
The result was a nose in that caused some
moderate, but repairable damage. There was a small gash in the wing, broken wing hold
downs, and a cracked cowl. All in all, the best that could be hoped for.
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SAFETY
FIRST
This month, I am
using this column to reprint our field rules. These are posted at the field, and are
printed on our membership application, but it would not hurt to look them over again.
1. AMA license required
2, Membership badge must be worn at the field.
3. No alcohol is permitted at the field.
4. Transmitters must be impounded.
5. Obtain frequency pin before turning on your transmitter.
6. Mufflers are required on all engines.
7. Be watchful of full size aircraft.
8. No flying behind flight line of the runway.
9. No high speed passes over the runway.
10. Pilots must stand in designated pilot box.
11. Pilot, pit crew only on the flight line.
12. No more than 5 aircraft airborne at one time.
13. No starting or running engines in pit area.
14. No smoking allowed at the field.
15. All fuel spills must be contained or wiped up.
16. No spectators allowed beyond spectator area.
17. Flying hours are 9:00AM to 4:30 PM daily except Easter Sunday, July 4th,
Labor Day, New Years Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, when the refuse site will be
closed.
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A
FOLLOW-UP RE:
JAPANESE FIREBOMB BALLOONS
For everyone who
enjoyed last month’s article, by Larry Frank, about these balloons, Bill Boitano has
submitted some follow-up information:
Still ANOTHER TALE FROM THE PAST
By: Bill
Boitano
Upon reading the article in the November,
2001 issue ot Wine Country Flyers: "Another tale from the past," I was reminded
of an article that I saw in a past issue of AIR CLASSICS.
I started to dig through my collection of
old magazines, and found it in the April, 1996 edition of AIR CLASSICS.
The story is titled: "The Fire
Bombing of America."
This balloon project was called Operation
"FU-GO," by the Japanese Military, and was started on November 3, 1944.
These incendiary balloons were released to
climb into the jet stream for the attack on the United States.
9300 balloons were launched toward North
America, but probably, only about 10 percent of them reached our shore.
The first confirmed downing of a Japanese
Balloon, in the U.S., was on February 23, 1945. On that date, a Lockheed, P-38 Lightning,
based at the Santa Rosa Army Air Field (now known as the Charles Schultz Sonoma County
Airport), intercepted a Japanese balloon over Calistoga, and Shot it down.
The first confirmed Japanese balloon
explosion in the U. S. was on December 6, 1945, near Thermopolis, Wyoming.
Pretty interesting stuff!
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TECH
TALK
By: Tom Nowelsky
WASHOUT
Have you been coming in long, low, and
slow, only to have one wing tip stall? Does
the plane roll to one side faster than the
other? You may have a "washout" problem. Washout is described as the
degree to which the trailing edge of the wing is warped upwards, toward the tip. This
reduces the angle of attack of the outboard wing section, relative to the inboard portion.
The primary purpose of washout is to
ensure that the inboard portion of the wing will stall, before the outboard portion.
Correct washout means that stall characteristics will be gentle. Washout that is equal on
both wing halves assists in keeping roll rates equal in both directions.
In order to check washout, place your wing
on a flat table. Hold it down at the center, and measure the distance off the table at the
leading and trailing edges. They should be the same values on both wing halves.
Further, the trailing edges should be
higher than the leading edges. Three-quarters of an inch of washout will give very docile
handling characteristics to a .40 size plane.
Washout is easy to adjust on a built-up
wing, which is covered with iron-on film. Simply block up the trailing edge, at the wing
tip, and heat the covering to set the twist. Don’t forget that both tips must be
equal.
Don’t forget that washout will not
prevent stalls. If airspeed drops below a certain point, the plane will stall. Equal
washout simply means that the stall will be straight ahead, and easier to recover from.
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CLASSIFIED
For Sale: Raptor .30
Heli, with all field gear. This is a 49 bb upgraded heli with an O.S. SX .32 engine.
Includes Hitec Eclipse 7 transmitter, and flight pack. Also includes fuel, starter, glo
driver, etc. Asking $1,500 for everything. Call Kevin Alexander at 569-0391.
Lost at the Field: A Hobbico Tachometer.
If found, contact Steve Jensen at 528-3966.
GOT SOMETHING TO SELL?
NEED SOMETHING THAT ANOTHER MEMBER MAY BE
WILLING TO SELL?
LOOKING TO SWAP SOMETHING?
GIVE THE INFO TO THE NEWSLETTER
EDITOR....FREE ADS!
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HOW TO BREAK IN A
BUSHED ENGINE
Reprinted
from Sparks Online.
Here’s a question that’s been
asked a hundred times: "How should I break in my engine?"
The answer depends on what kind of engine
you have.
For our purposes, let’s assume the
engine in question is an OS 40 FP. This engine has a bushed (as opposed to ball bearing)
supported crank shaft with an air bleed carburetor, and ABC (aluminum, brass, and copper)
construction. The owner’s manual suggests that the engine could benefit from a short
"break-in period" before being used to its full potential. This is true of all
internal combustion engines.
How you break it in the engine determines
what kind of useful life you will get from it.
For 40 FP and similar engines (remember
we’re talking about an ABC engine), use a 10 x 6 prop. Fill the tank and
open the needle valve two or three turns.
Start the engine. It should be running rich.
Gradually lean the mixture until it just
breaks into a ‘clean’ two cycle. You will have
to listen to the exhaust sound of the
engine. It should burble a little bit. The OS instruction manual says this setting would
be
about one half turn out from the optimum
setting.
The instructions also say to run out a
whole tank on the ground with the engine set this way. If it were warmer, now would be a
good time to go and cut some grass. (Stay well away from the engine, dust is an
engine’s worst enemy.)
I run a second tank on the ground but I
don’t use all of it. Run the engine for two minutes at the previous setting and then
gradually lean it out until it is just below the optimum setting. Allow it to run this way
for about 30 seconds or so and the richen the mixture back up. I alternate between the
rich and lean two-cycle settings for about half the second tank of fuel and stop, allowing
the engine to cool.
You can now fly the plane with the engine
set slightly below the optimum setting for four or five flights and it will be completely
broken in. I have found this method works well with the ABC type engines.
The break-in for ringed piston engines is
similar but you don’t run as lean at first because the piston ring needs time to seat
in the cylinder liner. In all cases, avoid dusty surroundings.
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TIP O’ THE MONTH
Keeping our work
area dust free is a full-time job, when working with balsa and light ply. One way to
reduce the dust is to tape a furnace filter to the intake of a portable box fan. Running
this on the floor near where you saw and sand will greatly reduce the dust in the area.
(An old T-shirt between the fan and the filter, will reduce particles in the air even
more.)
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AUTO
ROTATIONS
The following is
reprinted from the AMA National Newsletter, November, 2001:
By: Mike Zellars
An auto rotation is where a helicopter is
brought safely to the ground, from any altitude, without power.
There is one key element to an auto
rotation, and that is head speed. No head speed as you approach the ground equals no
helicopter afterwards. Since the engine is what typically determines head speed, how on
earth do we keep head speed after shutting the engine to idle, or off? Well, it has to do
with the pitch of the main rotor blades, and the weight of the helicopter. When a
helicopter is flying upright, there is always some positive pitch in the blades, and the
helicopter needs engine power to maintain that positive pitch.
So when the power is off, we use the
weight of the helicopter, along with negative pitch, to maintain head speed.
Basically, what happens is I will shut the
engine down, and then immediately feed in between four and seven degrees of negative
pitch. As the helicopter starts falling, the air comes up through the blades. Because of
the negative pitch, this air automatically keeps head speed up, and sometimes increases
it, depending on how fast I let the helicopter plummet.
Now, at about ten to 20 feet from the
ground, I start feeding back in positive pitch, which slows the helicopter’s descent,
and I keep feeding in pitch until the helicopter comes to a stop just a little above
ground.
I then feed in a little negative pitch to
set the helicopter down.
Clearly, Auto rotations have a lot to do
with timing.
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NAME THE PLANE CONTEST
THE ABOVE PLANE HAD ITS ROLL OUT CEREMONY ON
22 NOVEMBER 1988, AT
U.S.A.F. PLANT #42. (THE LOCATION IS A HINT)
A PRIZE FOR THE CORRECT ANSWER AT THE DECEMBER MEETING.
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