February 23, 2022

Spot Landing Challenge Report

Events

We are back! Yes, indeed January’s first club-event of the year was met with enthusiasm and anticipation. With 25 competitors, it was easy to see that we are all ready to resume our monthly shenanigans.

I wanted to START ’22 with our STOPPING event, and that was met very well. Everyone who played the game was ready to get started right at 10:00am.

There seems to be a trait, of people not wanting to be the first competitor, and always waiting to sign up after a few people have. Well, let me suggest otherwise! Our first two sign ups, took 2nd and 3^rd place, so there ya go… Sign up early!

Points were 5 for bullseye, 4 for the middle ring, and 3 for the outer ring. Landing anyplace on the runway got you a single point. There was lots of action, and people were watching the competitors battle it out with some pretty favorable conditions. I decided to add the “Time” element to solve any ties, and I’m happy I did, the top 3 all tied in points!

Finishing order: First Place Brad Bender with 13 points @1:04

Second Place Bob Anson with 13 points @1:13

Third Place George Sullivan 13 points @1:29

Fourth Place Alex Sutton 12 Points @0:53

Fifth Place Tom Baker 11 points @ 1:30

It’s always great to see new member joining in on our monthly games, but more so, having our membership participating regularly, is what makes these events fun. This last event shows that for our events, participating is the main focus, anyone can win.

SPEAKING OF anyone can win….. Next event is the ever-popular POKER FLY! You have the same chance of winning as ANYONE ELSE, as long as you make the flights to draw your cards. As usual, all club events are on the 4^th Saturday of the month, sorry for the confusion in the dates! POKER FLY is Feb 26th, 2022. I hope to see you there.

Jim

Bill’s New Jet

Builds & Reviews

My latest purchase is this Xfly T7A from Bitco Hobbies or Banana. I got a pre-purchase deal for $150 on a recommendation from Chris Wolf’s youtube channel. I love this thing ….65mm edf, fixed gear and 4s 2200 lipo. Nicest flying jet I own. Fast very nice finish and sounds great. I highly recommend it. Bill A.

Prop Safety is Important!

Safety

By Steve Neu

I have seen a number of cases of our club members handling and standing in very close proximity to their planes that have their propulsion systems armed and radios on. In some cases people are standing in front of the plane turning or handling the prop. The electric motors can develop full torque at zero RPM and accelerate to full RPM in a few 10ths of seconds. Getting tangled in a prop can easily lead to an ER visit of worse. Here are some simple suggestions:

1) Do not plug the propulsion battery to the motor controller until you are ready to fly.
2) Do not work on the prop, spinner with the battery plugged into the motor controller.
3) Do not depend on “safe or arming” switches on the controller OR the transmitter —if you need to work on something unplug the power connector.
4) If you need to test run your motor at the field do it well away from others —point the plane away from people make sure people are out of the arc of the prop is if it fails—yes it happens!

Don’t put your safety at risk by depending on a micron of silicon or a few lines of computer code to keep you safe—stay away from the blades of your prop when it is armed!

Silent Electric Flyers of San Diego Board of Directors Meeting Minutes, Feb. 2022

Meeting Minutes

Date and Meeting Location : Home of Steve Neu, 03 February, 2022, 6:30 P.M.

Board Members Present : President-Manganelli, Vice President/Treasurer-Nguyen, Safety Officer-Neu.

Via Zoom : Member at Large-Cox, Member at Large-Kosta, Member at Large-Struthers, Editor-Belknap.

Not present : Chairman of the Board-Murek, Secretary-Dresser

Called to Order by Manganelli at 6:45 P.M.

Old Business ;

Holiday Banquet : Citing business and logistics concerns, the Edgewater Grill is not holding our banquet on the 19^th of February! Instead we will be at the Aerospace Museum on February 18^th graciously catered by Lisa Bender’s Company. E-mail announcements have already been made and a few more tickets remain as of a few days ago.
Membership renewals. We have 222 paid up members as of 2-1-2022 : the BOD thanks you for renewing! Badges for rest of 2022 will be mailed.
AMA help to raise our altitude limit. I contacted Tyler Dobbs and Chrystal Pearson of AMA. The process by which a Club’s altitude limit can be negotiated is via the Safety Risk Management (SRM) Panel. The panel, sanctioned out of FAA/Washington DC, gathers all relevant stakeholders to the process. In our case, the stake holders would include Lindberg Air Traffic Managers (ATM) and probably Southwest Airlines, USCG, SDPD, SEFSD and the AMA. In general, SRM Panels have a positive outcome for the club because often, the applicable ATM and other stakeholders have no idea the model airplane club exists. We know this is not the case for SEFSD. At present the backlog for SRM Panels is 50 clubs and with approximately 2 per month taking place, our lead time is 1 ½ to 2 years. I placed us in the queue with agreement that as we neared the top of the queue, we would revisit our relations with ATM and decide to go forward or cancel. In the meantime we must maintain positive relations with ATM by abiding by the terms of our current agreement!
New T-28 Medals . Seventy five Medals were purchased, (64) with the custom logo designed by Frank Sutton and (10) “Better Luck Next Time” for most cuts in T-28 Racing. The medals not identified for T-28 Racing will be provided to Jim Bonnardel and added to the Monthly Fun Event prizes. The words contained within artwork are not specific to T-28 Racing, but the medal standard casting is specific for the year 2022. Medals should be delivered in time for February’s T-28 race, Monthly Meeting/Fun Event and subsequent events.
Club Officers Still Needed! A new Treasurer and a new Membership Leader, aka Badge Maker are needed! Our immediate past Treasurer, Quan Nguyen graciously stepped up as interim Treasurer as responsibility was not fully transitioned. Please contact any BOD member if you can be of service to your club as Treasurer or Membership Leader! We need you!

Field Condition and Maintenance

Field Surface Improvement. One possible improvement under discussion is application of a 2” to 3” layer of decomposed granite and compacting it to a smooth and airplane friendly surface. In past discussions, costs were prohibitive but further investigation when construction tempo “cooled” was intended. Larry Costa has been investigating and will provide near term update.

Report on Immediate Past Month’s Events

T-28 Racing. Occurred before BOD Meeting, Jan 8^th event already reported.
Scheduled for 1-15 but cancelled due to rain.
Club Members Meeting, Funfly Event. January 22th. Touch and Go, CD : Bonnardel, 29 participants! Well organized and a great time, Thanks to Jim Bonnardel, CD, Mark Davis, Carl Cox and Lisa Bender for the Hot Dogs/Brownies!

Schedule of Upcoming Month’s Events

T-28 Racing. February 12^th, CD Neu.
February 19th, CD : Struthers (Mr. and Mrs.)
Club Members Meeting and Funfly/Hot Dog BBQ. February 26^th, CD : Bonnardel, BBQ Lead : Mark Davis. Event Type : Poker Fly
PENDING-STAND BY

New Business

Club Logo Apparel . I noticed a boon hat worn by George Sullivan with “SEFSD” embroidered on the back : I thought “Cool” and remembered our original logo is somewhat tired. BOD Decision February 02 : Explore both a new upgraded logo design suitable for hats/embroidery and/or printing on shirts and consider them both as prize awards and direct sale for field improvement fundraiser. Action : Nguyen sent existing logo artwork to Kosta for no cost analysis. Decision to fund initial production run and/or take pre-orders will be made after design approval.

Treasurers Report

Narrative : The gift card prizes for the Monthly Fun Event have been increased to $350 per event to cover inflation. Our 2022 budget plans a deficit of $3,000 to $5,000 that will still put us even at the end of the year.

Starting Balance (at the beginning of January) : [removed]
Income from the Past month (January) Aggregated : Unk.
Expenses for the Month (January) Itemized :
1. Medals : $384.99
2. Outhouse Maintenance :
3. Badge Making/Mailing :
4. Hot Dogs/
Ending Balance (as of January 31) :[removed]

Next Months BOD Meeting : 6:30. March 2^nd, Location TBD

Adjourned : 7:24 P.M.

Minutes Submitted By : Manganelli, 2-10-2022.

Electroglide Report for Feb 2022

Electroglide Contest Results Events

We had a pretty good time at the first Electroglide for this year. The weather was much better this time around; we had clear skies, a Northwest wind of 3 mph and a temperature of 64 degrees at first launch.

Although the wind was light and the sun was shining, thermal lift was very hard to find. As a result, fight times on all launches were on the short side. The scoring points were being made on spot landings as opposed to flight times.

On the first launch in the Radian class, Alex Sutton had a bull’s eye in the target circles, earning an extra 30 points. Bob Anson picked up a 20-point. landing and Scott Vance scored a 10-point landing.

In the open class, Denis LaBerge, Bob Stinson, and Derik Knight all scored 20-point landings.

Flying in the Radian class, Scott Vance had the long flight at 2:32 minutes and Bob Stinson had the long flight of 2:12 minutes in the open class.

Second launch had Alex again scoring a 30-point landing, joined by Dennis flying open class. Bob Stinson, and Derik also flying open picked up 20 and 10-point landings respectively. Bob Anson, flying Radian class scored a 20-point landing, Fritz Logan (Radian) picked up a 10-point landing. The long flight in the Radian class was earned by Scott Vance at 3:27 minutes and in the open class it was Dennis LaBerge at 3:40 minutes.

Third launch again had Alex parking his Radian in the 30-point circle, joined by Scott (Radian) and Bob Stinson (open). 20-point landings were made by Dennis and Derik, both flying in the open class. The long flight for Radians was by Scott Vance at 3:44. The long flight for open class was Dennis LaBerge at 3:10.

Fourth and final launch had everyone missing the bull’s eye but still, there were close landings. Alex and Fritz (Radian) both had 20-point landings. Bob Stinson (open) also had a 20-point landing. 10-point landings were earned by Scott (Radian) and Dennis (open class). The long flights were flown by both Scott Vance and Bob Anson (Radian) at 4:12 minutes and Dennis LaBerge (open) 2:34 minutes.

We didn’t have much in the way of thermal flying this time but all the scoring in the spot landings, despite a Northwest wind, showed good skill among all the pilots. Great job guys!

Thanks again to Frank Sutton for the event pictures. Next Electroglide will be on March 19^th. First launch at 10:00 a.m.

See you there,

Jeff

This is three aircraft in the 30-point circle

T28 Pylon Racing Report for Feb 2022

T28 Contest Results

By Steve Neu

We had our largest turnout yet with 16 pilots with most of the usual suspects as well as a 5-6 new pilots. I suspect the fact that our local Discount Hobbies got a fresh shipment of T28s is the cause of the increase. It was great to see so many new pilots!

With 16 pilots we conducted the preliminary races with four planes in each flight group. After the dust settled from the preliminary rounds and the results tabulated the finals racing groupings were set. There were a couple accidents putting a couple of planes out of action but most should be repairable.

The Bronze class was hard fought with Steve M and Fritz dueling for first place with Steve crossing the finish line first.

The Silver class race had some drama with Larry Kosta and Quan planes tangling near the downwind pylon resulting in DNFs for both. Brad and Alfred took first and second place.

The Gold class race was hotly contested with Otto and Alex trading places for most of the 10 laps——I was about half a lap back following the battle up front—then near the race’s end, Alex lost control of his plane for a split second loosing his line and allowing me to slip ahead of him—but Otto still crossed the finish line first but as fate would have it Otto had a cut recorded earlier while trying to keep ahead of Alex—handing first place to me.

The February event saw the debut of our new awards that sport an image of a T28 courtesy Frank Sutton—they look great!

See you at next months races! Next month we will try a new racing matrix that should save 10-15 minutes off the process of setting flight groupings for the preliminary rounds—thank you Steve M.