By Steve Manganelli
As the Newsletter year and my tenure as your President comes to a close, this needs be my “Thank You” edition. I’ve enjoyed R/C modeling virtually my whole adult life, but at the end of the day, the people I’ve shared it with and the places it has taken me, become more memorable than any particular model. I like to think the popularity of our Club is not just because we have the most central City location, least expensive dues and certainly the best Summer weather in San Diego, but that we all like hanging out with each other, sharing each other’s triumphs and commiserating with each other’s follies. We like learning things from each other between flights and getting first hand advice for our next model by searching the flightline for attractive models. In this context, I thank my fellow BOD members whose energy and enthusiasm sets the tone for the Silent Electric Flyers of San Diego, and makes the Club what it is.
The glue that keeps us together is this newsletter, the Club Calendar and a series of E-mail blasts that reminds us of events. All of those tools are the purview of our editor, Mr. Steve Belknap. Thank you for your service, kind Steve! Thanks to Jovi Murek for chairing the BOD to keep us on the straight and narrow, for procuring great raffle prizes for the banquet (hint : we have some awesome raffle prizes for the Winter Banquet, you won’t want to miss it!) and scoring/officiating T-28 Racing and the Monthly Fun Contests. Jovi also pitched in as Hot Dog lead when Mark Davis was unavailable. Thanks to Quan Nguyen for paying our bills, keeping our books straight as replacement treasurer and being in charge of club events as Vice President. Beyond simply paying our bills, he arranged and negotiated our expenses such as the outhouse rental, water truck and Dust Down procurement. I’m going to try to fill Quan’s shoes next year, but it’s going to be tough!
Thanks go out to Steve Neu for keeping us safe, hosting BOD meetings at his home and running the T-28 Racing Series. I have it on good authority that the prizes from the post-race raffle come from his Neumotors business and the club may or may not get a bill; it’s wholesale if we do! I Next want to thank Jeff Struthers whom provided valuable input to the Board of Directors and along with his Misses, conducted Electroglide throughout the year. Even better, Jeff is standing up to do it again next year; thank you kindly, Jeff! I want to recognize Larry Kosta whom along with BOD issue insights, used his business to provide a variety of graphic arts items to the Club at no cost. These include the Lindberg Field warning addendum to the main sign board, the “SEFSD Property” sign and stencil for the new chairs, numerous paper stickers with our new logo and the and Electroglide medal inserts. Larry’s professional graphic artist “Felix” is the one responsible for our new logo. Next, thanks to Carl Cox for reasoned input to BOD decisions and pylon judging for T-28 Racing. Lastly, thanks to Alan Issacs and Ken Dresser for doing what they could when available. Non-BOD members whom made great contributions to SEFSD include Dennis Laberge, Frank Sutton, Mark Davis, Randy Wyant and Jim Bonnardel. Dennis for his selfless field maintenance activities, Mark for his incredible home-made salsa and the rest of the hot dog roasts, Randy for surveilling our field for nefarious homeless encampments and lost airplanes, Frank for his expert photography and graphic arts and Jim for running the Club Fun Contests all year and maintaining the tables. Yes, it’s all those efforts that make us what we are and I appreciate it!
Military scale at the last Club Members Meeting in October was a hoot! It took all year, but master of ceremonies Jim Bonnardel finally found a scoring rubric that us rocket scientists could handle using only half our brains : every other method tried seemed to need all our brains which apparently could not be mustered for these contests…”Ever watch a dog show on TV” says Jim? You just walk up and down the flightline, put the medal on your favorite airplane and declare it the winner! Quan and I had a lot of fun watching the show and coming to agreement on the winner, er “Best In Show” which I recall was a twin bomb dropper guided by Bob Simpson. The lack of paperwork to be second guessed was a bonus!
In closing please support our new President, Mr. Brad Bender, new Member at Large Nick Anton and new Secretary Eric Shapiro and the rest of the 2023 BOD (details contained in the November BOD Meeting Minutes elsewhere in this issue) and of course, see you at the Winter Banquet on January 13th where there is at least one surprise awaiting one well deserving somebody, just saying.
