If you're faced with a forced landing, fly the thing as far into the crash as possible.

- Bob Hoover

August, 2005

July Meeting Notes

The July meeting of the Monroe County R/C Club was called to order at 7:05:05 (Eastern Standard Time) under mostly cloudy skies at the club field. It had been raining much of the day but we got lucky & it dried up around 4:30, so we could get in some flying before the meeting. Mr. Tim Mellott counted nineteen people in attendance for the meeting.

Mr. Jim Scott gave reports, followed by some discussion, on last month’s Cub Fly & Fun Fly. Thanks for your good work on both events Jim!

Mr. Matt Fornefeld reported that he had sixty flyers for this year’s annual air show ready and available for distribution. He also passed around a pilot sign up sheet to get an idea of what members were planning to fly in the show. Volunteers were rounded up to handle parking at the show & to provide coolers for ice storage. Mr. Mark Sexton has volunteered to take over the concession area from Mr. Marty Bassett, who is retiring from that position. Thanks for your many years of service Marty! Volunteers were also recruited to sell raffle tickets during the show. Mr. Brent Hoover is lining up the raffle prize through Johnny Berlin & Joe’s Hobby Barn in Terre Haute.

We discussed our not-for-profit status & how it might affect federal taxes & liability for the club & it’s officers. Mr. Hoover will be doing more investigation along with Mr. Sexton.

The last topic of discussion was the club’s web site. Mr. Vargha Manshadi submitted a proposal to move our web site to Yahoo.com to have more space available, save some money, & have more security & control of the site over our current provider, Iquest. Our current site is now 135% over it’s allotted memory space & growing fast. An upgrade of our Iquest service would be very expensive. The club voted to move the site to Yahoo & pay Vargha for his expenses to host the site for one year. Tim Sparks made a quick cell phone call to Vargha in Oklahoma, during the meeting, to tell him the good news. Thanks for all your work on the web site Vargha!

The meeting was closed at 8:05 & Mr. Michael Friesel led the charge to the runway to get in one last flight before dark.

Interesting Bits

Dave Townsend traveled to St. Louis for a helicopter competition in June. He submitted this report for the July newsletter but I spaced it. Here it is a month late. Thanks for the article Dave & sorry for the delay... Better late than never.

21st Annual R/C Helicopter Fun Fly

By Dave Townsend

The turnout for the show wasn’t as expected due to the weather forecast coming into the weekend, which called for severe thunderstorms the whole weekend. We took a chance and went over anyway, hoping the weathermen would be wrong & as usual, they were. It was hot and humid all three days with lots of sunshine and I am as red as a fire engine from all the sun. This event usually attracts around 80 or so registered pilots but due to the forecast I think some people were scared away so pilot turnout ended up at 47 registered pilots.

Figure 1:

Dave Townsend is enjoying the 21st Annual R/C Helicopter Fun Fly.

[June 5, 2005]

Buder Park is just South of St. Louis and is a fantastic facility. About the only way to describe it’s size is to imagine our field, and ALL the cornfields on the North , South, East, and West of our field make up the open area of Buder Park, which is large enough it had control line stuff going on one end, and baseball and soccer games going on in front of us through the whole weekend. They have two paved runways. We had two full sized helicopters come in and stay awhile then do a small show before departing the area. Lots of prizes including a new 90 sized Evo from Hirobo, that’s not even in the shops yet, a new Futaba radio, gift certificates from everyone, including Horizon, Tower Hobbies, Robart, SCR Batteries, & V Blades, just to name a few...

This year there were the usual events. The drag races, autorotation contests, and freestyle. I signed up for the drags and auto contests but by the time the freestyle got there on Sunday, I was so fried from all the sun I was just not feeling too well and didn’t compete in that one, however, I did take first place in the drags (which is amazing as I developed a problem on the heli in the middle of the competition, but it stayed together), and 2nd in the autorotation contests. Besides getting plaques, I won a gallon of the new Curtis Youngblood 30% fuel, distributed by Wildcat, a Futaba knee pad (lol), and some other misc. stuff.

There were a few appearances by airplanes on Friday and the most impressive was an Ultimate bipe by Hangar 9 (I believe). The pilot was great and could hover torque roll right off the deck. The power plant was a DA150 with a 32 inch carbon prop, and a smoke system that was just amazing. There was a German fighter with a nice 4 stroke & retracts that ended up in pieces and my friend Kenny brought home the vertical fin and rudder home as a souvenir.

All in all it was a great time and I got to see some people I haven’t seen in a few years (when I was able to afford those events regularly) and I was able to bring mine home in one piece as well!!!

The pictures that my friend Kenny and myself took are posted at http://www.indyhelis.com/stlouis.htm.

Figure 2:

A number of MCRCC members attended the 2005 AirVenture.

[August 30, 2005]

A van load of fat boys traveled to Oshkosh, Wisconsin on July 28 followed closely by the Manshadi family sedan. The trek was to attend Airventure 2005. The weather was golden during our entire trip & we returned to Indiana just as the high heat & humidity arrived again. We had a great vacation & saw airplanes. Lots & lots of airplanes. Pictures will be available soon & Vargha will post some on the web site.

It took a little time to convince Delbert Davis that all things in Oshkosh were airplane related. He kept trying to correct people referring to the "fly market", telling them that it was supposed to be "flea market," until we explained the airplane related thing to him. We also had trouble telling day from night when Delbert exclaimed that the full moon was visible, inside the Cracker Barrel, at 8:30 in the morning, courtesy of Jimmy Vanvleet. I understand that being mooned by an old fat guy is not a pretty sight & this event may have scared Delbert for at least a week or two. Lane isn’t sure if he wants to travel with us again or not. There was one "first" that happened on the way to Wisconsin. We skipped lunch to get Damon to the Miller Brewery on time for the last tour of the day. We have never skipped lunch before!

Mr. Tim Mellott has been working on a unique model. It’s an Indy race car that takes to the air. He’s having some balance problems but is working it out. It will fly but only semi controlled. It should be ready later this season, if it doesn’t kill the test pilot before he kills the aircraft.

Mr. Michael Friesel is working out the details on the flying boat that many of you have seen on the internet. I’m told it will fly from grass & pavement as well as water & should be good on snow. His prototype is coming along nicely.

Mr. Mike Habig attended the Atterbury warbird fly-in in July.

Figure 3:

Mike is getting ready to start his P-47.

[August 23, 2005]

Event Calendar

Thanks to Delbert Davis for providing information for the event calendar & for proofreading this newsletter month after month. Jane Black & Tina Rogers also helped proofread last month.

Who’s training who here???

Figure 4:

Jim and Mark are using the buddy-box training system.

[August 21, 2005]