There will not be a club event for November and December.
Events
Civilian Scale Day
Sat 23rd, 10am

This will be a fun fly event and each time you fly you will receive a ticket. Up to 5 tickets for a chance to win $35.00. For medals, each pilot gets one opportunity to preform scale techniques, take-off, scale turns, level flying, preform a low fly-by and of course making the perfect landing.
Thank You
Jovi
Reminder!
Saturday, June 24th 10:00am
The club favorite returns,
it’s time for the annual
BOMB DROP!
This year, we are adding NEW ORDINANCE!
A new twist has been added!
You can choose your weapon loading the regular bomb
or the new MEGA BOMB!
At 10:00am the bombs start dropping for score.
As usual, $175 in certificates for DHW are up for grabs, 1st through 5th place, and the top three earn the coveted
SEFSD ’23 medal!
Bomb drop devices, and bombs are provided.
ANY FIXED WING CAN PARTICIPATE!
Stay for the meeting, awards & lunch afterwards
Remember, don’t watch your
watch your
First change was the “Mulligan” rule (and yea we also defined what a Mulligan is, a do-over). At first I was asking pilots to call their mulligan BEFORE the airplane touched the ground, but that proved to be just a tad bit of cognitive stress on the pilots, so we changed it to simply applying power and going again. You still got 3 mulligans for the event.
The next change was we went to 3 “play’s” per pilot because as a competition, it goes really fast. You are done in just a couple minutes.
Last change was only providing 10 seconds of motor on power. I’m SO GLAD we didn’t do 20 seconds! OMG, it was amazing how many pilots were successful right up to 199ft with just 10 seconds of power~!
So with that, we began the game. Pilots did high-power launches to get to their best height and then it was on! Early pilots were treated to calm winds, pilots who launched a bit later, were treated to the typical AM thermals that the Electroglide pilots all love!
George Sullivan was the brave soul that stepped up first. His first RTH (return to home) was not so successful, so as he went out to the field doing the walk of shame, Brad went ahead and launched. Brad, being the first pilot to launch and return, set the bar at 42 seconds of glide, and a BULLSEYE 30 point landing. Well now…. thats showing the gang how its done! There was more excitement as we saw virtually ALL types of aircraft come to the line. EDF, Military, Sport, Micro, & Trainer. Balsa and foam planes!
Scores were varied and impressive. Getting 1 point per second of airtime, and then the landing bonus of 30, 20, 15, Scores were worthy!
In Finishing order:
Congrats to the winners, THANK YOU to all the pilots for participating. Its the club’s membership that makes these events fun, and through participation, continue.
Next month, BOMB DROP!!
This month’s club event is the:
May 27th, 10am
This event will test your “emergency return” skills, and reward those who have a command of the task.
How it will work:
Rule #1. DO NOT SACRIFICE YOUR AIRCRAFT. If during the event, you are not going to make it to the field safely, you can simply power up and come back to try again.
You get 3 attempts. NOT 3 TRIES. It MUST BE a “safety for aircraft” abort, not a “you didn’t do well” abort.
You get 20 seconds of motor on. Once the motor is off, the flight timer starts. Timer ends when model stops moving on the ground. Points for flight time are accrued. Landing on the runway allows time score, off field landings are zero. Position on runway ONCE MODEL STOPS, can score bonus points.
Scoring will be similar to electroglide where a long glide is helpful and the scoring bonus zones will be larger than the standard electroglide target.
No gliders allowed. This is a dead stick challenge of a regular airplane not designed to be flown power-off.
Gliding starts at 10:00am, and like usual, Meeting, Awards & Lunch afterwards.
Poker Fly success!!
Hello fellow SEFSD’ers. I am happy to report that April’s club event, the Poker Fly, went off without a problem…. I think for the first time since we started!!! April’s event was a PERFECT example of how a club member can influence our events with great ideas. Poker Fly has traditionally been difficult to score, because as simple as it is to grade Poker Hands, it gets challenging when there are 40 hands played. A tip of the hat goes to Bob Anson, who last year suggested using 3×5 cards instead of the score sheet. AMAZING. GENIUS. PERFECT. Using the 3×5 cards allowed the contestants to be responsible for holding on to their own “hands”. At the end, we only were presented with the hands that were worthy of scoring, not the plethora of junk hands as was in the past. Scoring went PERFECTLY, until at the presentation for awards, a member shouted out “What about my xxxx hand??” My gut dropped as I thought we had again, screwed up scoring. Well, it worked out that the club member didn’t understand the ranking for his poker hand, and our scoring WAS PERFECT AFTER ALL!!
Additional thanks goes to George Sullivan, who played dealer so I could get my flights in, and Jovi who shared the final scoring duties. Our event went a bit long as there were LOTS OF CONTESTANTS, and LOTS OF FLYING! The flights were entertaining, everyone gave the right amount of courtesy to all pilots to let them get in their 4 flights. All in all a great “Luck Based” event. Alex was the “Lucky Dog” with his lowest hand, and came away with a pair of MG Featherlite servos from Hitec.
Next month, there is NO LUCK, its all YOUR SKILLS! The Medal’s come out next month for the podium finishers. DEAD STICK CHALLENGE. You get 10 seconds of motor, glide for time, land for bonus. Similar to Electroglide, but NO GLIDERS (any other aircraft is allowed even MICROS!) Scoring is where the aircraft stops, not where it touches.
Congrats to the winners, THANK YOU to all the contestants that played. Again, these go away without participants. I’m looking forward to May, as that is a NEW event for us, be sure to come down and play!
Jim Bonnardel
Click a pic below for the entire album:
so look forward to something to make it easier!
This month we had Joe Rosevear join in his first club contest with an absolutely awesome CLASSIC Dynaflite Wanderer with a power pod. This charmer of an airplane took its sweet time to get to altitude, but the whole time everyone was having flashbacks of their early years with home-built balsa kits, and reliving those early days. I think more than 12 people raised their hands when I asked, “Who here has had/built/flown a Wanderer?” The Wanderer was first produced in 1975 by Marks Models. Joe’s score didn’t put him on the podium, but he did have a great time joining in on our shenanigans.
Also joining in on the game, Vlad Robin who also is not a usual monthly game participant, we are happy to see you joining in! I don’t want to forget mentioning Brian Glensky, who is pretty new to all of our games, he did better than the average score!
The Results:
1st Steve Manganelli BULLSEYE @ 199 ft. !
Also, thanks to Steve Manganelli who has stepped up to handle the monthly contest certificates for the rest of the year. All of our volunteers have real lives, and sometimes extra errands are just too hard to get done, or even forgotten. Thanks Steve!
Saturday March 25th, 10AM
Meeting to Follow
Prizes 1st through 5th Place
The Limbo Challenge will have to be done another time.
Saturday would be a good day to avoid the soggy field.
At 09:45 the sign up sheet was put out. Our chairman, Jovi, had been wanting to be the first to sign up and had actually gotten ahold of the sign up sheet and was told he could not sign up until 10:00. Jovi knew the reason why you want to sign in early for 2023’s events, and thats because all tiebreakers will be decided by sign up order! Well Jovi got to sharing his 2022 video with AMA District 10 President and friend to SEFSD Greg Stone an forgot to watch his watch! 10:00am ticked by and our Treasurer, Steve Manganelli beat him to the punch with being contestant #1. Jovi realized his mistake and got in at #2.
There are some ‘rules’ we will operate under 2023, and that is the sign up sheet will always be the tiebreaker. Granted our games are pretty hard to have exact ties, but it does happen with Limbo which is our next event in Feb.
Beans started flying right after the pilot briefing, and Steve doing his first bean event EVER, did his first out of the gate, with no one showing their strategy, did a very respectable 1:14 flight but he only had 3 beans. The bar was set with room for improvement!
More entertainment ensued with George Sullivan almost donating his plane to Mission Bay, and carrying a RUNCAM onboard! That video is found at: https://youtu.be/NWafwJky45g Thanks to Frank Sutton, Georges near loss was captured for your entertainment! I cant believe how long the beans were there, but you gotta watch!
We had several pilots come home with the full load of 20 beans:
NAME Time Place
Bob Anson 0:22 1st
Brad Bender 0:27 2nd
Bruce Driver 0:31 3rd
Jim Richardson 0:34 4th
Ty T 0:54 5th
Phong Tran 0:57 6th
The rest of the pack with beans came in as follows:
Bob Stinson 18 Beans :25
Alex Sutton 14 Beans :38
Steve Manganelli 3 Beans 1:14
Jim Bonnardel 3 Beans and a CRAZY FAST 16 seconds!
Jim lost his beans when his airplane had a hiccup in the middle of the loop, otherwise it could have been a record breaker!
Kudos to:
Phil Barlow
George Sullivan (Loops & Rolls)
George Harper
Quan Nguyen
& Mark Davis
Those gents did their duty to populate the field with bean sprouts. We thank you putting all of your cargo out in the field and adding to diversifying our vegetation index.
We were visited by the AMA District X VP, Greg Stone, Saturday and he very much enjoyed watching our “Don’t Spill The Beans!” competition.
January’s Club Event:
Don’t Spill the Beans!
Our FIRST event for ‘23 is one
EVERYONE can participate in!
Beans & carrying devices are provided.
You get 20 beans, you do a flight with a loop or roll, and land.
Beans left in the cup count.
Leaders get $1.00 per bean PAID CASH MONEY!
$175 in CASH PRIZES AWARDED
Saturday 1.28.2023
Beans start flying at 10 am
Club meeting and BBQ to follow.
Typical 3S 2200 style airplane preferred. Not an event for Micro, or Large Scale.
OCTOBER’s Club Event:
WARBIRD DAY!
The LAST CLUB EVENT OF 2022!!
October 22nd 2022 10:00 am
Our tribute to warbirds of all types.
There will be a chance to participate in an “Axis Vs. Allies” Attack of our field!
Prizes and medals for defending our honor!
All warbirds for open flying before the runway attack.
3~4cell battery types for Axis Vs. Allies event pls.
Participation earns raffle tickets, all raffle tickets are eligible!
Meeting and FINAL BBQ of the year to follow.
We had a good turnout with 11 pilots going for the gold. As is often the case Quan was fashionably late in arriving putting him at the very end of the signup sheet. Jovi did a great job of keeping things moving along and keeping the scores.
In the first round of the preliminary races there was some very tight racing with Alex and myself trading places for much of the race—near the end of the race with things a virtual tie Alex made a bad turn giving me enough distance ahead to get the win. A couple races later Otto and Alex tangled at the downwind turn just a couple laps into the race—with both tumbling to the ground. Steve Manganelli waltzed into first place in that round given that 2/3rds of the group had crashed.
Alex had planned ahead and had a second plane ready to go for the finals—and Otto was able to glue the wing back together all within the 10 minute break before the medal race start—amazing what the right CA glue can do with foam.
The results were as follows:
Bronze:
1) Quan
2) Bob Simon
3) Carl
Silver:
1) Alex
2) Otto
3) Bob Stinson
4) Daric
Gold:
1) Steve N
2) Glen
3) Steve M
4) Brad
For those looking for “tips and tricks” for racing T28s a good starting place is this guide:
Setting up your T28 to race.
The most important thing that many people miss when starting to race RC planes is that going fast is nothing without control! The FMS T28 is a small plane and setting it up to race IS very different than for your basic sport flying. Getting the CG and control throws dialed in are key to getting the plane to “go fast and turn left” and keep in control. As a racer running at full throttle— the elevator and aileron travels needed are minimal . A properly setup T28 will actually be easy to fly with only small control deflections.
The control throws suggested in the FMS instructions are intended for a plane flying much slower on a 2S battery. We are flying much faster with 3S. Here are the control deflections I have on my plane:
Ailerons: 6mm up 6mm down
Elevator: 3mm up, 3mm down
Rudder: 6mm left, 6mm right
CG measured from edge of wing at fuselage opening 71-72 mm
I like about 30-40% expo on both aileron and elevator—helps make the plane less sensitive around center making it easier to do fine adjustments to the planes track. A little nose heavy help make the plane positively stable in pitch which and the elevator less sensitivity but the recommended CG in the FMS instructions is too nose heavy for my tastes. Too rearward CG locations will make the plane neutral in pitch stability or even negative which will make it more difficult to find a stable track down the course. The trade offs in moving the GC is stability vs turning ability with the aft CG setup being able to turn more quickly. You need to be careful with the CG and elevator throws in that if you get too aggressive the plane will tend to snap roll in tight turns.
If you find the racing setting a little too mild for take off/landing and general sport flying I suggest setting up a dual rate switch so you can easily swap from one control rate to another.
Some of you did not read my previous article regarding the “AD” for the nose wheel strut—I learned the hard way that on our rough field the stock strut puts the nose wheel too close to the prop which will result in props getting busted when the blade hits the nose wheel rubber. fix is easy—just turn the nose wheel around (be sure to put a flat on the shaft on the opposite side!).
We had a great time—see you at the next T28 race on November 12th!
September’s Club Event:
Civilian Scale Day
August Club Event:
SPOT LANDING CHALLENGE!
Saturday, 8.27.22
You get three landings (touch & go) to get a score. Scoring is where the first wheel makes contact.
SCORING TIES ARE DETERMINED BY THE CLOCK! Don’t waste your time!
Club meeting and BBQ to follow.
Our May T28 races were held May 14th with most of the usual suspects in attendance. Racing got underway at a little after 10am . Larry had some bad luck starting out when his plane decided to make a hard left turn after takeoff right in to the side of Jovi’s pickup truck—most of the damage was limited to Larry’s pride but the crash put him out of the rest of the races. After that most of the races were mostly without drama—there were a number of very tight races with planes crossing the finish line wing tip to wing tip. Several of us got tagged by eagle eye Jovi at the starting line for crossing early—protests proved pointless:)
April’s Club Event:
3 RING CIRCUS!
We are doing something new for April
A 3 Ring (event) Circus!
Ring #1: Limbo Loops
Ring #2: 30 second power to dead stick landing
Ring #3: Figure 8 Taxi race
For March’s 3 Ring Circus, we will use the typical, 3-cell airplanes under 50″
wingspan. Trojan, Cub, Timber, Visionaire, Apprentice, Extra 300 etc. No motor-
gliders, no drones, fixed wing only. 3 Cell, 2200 mah battery aircraft is desired.
Limbo Loops = Looping around a limbo ribbon 10ft AGL
30 Second to Dead Stick = Power on for 30 seconds. At power off, timer is
started. Longest glide to scored landing using Electroglide target. Off runway
landings do not score.
Figure 8 Taxi Race = 3 laps around 2 cones without leaving the ground.
March’s Event:
February’s Event:
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 19th. First launch at 10:00 a.m.
See you there,
Jeff
– Jim Bonnardel will return this year as our SEFSD Contest Director. –
What are we starting with? For 2022, we are starting with one of the easiest games we have, the:
Spot Landing Challenge
pilots meeting starts.
$150 in prizes!
An exciting variation on the popular Bomb Drop