Summer seems to be winding down faster every year and with the shorter days the 2004 flying season will eventually come to a close. That was the bad news. The flip side of the coin is that first, the contest season is over and now flying is for fun and not for practice. As a side note, flying should always be for fun but sometimes even I get more serious about it then I should.

Second, building season is just around the corner. I don’t have anything I really need to build for a change so even my pace will be somewhat slower then usual. My Legacy is done and flies great. Providing I keep it out of the dirt it should carry me through several years of service. The P-40 is also up and running now. It doesn’t fly as well as the Legacy because the wing loading is higher but it is by no means bad and a little more time with different props and some additional trimming will make it a good back up plane for my Legacy in advanced. Another plane I finished this year is the Thunderbird. I built this to replace my Ares and after a motor change and a tank change it’s turned out to be a pretty decent flying plane and works well in classic stunt. For old time stunt my Chief still lives so except for needing a good profile plane I’m really set up well for next year.

Other people have nice planes ready for next year too. Wayne has got his Midwest Mustang flying, he named it “Horsin’ Around”, which is a play on words for both Mustangs and control line. Wayne has also recently finished a Flying Clown and from the reports I heard flies quite well. Bob has just gotten a different plane too. His Magnum lost the battle with mother earth and he ended up buying a modified Sig Chipmunk that I built for Al Sandberg. Another plane that has been showing up more often is Sina’s Force. This is good because as good as his Buccaneer flies it has managed to absorb a significant amount of fuel and may not last a great deal longer. John Christensen is elbow deep in building another Cardinal and is diligently trying to shave some weight off and make this one lighter then his previous Cardinals. Could this be the Forerunner of the future? I can’t hardly keep up with all the planes being built or flown up here, much less get a handle on what our southern chapter is cooking up. Bottom line is stop by the field because you never know who will be there and with what.

On September 18 we had kind of a fun fly/demo in Otsego along with Al’s R/C club. Several of us showed up and although I didn’t especially feel like flying anything, I had a really good time. Now instead of dragging my feet getting there I wish that I had gotten there earlier. One thing that I’ve noticed and after this Otsego event I’m convinced of and that is that two of our members may need to move up the stunt ladder one rung. Their initials are John and Sina.

Along with the fall weather comes the end of all the chair officers terms. Because of my other obligations and the fact that I like living at home I will not be running nor will I accept nomination for president again this year. During the four or five years that I’ve been up front a lot has been accomplished in our club and I can in no way take credit for all of it. Look at the people that sit next to me and you’ll understand why things have gotten done and why things have run so smoothly. Most of the time the job was not a difficult one and I appreciate the fact that you all have had faith in me. I’m not going anywhere and will help the new president in any way I can, so think about who you want that to be, I’ve got my choice already.

One final thing before I sign off. Typically the same weekend of the Fargo contest is the Oshkosh Airshow and with it Kid Venture. I know they always need more help out there and it is a lot of fun so I’d like our club to show up there in numbers and make a weekend out of it. The reason I bring this up now is that we will need to make hotel reservations soon. Anyone that has been to Oshkosh will surely understand. We’ll cover this and other topics in depth at the September 30 meeting, see you there... 

Keith Sandberg 

Vice President's Column

One of the most interesting parts of the C/L flying business is the materials and structures we use to build these little machines. I try to follow what different builders are doing out there. There have been a lot of innovations made in recent years-many of which can be used on everyday planes to make them lighter or stronger or longer lasting.

It’s worth noting that good old balsa and plywood keep on trucking along. On a busy day at the flying field there might be one or two foam wing birds, but the rest will be all balsa. Balsa is still the material of choice for models. It’s fairly cheap, easy to work, light, and strong for its weight. Did you know that balsa has one of the best strength-to weight ratios of any material? It’s worth noting that the new C/L ARFs are all balsa. I wonder if foam board will find its way into the C/L ARF market as it has in the R/C market. Wait and see.

Some of the neatest new ideas relate to ways of building balsa structures. Tom Morris has some of the cleverest ideas. The Lincoln Log jig block system makes building a straight wing pretty automatic. Better yet, is the Millennium wing. This structure uses a sheet spar and sliced ribs that egg crate into the spar. Once this thing is sheeted, it is very stiff and light. These wings, with light sheet balsa spars and spar cross braces made of thin balsa strips, work because they maximize the work done by each part. No brute strength, here. The thing is engineered like a suspension bridge. I am getting to where I use this type of spar is most everything I build. Light and stiff. 

The other part of Tom’s system that can used easily on many of our models is molded balsa sheet. If you haven’t tried molding a turtledeck or something, try it! Even just playing with it is fun. And when you get a good part, it looks great and works so well. If I’m going to harp on anything here, it’s. Light and Stiff! And the molded parts are just that

Foam wings have been in use long enough to almost be a nostalgia item! How long has the Magnum been around? The search goes on for better ways to do foam. The same old limits still apply, though. Foam will usually be a little heavier than balsa. But it is easier to build a straight foam wing. And by choosing wood with care, and using the bare minimum of glue, you can cut the weight penalty down to a small one. The latest innovation in foam construction is the use of polyurethane glue for skinning. A bare minimum amount of poly glue on the skins seems to work great. The glue foams a little, filling the gaps in the foam core. Someday I’m going to cover two identical cores with the best balsa I can get and with 1/64th inch plywood, and see what the weight difference is. I really like the plywood-it has a lot less grain to fill, perhaps reducing the amount of paint needed.

Then we keep hearing about composites. Carbon fiber, epoxy, fiberglass, all exotic stuff. What’s going on there? Most of you have probably used a little fiberglass somewhere. Reinforcing a nose, repairing a damaged plane, molding a cowl, maybe even finishing an entire plane with 1/2-ounce fiberglass cloth (my personal favorite finish). That’s using a composite material. But there are a few really exotic carbon fiber ships out there. Urtnowski’s Miss Ashley and now one by the Moon brothers in Dallas are the most familiar. Why aren’t we all doing CF? Cost, for one thing. CF cloth is around $100 a yard. Ouch. Time, for another. To make a CF wing, you have to cut a foam core, slice it into top and bottom halves, put a perfect finish on each half, make a mold of each half, spray the mold with mold release, spray the primer coat into the mold, lay up the CF, cure it, bond the halves together, and paint. Wow! If you have to ask, you can’t afford one. They are gorgeous and stiff and durable. Interestingly, CF parts often don’t turn out any lighter than a part made of ordinary materials. There is one really good use of CF on regular models. If you haven’t tried it, get a little CF veil. Brodak, Lone Star, CST, and others sell it pretty reasonable. It comes in two varieties. One is kind of fluffy and soft. I have more trouble working with this stuff compared to the harder, shinier type. But use it instead of silkspan over solid balsa surfaces. Just dope it on and fill and paint like usual. It takes about half as much dope to fill as silkspan and dries out hard as a rock. It makes a very good surface to paint, and seems to be very stable compared to silkspan.

This is all fun stuff. In the end, we seem to come back to balsa, though. And the search continues to make the most of balsa structures. There are plenty of tools, techniques, and teachers out there. Like all the old Guillows boxes say, “Balsa Flies Better”. To that, Bill Winter added, “Simplicate and add lightness”. You can’t do any better than that.

Kelvin Heath

Members Space

Hi guy’s, just thinking about our last meeting. I mentioned that I would publish the two questions that were brought up in our discussion on the Bentfield Contest.

QUESTIONS:

(From Wayne Willey)  How do we get our club known to the people who don’t know about us?

(From Jeff Welliver)  What draws you to travel to an out of town contest?

Please respond to these questions. Then  we can discuss the results which in turn can only lead to having better contests in the future.

Norman Anderson responded with the following:

Regarding the Don Bentfield Memorial Stunt Contest: 

I mentioned at our last meeting that I felt a club of our size, representing THE major metropolitan area in the upper Midwest probably ought to sponsor an AMA sanctioned contest. It seems what it really comes down to is whether we can successfully attract enough fliers from other regions to travel to Minneapolis and make the event worth all the effort of our hardest working club members. Instead of speculating about all the reasons why people didn't come, can't we make a few phone calls and ask some of these fliers what the problem is. Once we have a better sense of what we need to do to attract competitors, we can make an informed decision.             

Norman Andersen

Bentfield Contest Results

Beginner

Intermediate

Classic
 

1st Place	Bob Baldus - Nobler Fox 35	522.5 Points
2nd Place	Keith Sandberg - Thunderbird K&B 40	514 Points
3rd Place	John Christensen - Dolphin Fox 35	453 Points

P-40
 

1st Place	Phil Cartier - Gotch Streak LA25	497 Points
2nd Place	Bob Baldus - Primary Force Fox 35	495.5 Points
3rd Place	Bob Brookins Primary Force Fox 35	485 Points

Advanced

As you can see by the scores all the fliers were very close and did great battles over the sky’s of the Piston Poppers flying site.

Bob