Next meeting: Tuesday the 20^th of May 2003. Time: 7:30 P.m.

Vice President: Red Jensen (707) 585-3170

Secretary: Larry Miller (707) 577-0496

Treasurer: Tom Haddorff (707) 526-7058

Member @ Large John Reade (707) 545-9831

New members this month include:
John Wolfe – Cotati. John flew some R/C 30 years ago and has been training with Tom Haddorff to polish old flying skills and Tom tells us that John is just about in the groove again.

Submitted by Phil Leech

MAY 10 WORK PARTY

We had a beautiful spring day for the season’s opening work party. Dale Chiaroni was at the field with his Massey Ferguson tractor and mower at 8:00AM. And he mowed continuously for 3 ½ hours. Soon both of the club’s push type mowers were humming and several members showed up with string trimmers. John Reade repaired the Porta Potty with some sheet metal and proceeded to clean out the storage shed. We threw out some old stuff and straightened the place up. We also removed a number of the old carpets in the pit area and carted all of this trash down to the refuse station below. How handy!

Guys participating for the work session included: John Reade, Eddie Garcia, Dale Chiaroni, Steve Cole, Gary Child, Phil Leech, Wayne Frederick, Bob Film, Art Sutter, Staci Stiefer Julio Alvarez, Tom Haddorff, Mike Beito and Tommy Blake.

The door prize, a gallon of fuel, was won by Casey Konnoff, Kris Konnoff’s brother.

TREASURER’S REPORT

Tom Haddorff presented the treasurer’s report for the month of March 2003 and he informed us that present membership stands at 94.

OLD BUSINESS

Rob Jensen reviewed the upcoming opening season event, "Spring Fling Fun Fly and Swap Meet". The event will be scheduled around a series of performances of planes and helicopters including racing and combat flying. He encouraged everyone to participate as the flight schedule is open and he anticipates a really fun day. He mentioned that he has a friend who owns and flies a Bucker Jungmeister and has offered to provide us with an aerobatic performance right over our field. Now that will be worth coming out for!

NEW BUSINESS

John Reade announced that he is planning a spring work party at the field for Saturday May 10. He will ask Dale Chiaroni to bring his tractor for the annual spring mowing. A new member, Bennett McMicking, has also offered to bring his tractor if Dale can’t make it.

Wayne Frederick announced a Qualifying Scale Masters Meet to be held at Woodland – Davis on May 2-3-4. Wayne will be participating in this event and it sounds like something many of us will be interested in.

Rob Jensen told us that the Ukiah Propbusters will host the Dan Sullivan Day Event on June 7-8.

THE RAFFLE

The half cash ($40) was won by Gil Delagnes. (Didn’t Gil win the half cash back in November? What’s going on here?)

Joe Olson won a battery cycler while Des Shapiro walked off with a nice combination tach and volt meter. And Gary Child won a volt meter too but it wasn’t as nice as the one that Des got.

SHOW AND TELL

There wasn’t any Show and Tell and let’s not let that happen very often either.

REFRESHMENTS

Phil brought the same old cookies and drinks. Does anybody out there want to take on this job? It’s pretty easy.

Respectfully submitted by Phil Leech for Larry Miller, Secretary

The meeting was held at the offices of Gary Childs, Mortgage Broker. Thank you Gary. Members in attendance were: Gary Childs, Steve Cole, Mike Cingari, Tom Haddorff, John Reade and Phil Leech.

The meeting was brought to order at 7:30 by Steve Cole as he announced that new badges have been secured for Helicopter Instructors. The new Helicopter Instructors are: Eddie Garcia, Guy Nicholas, Mike Cingari.

A Work Party is scheduled for the coming weekend, Saturday May 10. John Reade told us that Dale Chiaroni will have his tractor in place, ready to mow, at 8:00 Am. The field will get a complete mowing and trimming with all tables being moved so that the grass can be trimmed. We are probably going to remove some of the most worn carpets and take them to the refuse station below. We expect a good turnout and Phil Leech suggested that he would get a copy of the Work Credit Form that Stevo Smith developed last year so that credit for each member can be recorded for the upcoming year.

A discussion and review of the "Spring Fling" Air-show and Swap Meet scheduled for May 17 proceeded. Robbie Jensen and Steve Cole will be the Program Directors & are planning a Program including Combat, Pylon Racing, Heli Drag Racing, Pizza Box flying, a Candy Drop and Scale demos. Gary Childs has offered to be the announcer for the event.

Tom Haddorff gave us an update on the club finances and told us that we now have 97 members.

Art Sutter has offered to host a summer cookout and social event at his beautiful home located adjoining the Russian River off Dry Creek Road. We have a preliminarily date in mind for early to mid August with Art. Art is a first class BBQ chef and we are all looking forward to this cookout that will probably be planned for a late afternoon after the field closes.

The meeting was concluded at 8:15PM.

Respectfully submitted by Phil Leech for Larry Miller, Secretary

The following is a list of persons that are currently in flight training and haven’t soloed yet. Let us know if we missed anybody.

Lou Winnard

Ollie Burns

Stuart Dobbie

Bilal Maqsood

Alec Sherrill - RECENTLY SOLOED

Robert Sherrill

Bill Boitano
Jordy Strong

Arriving about 10:30 I parked next to Doug Boucher’s truck and trailer and joined the group. There were about 20 beautiful scale airplanes ranging from WW1 Nieuports and Fokkers to WW2 Corsairs and P-47’s with a Waco Bipe thrown in for the mid thirties civilian types. What an impressive group of planes and pilots.

The planes are judged scored with two categories. The Static score is given for the planes overall correctness to scale of the original full size aircraft. And the second category is the pilot skill flying the plane through a number of aerobatics that would be normal for the particular aircraft being represented. Wayne’s Static

Score was 96.5 and his flying score was 92. As it turned out Wayne placed second to a Santa Rosa resident, Gene Jobs, who entered and flew a Sea Fury.

All In all, it was a great experience to see these magnificent models that have taken untold hours for these modelers to create and fly. I can enthusiastically recommend to anyone of you guys that has an interest in scale flying models. Maybe you can make it next year!

Let me give you a quick idea of what its about. Three pilots per 8 lap heats throw

their planes over the Pacific Ocean from a 200’ cliff. If it goes up all is well, if it goes down you have misjudged and have too much ballast or not enough wind, 30 mph is good, more is better. You have 60 seconds to get altitude and dive to the starting gate. I hear that 140 mph through the start has been done. The three of you with 10’ wings race 200 yards to the turn which is also on a cliff. But your sleek craft looks like an arrow and I can’t tell when I am there but they have given everyone a different color light that will be flashed when you should turn. But you’re watching your arrow disappear so a team mate along side screams in your ear, "Turn!" But the other pilots who are all standing together aren’t sure it was their team mate yelling. After 8 laps its over and if you’re lucky you’re first and you can do this for two days, that is if you have been getting your ballast right as the air changes. If you found where the lift is across the face of the cliff, if you stayed out of the sink and if you made perfect turns without losing speed and dropping in the rocks below and if you didn’t have a mid-air and have your tail sheared off. After you have been able to get 1^st in two days of heats with only one heat to go. But to get it repaired in time to fly and get 1^st again to qualify you for the final and get 2^nd. Then it must be Robbie Jensen our local talent that is rubbing wings with some of the world champs. Let’s hear it for "Red’s Hobbies".

P.S. Where else does your competition help you repair your plane to get you to the Finals?

(This is taken from last month since we did not have the newsletter out in time for the meeting)

O.k. Two for one on this one. Two questions with two different answers, one prize. Name the plane that has the most examples built? Name the plane that was the first turbo prop airliner. See you at the meeting!

Don’t forget to come to our Spring Fling fly-in, Air show & Swap Meet. It will be Saturday May 17. Bring out your friends and family for a day filled with relaxed flying mixed in with some great flight demos too. There will be combat, racing, extreme helicopter flying, wild 3D aerobatics plus maybe a turbine and a mini full scale aerobatics show! Oh don’t forget the pizza box! This will not be one to miss. Swap tables will be $5, so dig out that unwanted stuff or buy some new. BBQ lunch too. Open to all A.M.A. members, Bring a buddy!

            Do you ever get ready to mix some epoxy and start looking for some scrap wood, wax paper,            small mixing cup or just a piece of paper? Well try this:::: buy a spiral notebook 8 1/2" x 11 1/2" ,put the epoxy on one of the pages and when you are finished tear off the page and you are ready for another job. It will also stay put..........Use a small notebook for a small job 

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IMAC Precision Scale Aerobatic contest at North Bay R/C near Napa (Skaggs Island). There should be between 25 and 35 giant scale aerobatic planes there along with some of the best pilots in the western States. The dates are June 7 & 8. Classes are: Basic, Sportsman, Intermediate, Advanced, & Unlimited. I'll be flying advanced. Spectators get in free. If anyone wants additional info such as driving directions, feel free to call Greg Penning (707)823-0444

We have a great flying season ahead of us this year so dust off those wings and charge the batteries and lets go fly.

Hope all of you are doing well and will be able to make it to the opening day this weekend. Should be a great time as usual. Remember, this day is for having fun so leave the egos at home and put on your fun cap and come on up to the field. Bring some cash too as there will be some wheeling and dealing at the swap meet tables.

Just about have the Venus back together after a bad positioned dead stick. I sure hope they move that pile of dirt soon as it is certainly makes for a difficult emergency landing. Thanks to Julio Alvarez for putting my fuselage back together. He did a great job on it. Now I just have to mend the wing and remount the motor and gear and I should be ready for this weekend. Also I have acquired a Hobbistar 60 and another 40 size plane so it will be nice to have more than just one plane to fly for a change.

I am looking forward to being at the field this Saturday as I have been home bound for the last three weeks. Had my knee worked on by the friendly people down at Kaiser and it is healing nicely. Just not fast enough for me though. As a result I have not been able to do much of anything on the computer or even at the building table during this period until now that is. So I will start working on the website again and the most important thing is I can start flying again. See ya at the field.

We have a very nice article from the parents of one of our younger pilots. It appears that our very own Bryan Rankin has moved up to the really large scale planes and is now (in addition to RC) really soaring with the eagles. I believe this article is from his local paper but was submitted to me by his parents. Way to go Bryan, I am sure a lot of us are jealous, in a good way!

Bryan Rankin, a CHS sophomore, completed his first solo airplane flight on April 22^nd, which was his 16^th birthday. FAA regulations do not allow a person to pilot a plane alone until the age of 16. Bryan’s goal was to fly before he could drive a car. He took and passed his driving test the day after he completed his solo flight.

Bryan has been taking flying lessons through American Aviation at the Sonoma County Airport since age 14 ½. Bob Gallagher, President of American Aviation, stated that Bryan is the youngest student pilot to solo at American Aviation.

Bryan’s flight instructor, Jason Franchetti, was pleased with Bryan’s first solo flight, which included ground and air radio-communication with the Control Tower, taxi to and from the runways, three "touch and go" landings and take-offs, and observing traffic and flight patterns.

Bryan completed ground school as a high school freshman by taking the FAA Rules and Regulations course at Santa Rosa Junior College. This summer he will take the written exam administered by the FAA. Bryan plans to work at American Aviation this summer where he will perform minor maintenance tasks. He will continue flying both with his instructor and solo, while expanding his flight area. He must complete a 300-mile solo cross-country flight before he can obtain his Private Pilot’s License. He will be eligible to take his in-air Private Pilot’s License test with an FAA examiner on his 17^th birthday.

Bryan has been interested in aviation for many years, and plans to either obtain his commercial pilot’s license or enter the field of aeronautical engineering. He and his brother, Kevin, an 8^th grade student at Washington School, have attended the NASA-sponsored U.S. Space Camp at Moffett Field in Mountain View, and U.S. Aviation Camp at Castle Air Force Base, in Atwater, California.

Bryan and Kevin build and fly remote controlled model helicopters and airplanes, which can have a wingspan of 5 feet or more. They are members of the Wine Country Fliers and the Ukiah Prop-Busters RC Model Airplane flying clubs.

Rich Larson would like to offer to trade audio/video equipment for airplanes or helicopters. If anyone is interested, have them contact me at

Thanks,

Rich Larsen