Dedicated to the Promotion of Electric Propulsion in all types of Aeromodeling

July F5B/D Day SEFSD

By Steve Neu,

Steve Manganelli in front of the planes getting ready to fly

July F5B 2013

This last Sunday afternoon SEFSD hosted the July edition of F5B/D Day at the Bay. Bruce Brown put in several flight with his Avionik D05 F5D plane. If you have not seen a F5D racer before it is truly impressive to see a 2 lb model run at speeds of upwards of 200mph–then glide in for a smooth landing at 25mph! Not too many planes have such a wide speed range!

The usual suspects from the local area were out along with Lenny Keer from Colorado. Lenny is what you might say is dedicated to these planes since he makes the monthly road trip with his wife every month to San Diego. We also had a visit from a legend of modeling Larry Jolly—looking things over. Sounds like he will be back in the near future to play with some fast planes!

As for flying with the F5B gliders the weather which was fairly cool for the middle of July with calm winds made for near perfect conditions for turning in very good lap counts in distance. The scores for the most part were in the 48-51 bases—with yours truly getting the 51 base score. Of course there were the usual comedy routines—the best was provided by Jeff Keesaman when he managed to miss a third of the turns at the far pylon on his first flight.

We had Don Corum, of the local top heli pilots took up my offer and flew my high powered F5B “rental” –he also looked over the F5D planes and it looks like may have another local joining us soon.

As usual Steve and Michelle Manganelli looked up into the sky and pressed buttons for the afternoon–many thanks for their efforts! Most here might not know it but Steve and Michelle will be running a F5B World Cup contest in Hawaii in September. We will have a three day contest with pilots from Australia, Japan USA, Russia, Switzerland and Italy in attendance. The idea was first proposed by one of our Japanese friends at the last World Champs in Romania. After a series of F5B events in Eastern Europe a venue like Hawaii seems like paradise! We worked with the FAI and AMA and the local club in Hawaii to make this possible!