MINUTES OF THE LAST MEETING

Minutes of the 9-11-2007 Tri -Area Flyers

Board meeting at 6:00 pm: 

Treasurer Anliker discussed changes needed for updating the club bylaws. Draft copy to be published in the next newsletter.

General meeting opened at 7:00 pm.

Members present were Kampmann, Berger, Fitch, Calkins, Greene, Carter, Cochran, Jim and Cindy Cook, Bangle, Smith, Anliker, Berson and guest Lawrence Pendleton (third visit). Also attending were Rachel Fondren and Nancy Patnode from SKP. 

President Kampmann presented Rachel and Nancy with Associate membership cards. This will address concerns about the club use of the SKP meeting room. Rachel offered to host the Christmas party.

Treasurers report:  $2255.73 Bank  $4029.23 CD    $6464.96 total.

Old business: John Fitch presented Randy Calkins with a Free Crash Certificate for help in retrieval of his downed aircraft from the swamp.

New business: Lawrence Pendleton was approved as a new member.

Jim Cook had a Patricia 10 for sale cheap because of poor flying stability.

Calkins announced that he has Ken Oaks’ planes to sell at the October swap meet sale.

President Kampmann will contact Rachel for the December banquet arrangements.

A member reminded of the need to leave money in the kitty for coffee at meetings in appreciation for the support from SKP.

Berger had photos from the recent Jets Over Whidbey event.

Crash of the month: Bob Kampmann took the prize this month for his out of range spiral dive with a Park Zone Spitfire. Jim Cook was close with a fence post strike

Meeting adjourned at 7:29pm

Submitted by Bill Berson

THE PREZ SEZ

Hello, all officers

Please try to attend the next board meeting on October 9th at 6:30. 

That Tuesday will be the date of our annual Swap Meet, so if you have anything you want to 'unload' on your fellow fliers, bring it along and make a deal?

And thanks for reminding me, Jim.

Cheers,

Bob

AROUND THE CLUB

>Tuesday August 28 was SO much fun. We had 7 pilots flying like crazy, and lots of kidding going on. It has been too long since I enjoyed that experience.

>Saturday September 1 was another big day with 5 pilots on deck (4 of them were present on the 28^th). The flying was pretty continuous, but we all watched in horror as Greg Marken did a spin that extended to ground level. The airplane nose was trashed, but there was little other obvious damage.

NEW MEMBERS

I hope to obtain a brief bio and a picture of our new members to enhance their introduction to the membership. This is voluntary on the part of the newbys, but it should be beneficial for all.

We ran a picture of Dave in the last newsletter. Here is his story:

Born 1926, Victoria, B.C. Raised in Victoria and Vancouver, B.C.

Moved to U.S. in 1948 to complete education in Mathematical Physics at Princeton.

After holding temporary positions at Los Alamos NM, NYU, UW, and UC Berkeley, took a permanent position at OSU, Corvallis, Oregon, in 1961, where I taught and did research in mathematics until retiring in 1991.

Moved to Port Ludlow in 1994.

Flying Interests:

My Dad, A.W. Carter, was a WWI ace, flying Sopwith Pups, Sopwith Triplanes, and Bentley Camels, etc. with the RNAS (Royal Naval Air Service), in France. Brother-in-Law Dick Ferguson commanded a Mosquito squadron from Tofino, Vancouver Island in WWII.  A.W. founded the first Canadian Air Cadet squadron in Vancouver about 1939. (I remember taking ground school and marching endlessly around the armory and Stanley Park in the Air Cadets.)

So I always knew I'd learn to fly sometime, and realized in my mid-fifties that I'd better get on with it! I remember wondering if I would have washed out as an RCAF student pilot: At one point my instructor said: "Dave, you're old and you're hard to teach!" But I eventually made it, and put in a couple hundred hours in Cessna 150s, 152s, and 172s. (The OSU flying club was the cheapest way to fly, though scheduling longer trips was often a problem.)

Although I admired the RC models on display at the Kitsap Mall a while back, I never thought of flying them before buying a dinky $20 electric from Radio Shack this Spring, which disappeared into a neighbor's tree and came back a couple days later in 3 pieces. Another neighbor told me about the Club field, where I luckily found Dave Henley and Roy Greene one Saturday. They explained how to get started properly.

So I'm looking forward to learning this new skill while making new friends!

HINTS, KINKS, AND STUFF

>My winter flying bud Ron Jans sent me this web site all the way from Wisconsin. It contains the history of a particular Ford Trimotor followed by a bunch of pictures of this beautifully restored airplane. It is for sale as well, so why not pool our cash and buy it?

JUST PLANE FUN

A photographer for CNN was assigned to cover southern California 's wildfires last year.

He wanted pictures of the heroic work the firefighters were doing as they battled the blazes.

When the photographer arrived on the scene, he realized that the smoke was so thick it would seriously impede or even make impossible, his getting good photographs from the ground level.

He requested permission from his boss to rent a plane and take photos from the air.

His request was approved and he used his cell phone to call the local county airport to charter a flight.

He was told a single engine plane would be waiting for him at the airport.

Arriving at the airfield, he spotted a plane warming up outside a hanger.

He jumped in with his bag, slammed the door shut, and shouted, "Let's go".

The pilot taxied out, swung the plane into the wind and roared down the runway.

Once in the air, the photographer instructed the pilot, "Fly over the valley and make two or three low passes so I can take some pictures of the fires on the hillsides."

"Why?" asked the pilot.

"Because I'm a photographer for CNN," he responded.

"And I need to get some close-up shots."

The pilot was strangely silent for a moment, finally he stammered, "So, what you're telling me, is . . . you're NOT my flight instructor?"

FAR FLUNG FLYING

I have just returned from a 3-week trip (my first) to Hawaii. Our group of eight included another model flyer, John Richards. John and I teamed up to go see some flying Hawaiian style. Gary Austin told me that there was a lot of slope flying there, so we expected to see some of that, but we also wanted to see regular powered flight. Before the trip I found 6 non-soaring R/C clubs scattered around the islands, and got contact info on them from the AMA website. John and I were able to break away from the group on a Saturday morning in Maui, and went to visit the Maui R/C Modelers.

These folks are co-located with the Maui Motor Sports Park on a WWII abandoned airbase, so there is lots of old pavement. Their runway is asphalt applied directly over the old pavement about 20 feet by 200 feet. It really looked narrow from the pits, but they did not seem to have any problem landing on it. They had just recently finished their shade shelter over the pits.

The very active pit area. There were a lot of variations on the AMA bench, so I believe pilots made their own.

The pilots were a friendly, laid back bunch that were a pleasure to visit with. While there we saw acrobatics performed by helicopters, electrics, and wet powered aircraft. Their flying skills seemed to be better than ours. The weather was in the low 80s, humid, with just a very light breeze right down the runway.

The breeze was just sufficient to blow sugar cane ash (part of the harvesting process is to burn the cane in the field) around. Most of the flying is done in the morning because the trade winds usually come up about noon and are pretty strong.

I witnessed some really heady flying while at the field. One of the pilots had a year old P-47 "Jug" that was very nice. He took it off, retracted the gear, and

performed acrobatics that would have been typical of the full sized plane. He then dropped the gear and did a low pass to verify the landing gear was down. One wheel had failed to extend, so he tried various things to get it down like cycling the gear and high G "shakes" to no avail. Finally, he retracted the gear, killed the engine, and bellied it in on the runway at such a slow speed the plane only slid a couple of feet. Since the whole area was paved, there was no grass to put the plane down on, but the only damage was a few scratches. Now that is smart flying!

EDITORIAL

As noted above, we had a BLAST at the field on August 28^th. Not many years ago this was a regular experience as a bunch of us would show up at the field any day that had decent weather. You would almost always find Wylie, Anliker, Fitch, and a few others plus myself. In those days we had a lot of rookies learning to fly, so there was a lot of activity. Lately I fly by myself about half the time, a complaint that David Henley and Lou Creedon have frequently voiced.

Several years ago Lou proposed a "club day" like the folks in Sequim have. This is where a day of the week (like Tuesday) is designated a Club Day—a time when you can be assured that some of the folks will be at the field. It really does not matter if the wind is blowing, it is just a chance to get together and enjoy each other. Somehow this never caught on with our club.

Perhaps we should reconsider the club day thing. I know I miss our bull sessions a lot, and I am not alone. A lot of the life and fun has gone out of the organization since we rarely group up anymore. Let’s have a realistic discussion on having a ROW (Regardless Of Weather) day at the field once a week. Heck, if we can’t fly we could at least clean up the field a bit!

FOR SALE OR TRADE

If you want to list an item, just send me the details including your name, phone number, and asking price or trade-for item. Low pixel count digital (JPEG) pictures are also acceptable.

MONTHLY MEETING—October 9 at 7:00 in the SKP Clubhouse

Gary sez to bring all the treasures you can stand to part with for our annual swap meet. Buy, sell, trade, or even give stuff away!

Pete Granger

granger@olypen.com