President's Column

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving.  I had to work the day before and the day after so while I got to spend Thanksgiving with my family, my wife ended up without me down in Lacrosse at her families, and somehow I have the same schedule over the Christmas holidays as well.  I've got Christmas day off but work the day before and after again.  I also work on New Years day, which ruins my hopes of being at Bob and Jeff's Frozen Fun Fly again this year.  Since I got hired on the fire department, I've been told that things will get better as my seniority increases.  Not true.  I've spent 18 years on the job, the last 10 of which have been in the worst part of the city and at the oldest most run down station in the city and yet I still can't pick any good vacation time.  Maybe I've got a few years to go before my dues are fully paid.

On a brighter note my household projects have been completed once again and I'm ready to spend some quality time in my shop.  For the first time since August or so I ventured in there to give it a good pre-building season clean up and while going through some boxes that were stuffed under my work bench I found a new FP 35 still in the box.  It has occurred to me that I should probably clean in there more often.  As I was cleaning and sorting I put some things aside for our swap meet.  It seems like a long ways out but really we have only the January meeting, then at the February meeting will be our swap meet.

In our January meeting, you'll no doubt notice a new face sitting up front.  While I've enjoyed my time as president over the last few months, I haven't felt as though I contributed much to the well being of our club so now seems to be the right time to hand over the reins to someone new and fresh.  I'm sure Jeff Welliver will do a great job as our new president; incidentally the new and fresh part was only a figure of speech.  Our club is running along in great shape.  The treasury has sufficient funds, our field is secure an the membership seems to be happy.  For years you have all given me the credit for this and as I've said before, the credit really goes to the people whose names appear on top of the newsletter every month, not me.  I have relied on those people for advice, opinions, and wisdom before I made any decisions so in your spare time look at who they are and give all the kudos' to them.  It has been my honor to serve as president these last few years but before I give up the post I have one final request, give the new guy the same degree of trust and respect that you've given me.

Have a great holiday season and remember our troops serving over seas that guarantee our safety and protect the privileges that we all take for granted.

See you at the meeting,
Keith Sandberg

Vice President's Column

Merry Christmas to one and all!  The end of the year is upon us, the tree is up and the lights are hung.  I hope there are packages under your tree in the shapes of kits and motors.  Maybe if I'm lucky, Santa will bring Lone Star's entire inventory of light C-grain balsa and stack it neatly in my garage.  Riiiggghht!

2004 has been a most interesting year.  Control-line is still going strong.  There are more new and neat kits and designs out there than a guy can keep up with.  Whether you want to fly OTS, Classic, Modern, 1/2A, sport or scale, there is something for you.

If you dig old motors, they are there to be had.  And there are people out there like Frank Bowman and Tom Lay who are set up to keep the old iron running its best.  If you want new power plants, check out the PA series or Richard Oliver's gorgeous RoJetts.  Not cheap, but I think you could buy one of these, fly it every day for years, and will it to your grandkids so they can fly it some more.

We have kits from Brodak, Ultra Hobbies, Larry Richards, Tom Dixon, Tom Morris, Walter Umland, Phil Cartier and others to choose from.  You can get plans from a number of sources, copies of original plans, re-drawings of old ones, brand new ones.  Wow!

The problem is deciding which of the hundreds of choices to go for.  I should live long enough to do all the projects I'd like to do.  It really is a golden time for CL modeling.

The Piston Poppers remain a healthy group.  We have a good membership at a variety of levels of experience and skills.  We have a good flying site.  Don't forget to tell Keith how much we appreciate all the hard and smart work he has done with the City of Brooklyn Park and the college to keep the site for us to enjoy.  We have several new members this year.  Each one brings their own set of skills and perspective to the hobby.  It's a great pleasure to have you guys aboard!

I'm looking forward to the New Year with great anticipation.  My own plans have some form now.  I'm getting some of the tools and skills together to do some better, faster building.  And I know what I want to do with this stuff.  Now, it's up to the old best laid plans department to decide how the year will go.

In 2005, under the capable leadership of Jeff Welliver, let's keep a positive outlook.  We'd like to see several more new members join the club.  The trip to Oshkosh for KidVenture should be a great chance to show our colors and have a great time at the world's best airplane gathering.

Anyone who likes planes and doesn't like Oshkosh needs a pulse check, for sure.  The changed date for the Bentfield contest should shake a more contestants out of the trees.  We are open to suggestions of ways to improve the contest and make it more attractive.  Do we need a social event Saturday night?  Or a Mall of America spree for the wives?  Don't throw those tomatoes; it's only a suggestion!  Maybe we could do some weekend fun fly event for the club too.  I've watched, but never flown balloon bust, for instance.  How about, ohhhh, one-design 1/2A balloon bust?  Where are all of the old club trainers, anyway?

One more time, it has been a great year.  It is a gerat pleasure to be associated with a group like this one.  I'm looking forward to a great 2005.  Don't forget, January One at the Blaine Sport Center for chili, fun, and flying.  Yes, Bob, I bought some boots and I'm shopping for warmer socks!  See you there!

See you at the meeting.
Kelvin Heath

Members Space

January 1st Frozen Fun Fly starts at 10:00 AM with prize drawing held at 2:00 PM at the National Sports Center, Blaine, MN (located just east of Hwy 65 on 105th Ave NE).  Everyone is welcome to come and join in the fun and to help us start the New Year right.  Chili and Hot Chocolate, cold fingers, and airplanes... what could be better than that on January 1st!

See you there,
Bob and Jeff

Norm's Design Page

Greetings fellow Poppers and Popperettes.  I've been promising to discuss mufflers for some time, so here are some thoughts.  We all know what an issue noise has become for our hobby (even disregarding particular neighbors to our flying field), so it makes sense to do the best we can to keep our planes as quiet as possible.  If we achieve acceptable noise levels with a minimum sacrifice in power and performance, so much the better.

There's no denying that it can be a lot of fun to make a lot of noise, but since I've had years of experience in this exact field (sound-making), I can tell you that generally those who aren't making the noise will be quick to tell you that it's just that - "(*)#$^@!!)%#$&*ing NOISE!!!"

I might suggest that we look more seriously at electric options (notice at the last NATS there was a successful stunt competitor operating "NO-GLOW"), but I can see within our club a definite love for the popping of pistons.  Personally, I could do without the airplane cleaning part of the equation.

Anyway, getting to our noisy engines and with the understanding that there are many different sources for that noise, e.g. - prop, carb intake, airframe vibration, it is mostly the sounds of combustion explosions (rapidly expanding gasses) that we are hearing and find annoying.

Stock mufflers help reduce noise by providing both back-pressure and an expansion chamber where sound waves at certain frequencies can cancel themselves out.  These mufflers are very simple in design, but can be significantly improved by installing an "outlet tube" of the same length as the chamber, but with a specific inside diameter that is matched by formula to the displacement of the cylinder.  For a .40 size engine, this I.D. is .276 inch, and the tube is always inserted 1/2 of its length into the muffler chamber.  This configuration will cancel many more frequencies, though some standing waves wills till pass at very specific frequencies - mostly outside of the range that is most annoying to our ears.