Here we are in February and we’re still dealing with COVID 19. I cannot express the gratitude that everyone is using commonsense out by the field by wearing your masks and keeping that distance between us by 6 feet. Thank You All for your continuing efforts. It has been good to see a lot of members renew and and we also have received new members to our Club, and I would like to welcome all our new members to the Silent Electric Flyers of San Diego, we appreciate you joining our club!
Today I would like to introduce a new airplane, Black Horse Model, Fairchild 24W ARF and yes its by Motion RC. I know, spending too much money with Motion..anyways this is a pretty nice model. The Fairchild is an all Balsa – Plywood Construction and its covered with Oracover, for those of us who use an iron to apply the covering material…..Here are the specs:
- Wingspan: 79 inches
- Length: 38 inches
- Weight: 41 lbs.
- Wing area: 1dm2
- Wing loading: 62 g/dm2
Had its first flight on FREEZE FLY day. Happy to say, this is San Diego, it turned out to be a very pleasant day of flying! Had many members show up and even saw a lot of new airplanes. Thanks to Frank Sutton and his great photograph, he was able to capture all the new aircraft! As I was saying, the 24W had its’ maiden flight and she flew as well as expected. I had a video camera mounted in the cockpit, so I hope you have an opportunity to watch its’ maiden flight. However I will warn you about a very hard bounce at landing and Yes this issue is being resolved with low bounce wheels…..
How about that rain we got this past January? Boy did that make a huge improvement on our runway. Finally, the soft sand is now nicely packed to the ground, just waiting for us to tear it up, in a good way. I took a picture of the runway, just after the rains and it really look good. However, I would like to make a comment here and that is, just after it rains the runway can be very saturated with water and if you try to fly, you’re going to see your tire marks, and if you get stuck, yep you guessed it, footprints, or footprints crossing the runway. Please, may I ask that we have a little patience and once it had a chance to drain and dry out, we’re all going to love the results as we see today! Thanks Club Members! New stripe down the runway, Thank You Jeff Struthers for getting that done for us! In the meantime, hopefully we still get some more rain, we really do need it.
On another note, I would like to add and it’s to all club members that when you’re flying and perhaps it is a 2-meter size aircraft, and we all know we must stay under 200 feet and stay in our fly zone. But sometimes one could be flying on a very cloudy or clear day and in a blink of an eye, it’s gone, just disappeared. You’re not seeing your aircraft and at that point, you might wish you had an extra set of eyes. We had a couple of situations that this happened not too long ago. Without fault to the pilot’s, it just happens. Perhaps a co-pilot would be helpful before you launch your model and if you or any member request help, Please ask us, we have a lot of good people out at the field and I know that anyone of us, including me, would be more than happy to be an extra set of eyes or just being a co-pilot …..
T-28 races are back up for 2021, and we had our first race of the year this past February 13. We had a great turnout of pilots. In our first round of heats of racing we had very close races, however we did have Frank doing loops and water landings off in the bay then racing….and can you believe we had no cuts in the race and to me, something was wrong. Until the Gold Cup Race. We had Otto, Alex and Steve M. in final heat. Alex’s started ahead of starting bell. Otto and Steve were racing up the sky’s, with Alex just behind them. Otto crossed first and Steve came in second and Alex came in last as this was the Unofficial Results. The whole day we had not cuts, not a one. But Otto came thru like a Pro with 3 cuts and Steve had one. Alex, even though he started early, he had no cuts and was our Gold Cup Winner for February 2021. Congrats Alex. Now you have a challenge for next month in being the defending Gold Cup Winner! Silver Cup went to Steve N. and the Bronze was given to Brad B. Otto was given a special award for his recorded breaking Cuts (nine) in last year’s finally.
Thanks to Steve Neu for organizing the event and bringing us Medals and some very nice goodies that were offered as a raffle to pilots and supporting crew! Thanks Steve!
Weekend is coming so Grab your batteries, chargers, radio and planes and let’s go Flying. See you all out at the field!
Jovi
President of SEFSD
