Daily Archives: June 24, 2021

Happy Days are Here Again!

Hello fellow SEFSD members.  I am happy to say, now that the state of California is opening 100%, we are now open to continue our activities starting with our club meeting and a Fun Fly on Saturday June 26th.  Spill the Beans will be the Fun Fly! As far as serving hot dogs, that will happen on our July meeting – so just one more month to go for goodies.

This also means that everyone who is fully vaccinated should no longer need to wear a mask.  However, those remaining unvaccinated should continue wearing a mask until you are fully vaccinated.  SEFSD is not going to enforce this rule. Instead, you are on your honor to use best judgment while following state and local guidelines.

Since this is our first meeting of 2021, you will finally get to meet the new board members which include your new president, me, Jovi.  This is very exciting for me to meet all of you.   During the past six months I have met a few of you at the field on Saturdays (which is the only available time for me to fly, something that I am going to work on and try to get out more often).

So I thought I would give a brief description of who Jovi is.  So let’s get started:

I started with RC airplanes back in the mid 70’s. At that time, you had to build your airplane (Old School) and it took some time before you could actually fly.  My first club was the Torrey Pines Gulls.  I would head out to the glider port and spend a Saturday afternoon when the winds were blowing.   There were full-scale gliders (no hang gliders were around at that time) as well and it was fun.  The first glider I learned to fly was the Wind Ward with a KRAFT radio. The Hobie Hawk was my best glider to fly.  It was fast, it could climb in the thermals, it soared over the cliffs and if you did it right, catch your plane with one bounce to slow it down.  From the mid 80’s to mid-2000, I spent hours away from flying.

I was lucky to travel the world with the company’s I had worked for.  I spent 3 months in Korea working with Samsung’s D Ram chips.  The town I stayed in was called Onyang which had no American food to speak about.  I just lived off French fries and OB beer at this one watering hole. Half way thru my tour I found a restaurant that had steak and A1 sauce on the table. The steak was good!

I have been all over Europe, Brazil and even down in Malaysia!  I arrived in Kuala Lumpur at 3:00 am after a 22 hour long flight, needless to say I was ready to get out of the aircraft, but I was not expecting on the humidity at 3:00am and the heat…OMG.  During those times my mind was still on model planes and during the off times I would be building a TopFlite kit and would spend years building it.   But as the years went on I would fly here and there.  I would have a nitro airplane out in the sand dunes to go fly around. It was a challenge with sand, thick sand, but having balloon tires, a 90 size 2-stroke engine and a tune-pipe turned out to be no problem!  Out by Lake Mead they have a runway setup for models, but not many fliers would show up. Plus it was 100 degrees when I was flying, so it was nice to be the only one and having the background of the Lake Mead was sure nice.  Took my toy trailer out Lake Mead RV Village; yeah, those were the days!  The field is still there.  Today I work for General Atomics where we build the new launch and arresting gear for the new Ford Class Carriers using electromagnetic systems. To be exact, they are called Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) and Advanced Arresting Gear (AAG).   I invite you go online and check them both out, they are very cool.   Today, I’m back full speed with my RC planes and I am all electric – no more nitro.  I am a scale type person who just loves to fly straight and level, but I’m still working on loops and rolls!!!

I would like to take a minute and talk about safety when flying and this happened a few months ago, but it still worth mentioning:

Heads-Up”, which has three meanings:  Adjective – showing that you are very aware of what is happening around you and it also goes for heads-up football.   Noun – a message that tells or warns someone about something that is going to happen as an example, gave him a heads-up that an investigation was pending.   Interjection – used to tell someone to look up because of possible danger or to clear a passageway.   Out of the three definition of heads-up we are more commonly known as to Interjection.   There are times out at the field, you hear heads-up and sometimes we just don’t look because someone say heads-up, especially when the voice projecting heads-up is not all that loud and, in most cases, we keep our conversation going with a fellow pilot until we hear from other pilots on what just happen.  Aircraft down….

As part of the club’s safety, we need to Shout Out heads-up when your aircraft is in danger and you are over the pits or parking lot.   The end of March there was an incident, well names don’t need to be mentioned……Ok, fine it was me and I was flying my Hawaiian Air.  Take-off was perfect, then 30 seconds into the flight I was in trouble.

One of my favorite old movies is “Animal House” 1978, starring John Belushi as Bluto and in the movie is this one seen where Bluto and D-Day were helping Flounder getting revenge for having Flounder cleaning out the horse stalls and doing push-ups over a horses surprise.   D-day hands Flounder a gun and Flounder goes into Dean Vernon Wormer office where the horse is and as Flounder is squinting his eyes pointing the gun at the horse, which he then points it, in another direction and fires the gun.  But the sound of the gun, killed the horse.  The prank-related accidental death of a horse belonging to Omega member and Reserve Officers’ Training Corps cadet commander Douglas C. Neidermeyer.

Bluto and D-Day run into Dean Vernon Wormer office and the first words coming out of Bluto mouth was, “MERRY CHRISTMAS”.    D-Day goes and says, “There were blanks in the gun”, Bluto again says, “MERRY CHRISTMAS”.   Those same words came out of my mouth when I was in trouble and I yelled it for all to hear.  As I got some control over my Hawaiian Air I again yelled out “Christmas”.  With seconds I had Dennis coming over.  I hear Brad in the background, “you in trouble Jovi” ……Yes was my response.  Dennis got it under control, gave it back to me and still, I was as nervous as I have ever been.  Brad finally took control and landed her safely for me.  Happy was I.  I needed oxygen after that ordeal.

Mark came walking by me and he mention to me how effective I was in yelling “MERRY CHRISTMAS” and how everyone was alerted of the situation at hand.

Here is what happened to me, I relied on the gyro.  When I took off, I thought I had the gyro on, but as I was heading downwind and when I turned base, that is when I notice I was in trouble.  My Airliner was climbing and I’m looking straight up in the sky and flying over the parking lot and Sea World Dr.   I was able to get back over the field.   I have learned that I cannot depend on the gyro all the time in which I did depend on it. It’s a nice feature to have but something that one should not always rely on. So, I am going to learn to fly without the gyro and just keep it for safety…if that makes sense.

However, the morel of this story is when you’re in trouble, it is most important to be yelling out loud heads-up or Merry Christmas!  Remember you must stay north of the fence line at ALL times.  You should never be flying over the Parking lot or the Pits, for the safety of our club members and guests!

On my bench I have the Top-Flite Bonanza which I started back in late 1998.  This was built to take a Satio 120 four-stroke.  Wingspan 81” and the length, 63.6” also included are the following:

• Robart Air Retract w/scale Robart Struts
• Scale Navigation lights that work off two 9-volt battery’s
• Scale Interior Cockpit that is all removable

As time went by, I really never complete my Bonanza.  But as of late, I got my hands back into it.   She is almost ready to go, however I have a few things that need to be done, one is to replace my flap servos.  I had to replace the v-tail servos.  When I was moving them, I notice that the servo arm was going around in oblong circle.  Not good.  Change them to newer Hitec servos and were back to perfection.   Theses retracts are old and not holding pressure.  It is holding pressure for a good 10 minutes in which I only need about 6-7 minutes…. Maybe some risk here…I’ll keep working that problem.

The biggest task I had was figuring a way to change batteries without taking the wing off like I have to do with my Cessna 182.   The Canopy is bolted down with four socket head cap screws, problem with that was getting to those bolts.  I removed them and now I have a quick latch to remove the Canopy.  You’ll see what I mean in the pictures.   It’s actually very cool how this works.  I can put the wing on and I don’t need to hook up the connectors or the air lines.  Once the wing is bolted, flip the Bonanza, unlatch the Canopy, remove the interior and I have access to everything in the aircraft.  Hooked it all up, connect the airlines and place the interior back into place.  Where the fuel tank would have been are where the batteries now sitting.

Balancing was next, I did a rough balance and she seemed to be good with the batteries mounted up front.  Out at the field on T-28 Race’s, April 10, was the day she was going to maiden!  Complete check out was preformed and she was now certified to fly.

Brad did the maiden flight!  She took off like an F-14 Tomcat heading towards the Sunset as seen in “Top Gun”.  As he was trimming her out, he was noticing the balance may be off.  She acted very weird.  He flew her around and she look very nice up in the sky, you think it was a full-scale Bonanza.  Time was running out and Brad was preparing for landing.  She came and touch down and just rolled down the runway.  I was happy, but the next flight, I am going to dial in the balance and hopefully that helps out, which it should!

Ok, I have made enough noise!

Grab your planes, batteries and radio, and let’s go Flying and looking forward to seeing you all at our Monthly Meeting!

Jovi