The Tale Spinner
Newsletter of the Tri-Area Flyers

 http://webpages.charter.net/russpetersen/

(AMA Charter Number 4063, Radio Controlled Model Aircraft Club)

July 1, 2002, Volume 3 Issue 7

Club Officers:

Meeting Minutes:          (Next Meeting: , July 9, 2002, Excapees RV Park)

Minutes of the 6/11/02 Meeting of the Tri-Area R.C. Flyers

President Wylie called the meeting to order at 7:00PM in the SKP clubhouse.  Attending were: Wylie, Anliker, Oaks, Petersen, Thomas, Granger, Benjamin, Greene, Fitch, Dantzler, J. Becker, Takata and Calkins.

The Treasurer’s report showed assets of $2544.96 comprised of $1786.46 in the bank account and $758.50 in fuel inventory.

There was a discussion of the club’s involvement in the community.  The members put our participation in the county fair on hold due to lack of enthusiasm.  The suggestion was made that we consider having an open house at the field this summer and the possibility of interesting the Boy Scouts was discussed.

Jack Becker told about the visit to the Air Museum and encouraged consideration of our support of the project. There was a general feeling that we should get involved. Opinions ranged from an annual monetary pledge by the club to individual member contributions in the name of the club.  Jack will see if there is an established pledge program and report back at the next meeting.

The donation of modeling videotapes to the library in the name of the club was suggested as a way to gain some recognition within the community.  

There is to be a fun fly at the flying field on September 10, which will include wives, etc.

Oaks and Anliker share the Crash of the Month Trophy due to minor, unavoidable malfunctions of their respective aircraft.

The meeting was adjourned and there was an interesting presentation by Pete Granger on ‘The Good Old Days of RC.  Russ Petersen gave a plane review of his new Saito 100 powered Space Walker. 

Takata and Granger supplied low calorie cake and cookies.

Respectfully submitted,

Bill Anliker, Secretary/Treasurer

Gadgets and Gizmos:

An Inexpensive Hold Down and Quick and Easy Custom Graphics

by

 Russ Petersen

Hold Down.  Here is an interesting idea that I had not seen before.  I was flying at the new Karcs field with Jim Montell and the wind was blowing a gale.  I ha my new Spacewalker sitting on one of the setup tables and the wind was threatening to blow it off on the ground.  Jim foraged around in the back of his truck and brought out a set of ankle weights and draped them over the fuselage of my plane just ahead of the rudder.  I like this idea and picked up a 5 lbs set at WalMart in Bremerton on Wheaton Way.  Here is what they look like on my Spacewalker:

Custom Graphics.  The Spacewalker (above) is a Great Planes 80” ARF that comes (alas) with no graphics at all.  The ones on the plane were made using Microsoft Publisher with the image printed on Avery #8665 Clear Full Sheet Label stock.  After that, since my printer is an ink jet, the graphic needs to be sprayed with a product called Fixativ, which may be obtained, in most art stores.  Then, you just cut out the graphic and stick it on the plane.  The sealing product comes in a spray can and is made in Switzerland by Alois K. Diethelm AG.  I bought mine in Silverdale at an art supply shop.  An alternative to seal proofing with Fixativ would be to iron down some clear plastic covering over the graphic after it is applied to the plane.  I have tried both approaches and either seems to work fine.  The Fixativ is probably the easiest and quickest solution to getting quick and easy graphics for your planes.

BALSA USA EINDECKER Revisited by Pete Granger

Last year I did a kit review on this airplane.  I finally got around to flying it on May 22 of this year and can now complete the review.  It took nearly a pound of lead in the nose to balance per the plans—and I had lightened everything aft of the CG as much as I dared in addition to moving all the radio gear and batteries right up against the firewall!  My first discovery was that the tailskid did not allow steering on our grass runway, so we had to place it in takeoff position.  It tracked nicely on takeoff roll and lifted off about the time I got to full throttle on the OS .91 four stroke—about 70 feet down the runway.  At about 50 feet of altitude I banked it right and turned 180 degrees to avoid the SAM area.  The plane really flew nose heavy and next time I will take out some of the lead.

The flight went off with no problem—I didn’t even have to touch the trims.  Performance was very scale like with a rather slow speed.  It will do a poor loop from level flight and a better one after diving to pick up speed.  Rolls were slow and sloppy.  The plane was very well behaved in a stall and did not drop a wing tip.  We had a fair cross wind when it came time to land and the plane wanted to weathervane into the wind.  It took 3 or 4 passes to get the throttle trim low enough and to master the rudder correction to crab the ‘Decker down the runway where it touched down light as a feather and promptly nosed over due to the crab (and probably being nose heavy).

The engine is perfectly happy being started and run inverted.  I am not using any in flight glow plug batteries and had no problem getting a comfortably reliable low idle.

Changes?  There will be a couple.  Some lead must come out.  I think I will replace the tailskid with a steerable tail wheel even if it is not scale.  That’s about all for now.  I do have one repair to make—one of the wing brace flying wires broke where I apparently over crimped it.

Pete Granger 

News and Comments:

(Here is an interesting article forwarded to me by an Arizona modeling friend about a recent fatal RC accident in Tucson. Ed)

Model plane slams into owner's chest, killing him. He loses sight of the 7-pound craft in the sun.

LA MONICA EVERETT-HAYNES

Tucson Citizen
May 20, 2002
A man flying his radio-controlled airplane near the Pima County Fairgrounds died Saturday after it flew into his chest.
Roger Wallace, 60, was flying the plane when he turned toward the sun and lost sight of it, said Deputy Nicole Feldt, Pima County Sheriff's Department spokeswoman.
Feldt said the plane, which weighs nearly seven pounds and has a wingspan of four to five feet, then struck Wallace.
Wallace, a member of the Southern Arizona Modelers Club and former owner of an auto parts store, lived in the 9400 block of East 26th Street, she said. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
The accident occurred around 9:30 a.m. near South Houghton and East Dawn roads, Feldt said. She said a few people performed CPR on Wallace while waiting for paramedics.
Jerry Knebel, the club's president, was flying his plane with other members when the accident occurred. Knebel said he got blankets from his car to help.
"It was a sad, tragic accident," Knebel said. He said Wallace had been a member for three years.
"It took a long time for 911 to get through. Two members were on cell phones, trying to get the operators to cooperate, because they didn't know where Dawn Road was," he said. "The response time was 35 minutes, but once the medics arrived, they did a fantastic job."

Great Planes Tiger Moth ARF Review

By Jack Becker, Tri Area Flyers

May 2002 

Specifications Provided by Great Planes:

Wingspan:  71"

Scale:  1:4.96 (based on full scale wing span of 29'-4")

Weight:  10.25 lbs

Wing loading:  17.35-oz/sq. ft

Engine:   .61 two-stroke or .91 four-stroke (I used the OS .91 four-stroke)

Radio: 4 channels w/ 5 servos

Actual Measurements: 

Wingspan:  70"  (71" per G.P.) (Full scale = 29'-4" per G.P.)

Chord:  10 1/2"

Wing Area:  1427 sq in.  (1360 per G.P.) (My number is a little high, as I assumed square wingtips, but I did subtract for the cutout in the aft center section of the top wing.  The fuselage portion of the bottom wing would take out another 55 sq in, which would put you at 1372, which is pretty close to their number.)

Fuselage length:  59 1/2" including spinner (60" per G.P.) (Full scale = 23'-11" per G.P.)

Wing Loading:  (17.35 oz/sq ft per G.P.)

Review Comments:

In response to Russ’s plea for something to put in the newsletter, here is my review of the new Great Planes Tiger Moth ARF.  By coincidence, Jeff Troy’s RC Scale column in the June edition of Model Aviation also talks about the Tiger Moth, so I can comment on his review as well.

First let me say that I’m not really a fan of ARF’s for a variety of reasons, having had several in the past, but the quality of these new planes, combined with very limited building time and space, finally convinced me to give them another try.  So here we go.

Regarding Jeff Troy’s review, my only contradiction is that the scale of this model is actually about 1/5, not 1/4, based on the wingspan of 71”.  Otherwise, his comments are good.  A .91 four-stroke is plenty of power, its relatively light wing loading lets it fly slow and scale-like (even with a good size chunk of lead in the nose), and it goes together very easily.  The plane is built of wood, just like a typical kit (i.e., no foam or hard-to-repair plastics), and the monokote is very well done (better than I can do).  The instructions skip over a few little details that a beginner might have trouble with, but if you’ve built other airplanes, this one shouldn’t present any problems.

There are a couple things to be aware of.  First, check the Great Planes web site for an update to the instructions on how to assemble the top wing.  Not having the updated instructions, I used the same amount of dihedral in both wings, which later required some plywood spacers under the brackets, which connect to the wing struts.  Not a big deal, but it could have been avoided. 

Second, the pre-drilled holes for the screws attaching the cabane struts on the fuselage were slightly off, creating a negative angle of incidence for the top wing, and the outboard forward struts were a little short.  The instructions did not give any specs on what the wing incidence should be, so I e-mailed Great Planes and was told that the upper wing should be 1/2 degree less than the bottom wing.  A half a degree is pretty close to 0 degrees in my book, which is what my plywood shims gave me, so I called it good enough (we could talk about biplane wing alignment theory here, but that would be getting off the subject; Russ can do that in another newsletter).

The only other problem I encountered was with the pushrods going to the tail.  Great Planes provides metal pushrods that go inside plastic tubes, which were pre-installed in the fuselage.  The aft end of these tubes apparently made a sharper bend than the wire pushrods liked, which caused them to bind.  I ended up using a piece of plastic pushrod in the middle, with the metal pushrods on each end.  So far they’ve held up just fine (4 flights).

The bracing wires are not required, but they’re part of the charm of old biplanes.  The lower wing has the usual nylon bolts attaching it to the fuselage, but the upper wing uses eight #4 bolts thru the struts, which takes a little longer to assemble at the field.  Get a hex ball driver and a small pair of needle nose pliers to hold the nuts, and relax and enjoy the process. 

I assembled my plane just like they said and it still required nose weight to balance it.  All of my flights to date have been without the cowl or the windscreens, but otherwise it’s complete. I installed a remote glow plug connector, but it appears to be causing a voltage drop, which makes starting difficult, so I can’t use the cowl until that’s fixed.  In windy conditions it’s a little bouncy due to its light wing loading, and of course it tends to nose over on landings (and on takeoff too if the field isn’t freshly mowed), all of which is just part of the challenge of biplanes.  Then again, if you wanted something easy you wouldn’t have chosen RC models in the first place, right?