Daily Archives: May 24, 2019

18 posts

Chairman’s Corner for May/June 2019

President's Corner

Well, we keep having our events rained out… Quite unusual for May! Thanks to all of you for staying off of the field when muddy. Footprints made this time of year are usually still visible in September. The flora growth in the field area is still advancing and I want to say a BIG “Thank You!” to Dennis La Berge and Jim Bonnardel for their efforts in keeping the runway clear. The extra growth means we still have people wandering across the runway to look at the “pretty flowers” AKA weeds. Please try to be aware of them. One nice thing with the late rains is the field is in great condition and we can save the wet down/roll for maybe August!

Recently the FAA sent preliminary guidance on the use hobby type unmanned aircraft. This is in response to the large number of events in the last few years of people violating restricted airspace around the country. A couple of the BOD members along with Mark Davis and Jim Bonnardel have been communicating with the AMA Government rep and the FAA to ensure we are taking the correct actions to keep our flying site safe. In the interim, I ask that all of you follow current AMA directives and register with the AMA – then place your registration number on each aircraft in a visible location. Also, we need to re-double our efforts in reducing reports to the tower of aircraft above our altitude limit. Please restrict up lines to 400 feet or less, and for the foreseeable future it may be a good idea to have a “calibrated eye” when electroglide is underway to tell pilots not to climb higher.

There was some discussion at the last BOD meeting about the yellow rock at the east end of the runway. It seems that some folks have been using it as a target instead as a centerline reference and have been hitting it. When Jeff re-paints the event target at the center of the field, we are going to try a centerline and see if that works better.

We have had issues again with folks leaving the gate and the Porta Potty open. PLEASE take a few moments and lock the gate if you are the last one out! If there are one or two cars on-site, ask them if they are members. If not, let them know you are locking up and they should leave. If there are empty vehicles, lock them in! People donated new chairs about a month ago, and they are all gone already – LOCK the gate.  We have keys for sale again, if you need one approach a board member for info. If you are standing right there and want to let a non-member use the toilet, that’s ok- but please wait and ensure it’s locked when they finish. Don’t just leave it open. It will get vandalized, all of the paper thrown down the hole, or the lock thrown into the field. That being said, we are in need of more chairs again due to theft/vandalism. If you are replacing yard furniture (or carpet) please bring your old (unbroken) items down instead of tossing them out.

There was a recent incident at the field where a spectator was injured by an out of control airplane. This is the exact reason we have AMA insurance coverage. I appreciate the folks that jumped in to provide comfort and first aid to the individual. Remember, sometimes it is preferable to let an unmanageable plane go down in the field, or behind the vehicles in the lot rather than try to get it back to the runway over people’s heads. If you are involved in an incident, please get the individuals name and phone number to pass on to the BOD for follow up.

George Sullivan has started selling tickets for the 4th of July Raffle.[See below] You can also buy tickets from board members. Remember this one is where we get the funds to support the holiday banquet in January, so if you enjoy the banquet with your family, I encourage you to enjoy the Raffle! We already have some great stuff donated by Steve Neu and Bob Stinson with more to come! We will announce the prizes as they finalize.

Assuming the field dries out in time, we will be having Jet Day on Saturday the 25th. Bring them if you got them! Between 10 AM and Noon the main runway will be reserved for jets only. Carl and Eric are making a plan on how to award the monthly prizes. Following the fun fly there will be a club meeting at the field and the customary hot dog lunch. Hope to see you there!!

Brad

Tony’s Corner for May/June 2019

President's Corner

Hey pilots,

Another month is in the books. I will start off by saying we unfortunately had an incident on Saturday the 18th. A spectator who was enjoying our hobby was struck in the hand and cut a couple times. The plane was out of control and ended up over the pits. “Heads up” was called out multiple times and most were aware that there was a plane out of control. As the pilot struggled to get it back to the field. He was able to make it just over the fence where the gentleman was standing. As the plane crashed down it struck his hand cutting a couple fingers. I’m proud our members jumped into action to get the bleeding to stop. At that point the man and his friends said they would be taking him to the ER to get a professional assessment. They left so quickly we were not able to get pertinent info. So this brings up a good point; when we have an incident, we need to get some basic info: who, what, when & where. If there is an incident we can provide it to the AMA for insurance claim purposes. That’s why we carry it. So please keep this in mind when we do have something happen. 
We are starting to prepare for our forth of July celebration. We have started to sell raffle tickets for our 4th raffle. We will have a great assortment of prizes. As always, it will be a members only, closed gate event. Fireworks are at sundown so plan accordingly. Traffic on that day can be hectic so please stay calm and give yourself plenty of time to get where you are going. There will be more updates as we get closer to the 4th. 
We do plan on rolling the field near the end of June and getting a couple tables replaced this year. As you may have noticed, some are falling apart. With that please don’t sit on top of the tables, they aren’t able to hold that kind of weight over and over. I would hate to pick someone off the ground after a table giving way under them. So please be safe. 
And as always, you are the backbone of the club and I’m proud to help guide this club with great members to be the best club we can. I appreciate all of you for being great members that look out for each other and always have fun flying. 

Yours,

Tony Blackhurst. 

Jet Day

Events

May’s Club Event is:

Jet Day

 

Assuming the field dries out in time we will be having Jet Day on Saturday the 25th. Bring them if you got them! Between 10 AM and Noon the main runway will be reserved for jets only. Carl and Eric are making a plan on how to award the monthly prizes. Following the fun fly there will be a club meeting at the field and the customary hot dog lunch. Hope to see you there!!

[ ] Smooth scale take off

[ ] Scale turn from take off

[ ] Smooth level flight. Maintain altitude.

[ ] Aileron roll.

[ ] Scan your area of patrol. A smooth high G turn like blue angels for example.

[ ] Perform a round loop. The rounder the better.

[ ] Low high speed pass. Below  flagpole from end to end smoothly gets extra points. Hitting the ground loses points and hurts airplanes.

Will be giving out Gift Certificates.
Sincerely, Carl Cox

7/8th Scale Fiesler Storch

Builds & Reviews

By Robert Stinson

On April 13th, there was a small airshow at Gillespie Field. Our field was supposed to be closed that day, so I went there instead. What luck! One of the planes on display was a 7/8th Scale Fiesler Storch, and I spent nearly an hour talking with the pilot and owner Steve Lund.

Those of us who have flown models of the Storch know that it isn’t the most forgiving of airplanes. Steve confirmed that our models exhibit authentic behaviors, and that they require a lot of attention. I thought I’d share some of his observations.

Due to its slow airspeed and zero dihedral, the Storch’s ailerons are not very effective. The pilot has to work the rudder constantly to stay on course. Flying from his home base in Torrance, he was berated by Air Traffic Control because he couldn’t maintain a constant heading!

I asked why the Storch had such relatively small wheels, since so many STOL planes use tundra style tires. Apart from the aesthetics, he said that landing speeds were so slow that they weren’t necessary, and would create substantial unwanted drag.

On one occasion though, the landing speed issue caused some damage to the plane. His plane originally had a skid on the tail. He was landing on a dirt field, and approach speed was about 30 mph. At that speed, there is so little airflow over the control surfaces, in his words, “you were just a passenger”. Once he touched down, without a tail wheel ground steering could only be accomplished by using the wheel brakes individually. He stepped on the right brake, the wheel dug in, and he veered right and hit a telephone pole alongside the runway, bending a landing gear strut. Fortunately, the field operator knew of a nearby machine shop. They removed the strut, straightened it out and were back in business in two hours. He now has a tail wheel instead of a skid.

Steve has spent many years making the plane as authentic as possible. He had 7/8th scale instruments custom made so that his panel matched the plane scale. The real plane had a map compartment under the panel. He made a fake map cover that masks his modern avionics.

The birdcage cockpit canopy is oversized, to meet the requirements for a reconnaissance aircraft. Sitting under glass, the pilot gets very hot! Steve fashioned prototypical accordioning roof and side shades and uses them all the time.

Great pains were taken to make the paint scheme authentic. For instance, the green “Z” on the fuselage denotes a headquarters squadron, and the yellow wing tips are Eastern Front theatre markings.

There was a lot more, that I won’t go into here. If you’re interested, search YouTube for Steve Lund FI-156. He posted a lecture covering much of this there.

So, for those of you who have struggled to fly an R/C Storch, just know that you are in good company flying a piece of history!

Treasurer’s Report for May 2019

General Interest

By Quan Nguyen

As of 5/22, our club has [removed] in cash, and 299 members. This month, the board is looking at CDs (Certificates of Deposit) to invest our reserves so that it keeps up with inflation. We’re also going to start updating the AMA website’s membership list at the club level so that it matches the actual members. We haven’t updated that list since I became treasurer.

Report on The 2019 AUVSI XPONENTIAL Show

General Interest

By Mark Davis

The 2019 AUVSI XPONENTIAL show took place recently. This is the biggest annual show dedicated to unmanned systems. Although it covers unmanned everything, the focus in recent years has been >80% unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

The Airbus Vahana (air taxi) prototype was popular. Attached are a few photos of the cockpit and externals. This air taxi opportunity (such as Uber Elevate for example) is drawing a lot of investment both from aircraft incumbents (Airbus, Boeing, Bell, Embraer, etc.) and a slew of startup companies. Almost all of the vehicles are Electric VTOL that also have an efficient forward-flight mode.

Boeing’s CEO gave a keynote speech and covered many topics, including their supersonic prototype. This topic (supersonic commercial service) is resurrecting recently, with NASA X-59 and other prototype efforts well underway.

Counter-UAS was a big theme, as always, with both kinetic and electronic methods on display.

The weirdest thing I saw was definitely this “aerial motorcycle.”   It has electric motors for VTOL and a jetcat for forward propulsion. Uh….no thanks.

Safety Corner for May 2019

Safety
While generally we have had a good safety record with few serious problems lately. That said there have been a few accidents which have resulted in small fires and wounds from props. If there is an event which brings a response from the fire department or a visit to urgent care or the ER we need to make sure some basic information is collected in case there is a later insurance claim of other followup. This is something that any club member can and should do—get the basics—names of the people involved, contact information, time and date of the incidence and brief description of what occurred. This information should then be provided to the club safety officer or member of the SEFSD board. 
While we are talking safety please take a few minutes to review the AMA safety code. I know 99% of us never bother to read it but given the closer scrutiny that our activities have been getting from government agencies lately it is in our best interests to be aware of the current safety code. The flying site you save may be your own!

Thanks

Steve Neu
cell 619-318-8301

An MQ-9 Story pt. 4 – Empennage

Builds & Reviews

By Bob Kreutzer

The fitting of the empennage.

After fitting the motor, the empennage needed to be installed. As the factory was advocating just gluing the empennage onto the airframe and I realized that that would not work if I ever wanted to remove that nicely tucked-in motor I would need to make the stabilizers removable. This was easy enough with some hitch-pins and some more graphite rods.

Note the little copper L-pins I used for set-up. These were replaced with the proper sized hitch-pins.

Note also, the tight linkage set-up. This factory set-up was a disaster and the controls clashed with each other at full deflection. Yikes! What you cannot see is the severely misaligned dihedral of the stabilizers .The dihedral was off by almost 1 inch” I guess the poor Chinese worker was distracted on that day. I don’t think this is going to fly straight.

It took a little minor surgery to correct this.

Next up: the elevator linkages.

Oh, wait. The supplied elevator ball link is split!

Imagine that, the rudder link is split too . These early production run models had a history of falling out of the sky. I bought all new hardware.

Here is the factory set up with new hardware. This is when I found out the elevator was going to crash into the rudder on full up and full left. I had to cut off the rudder and cut down the wire and re-bend about an inch lower and re-install it. That took care of it.

This is the final flight worthy result. It is a bit busy in the back. Here you can see the final hitch pins that allow the elevators to be removed for motor servicing.

Here is the final result. It is starting to look like a real MQ-9!

Electroglide Report for May 2019

Electroglide Contest Results

It was looking like we were going to have a terrific Electroglide this month. The weather consisted of clear skies, warming air and little wind. Nothing resembling the early predictions from Lindbergh Field. Scott Vance, young Neil Yieh Zhu and I had our gliders up about a half hour before the 10:00 start time. The lift was not hard to find.

Abundant lift was anywhere north of our runway, all you needed was about 150 – 200 feet of altitude. Scott and I noticed that even with moderate down stick applied, our Radians continued to go up. I watched Neil put his glider in a tight left turn and with wings banked, the glider maintained its altitude. This was looking like fun!

The 10:00 o’clock start time soon arrived along with, some western wind. Seven pilots sent their aircraft aloft, looking for that thermal lift and it was gone. With lift now disrupted, Scott Vance had the longest flight at 3:30 minutes with a 20-point bonus landing. Bob Anson came in second at 2:53 aloft, also with a 20-point landing. Dennis La Berge was third at 2:30 and a 10-point landing. Eric Byrd and Neil both picked up 20-point landings

This was looking depressing; the wind had blown away that great lift.

Second launch took place two minutes after Scott retrieved his Radian from the runway. Seven pilots again took to the skies with a slight change in the wind strength. Five pilots found the lift and with careful piloting were able to get long flights. Bob had the longest flight at 9:30 minutes. Eric came in second at 8:54 and Scott was third at 8:50 aloft with a landing bonus of 20-points. Dennis picked up a 30-point landing. Alex Sutton had a 20-point landing. Neil and Stephen Treger both had 10-point landings. This was looking much better.

Third launch now had eight pilots trying their best and the lift had vanished again. Scott had the long flight at 3:35 plus a 30-point landing. Second longest flight was from Eric at 2:30, also scoring a 30-point landing. Bob came in third at 2:26 aloft. Dennis picked up a 30-point landing and I picked up a 10-point landing.

Fourth and final launch was into pretty much the same conditions. Vince Gonsowski had the long flight at 5:00 minutes with a 30-point landing. Bob and Scott both flight times at 3:30, Scott getting a 20-point landing. I came in third at 3:07 with a 10-point landing. Neil picked up a 30-point landing, Dennis and Stephen both had 20-point landings.

Good flying to all involved in the Electroglide. The weather was frustrating, but pilots made the best of it. Kudos also to all who continue to score the bonus landing points. It’s a hard thing to do, placing your aircraft in the target circles so often.

Thanks again to Frank Sutton for the great pictures of the event.

Next Electroglide is set for June 15th at 10:00 a.m.

See you there,

Jeff

2006 Mid-Winter Electric Write-Up

General Interest

[Some nostalgia for those who might remember this]

By Steve Manganelli

The 10th Anniversary Mid Winter Electrics Spring Fling (MWE) was held May 16th, 17th and 18th at SEFSD Field, Mission Bay Park. From my perspective as Contest Director (a pittance effort really), we did another beautiful job. More specifically, Stelio Jackson did a beautiful job. As chief organizer, equipment orderer, personnel herder, Boyscout facilitator, hat maker, setter-up-er and taker-down-er, Stelio is the hero of MWE, congratulations on a job well done!

Next in line for the most selfless include Night Watchmen Lou Rosse and John Hainlen, Impound Coordinator Frank Gagliardi and the ever cheerful raffle and merchandise sales team of Don and Donelle Griffin, this year assisted by Michelle Baker deemed an enthusiastic addition to the team. Wayne Walker was the master of the parking delimiters, parking enforcement and provider of the flag used for the daily flag raising, and Tim Attaway, the transporter of the Club Trailer from which the PA system, signs, tents and other SEFSD owned equipment magically jumped into their positions on the field…NOT! The blistered hands, filthy clothes setup crew included Tim, Tom Brown, Zeke Mazur, Bob Anson, Lou, Stelio and several others, the teardown crew included myself, Michelle, Stelio, Lou, Wayne and Tim. Sam Wright handled the announcing chores like the pro he is on Saturday and he was also responsible for the Kyosho donations. Sunday, I advised hydration, raffle ticket/memorabilia sales and merchandise purchase from our vendors. The 10th Anniversary Logo was designed by graphics professional, Jack Hix and the announcer of the lucky raffle winners both days was Mr. Mark Wood. Ray Fulks got our Government permit from the City Parks folks, Chuck Grim coordinated the sanitation equipment, Frank Smith did an outstanding job with trash management, and Doug Rubin coordinated the caterer serving us the tasty chow. Special thanks to Boy Scout Troop 24 for gate/crowd control both Saturday and Sunday. Scout leaders included Dick Thorn, Jennifer Calvert, Shawn Shepard, Joe Strickland, Abby Voigt, Dan Machado and Nick Amicone. Scouts doing the heavy lifting included Pavel Thorn, Michael Orona, Conner Shepard, Jack Bowman, Steven Strickland, Micah Schatz, Cody Machado and Nick Amicone. Thanks folks!

MWE wouldn’t be what it is without vendors and sponsors. I’d like to mention Hitec/Multiplex, NeuMotors, ThunderPower RC, Aeromodel/Hacker, and Castle Creations as key sponsors contributing not only merchandise for the fabulous raffle but cash $ to pay for the equipment rentals, thanks gents, we couldn’t have done it without you. Thanks also goes to RC Sport Flyer Magazine for their donation. The rule for vendors requires a minimum donation of merchandise of $150 retail value. If you saw the prize haul for the raffle and counted the vendors you’d realize it didn’t add up : our vendors were very, very generous! Besides the sponsors and vendors we also had contributions from Great Planes, Horizon Hobby, E-Flite, Medusa Research, Kyosho, LipoSack, Tower Hobbies, RC-TEK, and Zurich Sunglasses. The vendors present at the event included NeuMotors, Aero-Model/Hacker, DW Foamies, Extreme RC Products, Innov8tive Designs, Discount Hobby Warehouse, Hobby Town San Marcos, E-Power RC, Center Stick, Electronic Model Systems, Cermark, Fun RC Hobby, MikroDesigns and last but not least the AMA booth manned by Dist X AVP Tim Attaway and his capable crew of AMA volunteers.

Part of the package for being a sponsor and vendor is allotted time for the Noon-time demos. Steve Neu and Pedro Brantuas showed off respectively F-5B (Multitask) and F5 (Pylon) models equipped with judicious amounts of NeuEnergy Cells and NeuMotors. Pedro followed up with a precision aerobatics demonstration with his 35% size YAK-54 flying on a NeuMotor 2215 and 14S 4900. Hitec/Multiplex used their slots to show us a couple of new aerobatic models and a substitute for a “typical .40 glow size trainer”, but purpose built for electric. These new models are made from a new foam called “Elapor” which is both resilient and serviceable. Hitec also brought out a couple of their very popular Twister EDF jets which flew very well in out of the box form and even better with Neu-excess power. Formation flight with a couple of these was memorable. Mike Morgan and his DW-Foamies had a virtual “airforce of foam” in the air during his demo time. Fourteen year old Ryan Archer from Scottsdale AZ and our own Pedro probably shared the prize for most prolific demo pilots each flying for at least (3) different outfits. To be in such demand at a young age is a tribute to young Mr. Archers’ skills! Speaking of young, Mr. Kyle Dahl of Delano, CA was our lone and very competent Helicopter demo pilot. Expert aerobatic pilot Mr. Steve Nelson treated us to an Unlimited Class Aerobatic Demonstration with Ray Fulks’ “Miss Ellie”.

What would an MWE be without famous demo pilots? Sean Plummer of Aeromodel/Hacker brought the goods! Jeff Szueber Jr. and Matt Szueber both expert caliber precision aerobatic pilots wowed us with their 3D flying or large aerobatic models set to music. Their takeoffs followed immediately by a wingspan height rolling circle set the stage for harriers, hovering, tail touches and other crowd pleasing maneuvers. The final demo of Saturday’s fest was super-expert Mark Leseberg flying a large (like 40% size) biplane. Mark’s fabulous combination of both precision and 3D aerobatics set to music was a fitting cap to the Saturday demonstrations.

MWE is not really a contest but a funfly. Nonetheless, we gathered all the Electroglide enthusiasts together Saturday A.M for three tosses for plaques created by Stelio. Bob Anson was declared the top Electroglider followed by Stelio and Dick Prentice. Before noon on Saturday, we also gathered all the scale models and handed out plaques for both “large” and “small size” categories. Each pilot had the run of the field to operate his model in a scale like manner, including a crash that the judges deemed scale and earned the pilot a respectable second place. Large scale was captured by “Eindecker” which I’m sure was the aircraft not the pilot whose name escaped our records, followed by Ray Fulks with his Extra 300 and Brad Bender with his J-3 Cub. Smaller scale was taken by Steve Neu with his F7F Tigercat, then Wayne Walker’s Yak-54, 2nd and Mark Ferreria’s HondaJet in 3rd. Of course, what would an MWE be without the Evil Dr. Jet’s limbo combat? The Limbo Combat was the last official event of the MWE before the final Sunday raffle. I think Mr. Mike Morgan of DW-Foamies actually outdid the evil Dr. Jet (aka Bill Knoll) in the planning of this very twisted task. Mr. Morgan designed and built a drill powered “rotisserie” approximately 10 ft wide and 4′ off the ground. The rotisserie was liberally embedded with 12″ long spinning carbon spikes waiting to fillet any unsuspecting foamy flying too close to the bar! Part of the fun of Limbo combat is that any points accrued by a competitor you take out, go to you! The other fun part is the mystery of the configuration, known only to Mr. Morgan until actually set up : no practicing!  After the foam chips cleared in round one, only Mr. Richard Carlton had a semblance of a lap completed. Dr. J, then simplified the task to just getting under the limbo for Round 2. Again Mr. Carlton proved victorious and claimed the plaque and bragging rights to Limbo combat champion for MWE 2008. Second and third place? There’s no second or third place in Limbo Combat!

What else? The weather cooperated perfectly all 3 days, maybe it was a little too hot, record setting hot in the East County making Mission Bay the place to be. The 72 registered pilots came from not too far and not too wide probably due to high gas prices. Richard Carlton and son Alex came down from the Sacramento area, Chris Stephenson from Las Vegas, Charles Steed from Wyoming and Roy Hooker from Peoria AZ; most the rest from the greater Southern CA area. Thanks for coming all; we’ll see you next year!

Respectfully Submitted,

Steve Manganelli, SEFSD Chairman of the Board, Contest Director

 

Finally – We Have the Old Articles Back on the Website

General Interest

As some of you remember our website was hacked in the Fall of 2017.  Since then we created this new and better website.  Unfortunately, adding the old content onto this website was much more difficult than anyone expected.  It took until now and required the help of several wonderful members to make it happen.  I want to thank Raphi Houri, Quan Nguyen and Stephane Gervais because without them it would never have happened.

I suppose most of the members could care less about a bunch of old website articles but it means a great deal to me.  I, with the help of others, created the previous website which started in 2011.  A lot of content was created and stored there.  The most important parts of that content had to do with club history.  When that website got hacked in 2017 I was fearful that content may never be reclaimed.  Most of it is now available to read.

Through the twists and turns of getting the content from the old website to this new one, some of the articles lost their images, some retained their images but lost some or all of their text.  Still, I am very happy to have what we have.

If you like, you can peruse the old files in the article categories:

President’s Corner
Meeting minutes
Events
Builds & Reviews
General Interest
F5B & F5D Pilots & Planes
Electroglide Contest Results

Steve

A Different Way of Calculating Wing Area and Various Wing Loading Methods Compared

General Interest

By Ken Myers

We are now in the buy and fly era of model aviation. A large number of people who enter the hobby today just purchase a bind-and-fly (BNF) or ready-to-fly (RTF) model airplane instead of creating their own model airplane.

Once it assembled, they expect it to fly as described in the various reviews; hobby magazines, online (Web site) or video (i.e. YouTube).

The only airframe parameters they are interested in is wingspan and fuselage length. In other words, “Will it fit in my vehicle?” or “How many can I fit in my vehicle?”

With a few more airframe parameters, a person who’s been in the hobby for awhile can compare and predict the flight characteristics of an unknown airframe. The added parameters provide useful information to those who have passed the introductory stage of RC modeling.

Many magazine reviewers provide the ready to fly (RTF) weight. If the RTF weight is given as 5.1 oz. to 5.6 oz. and the wing span is noted as 28.15″, it does provide a little comparative information when comparing it to to another model that has a RTF weight of 2.22 lb. (35.5 oz.) with a wingspan of 65″, but not much.

As a quick mental exercise, try to arrange the following in order from easiest to fly to hardest. All the planes were reviewed in the Winter 2018 issue of “PARKPILOT” magazine.

Horizon Hobby E-Flite UMX Aero Commander 5.6 oz. & 28.15″ – 2.39 oz./ft.
Origin Funter Glider Trainer EP RR 35.5 oz. & 65″ – 6.55 oz./ft.
Hacker Model Pilatus Turbo 890mm EP ARF 7.3 oz. & 35″ – 2.5 oz./ft.
Horizon Hobby Blade UMX F-27 FPV BNF Basic 2.8 oz. & 17″ – 1.98 oz./ft.
Horizon Hobby HobbyZone T-28 Trojan S RTF with SAFE 1.65 oz. & 16.8″ – 1.18 oz./ft.
Horizon Hobby E-flite X-VERT VTOL BNF Basic 7 oz. & 19.85″ – 4.23 oz./ft.
Tough Jets T-15 40 oz. & 31″ 15.48 oz./ft.
Horizon Hobby E-flite UMX Waco BL BNF Basic 3.5 oz. & 21.7″ – 1.94 oz./ft.

This method has an obvious flaw. The Waco is a biplane and only the wingspan of the top wing is noted. That is okay for noting how much space the top wing will require, but not so good for comparative information.

Ounces per linear foot is an oddball way to try the anticipate possible flight characteristics and similarities of flight of various model planes.

Full scale designers, and modelers, have used ounces, or sometimes pounds, per square foot of wing area for generations as a comparative and anticipatory value.

A look at the example planes using ounces per square foot of the wing planform area.

Horizon Hobby E-Flite UMX Aero Commander 5.6 oz. & 93.1 sq.in. – 8.66 oz./sq.ft.
The reviewer did not note the wing area. It is on Horizon Hobby’s Web site.

Origin Funter Glider Trainer EP RR 35.5 oz. & 434 sq.in. – 6.55 oz./sq.ft.
The reviewer did not note the wing area. It is on Tower Hobby[s Web site.

Hacker Model Pilatus Turbo 890mm EP ARF 7.3 oz. & ?? sq.in – ?? oz./sq.ft.
Neither the reviewer nor Tower Hobbies noted the wing area.

Horizon Hobby Blade UMX F-27 FPV BNF Basic 2.8 oz. & ?? sq.in. – ?? oz./sq.ft.
Neither the reviewer nor Horizon Hobby noted the wing area.

Horizon Hobby HobbyZone T-28 Trojan S RTF with SAFE 1.65 oz. & ?? sq.in. – ?? oz./sq.ft.
Neither the reviewer nor Horizon Hobby noted the wing area.

Horizon Hobby E-flite X-VERT VTOL BNF Basic 7 oz. & 120 sq.in. – 8.4 oz./sq.ft.
The reviewer did not note the wing area. It is on Horizon Hobby’s Web site.

Tough Jets T-15 40 oz. & 615 sq.in – 9.37 oz./sq.ft.
Wing area was noted by the reviewer and it is on the Tough Jets’ Web site

Horizon Hobby E-flite UMX Waco BL BNF Basic 3.5 oz. & 132 sq.in. – 3.82 oz./ft.
The wing area was noted by the reviewer and it is on the Horizon Hobby’s Web site

Arranging these planes by ounces per square foot, for comparison purposes is a bit easier, except three of the planes cannot be arranged by wing planform area loading because the wing planform area is not available.

The F-27 and T-28 are somewhat similar, with some of the shortest wingspans in the group, and both are ‘low weight’ models, so they could be expected to fly in a similar fashion. The Hacker Model Pilatus Turbo 890mm EP ARF with a 35″ wingspan and 7.3 oz. weight would fly differently. Continue reading →

A Couple Fun Videos

General Interest

Flight over the Superstition Mountains in Arizona…Go “full screen”. The photography is HD, the planes are gorgeous, and, most notably, it is shot as the B17 takes off from Falcon Field in Mesa, AZ and then flies over the Superstition Mountains  the east of Apache Junction and then on to Roosevelt & Canyon lakes on the east edge of the Phoenix valley.  Both aircraft are stationed at the Confederate Air Force hanger located at Falcon Field in Mesa where both aircraft were rebuilt.  Falcon field is an old WWII training airport. The backdrops are stunning. Music is from the mini-series, John Adams. Great combo.  Click the pic.

 

Now for some good clean fun:

PopWing Rainout

Events

Frank sent in this image of those intrepid model fliers who braved the elements to come out and stand under covering only to watch the drizzle come down.  Nice to see Carlos!