President's Column

Folks, it’s been quite a month considering that it’s not flying season yet. We’ve had lots of activity and haven’t even had to be outdoors.  

First of all, our yearly club auction came off very well. Lots of goodies were sold by the members with 10% to the club, followed by a bid auction of donated items with all proceeds to the club. There were some really nice items in this last group, plus reading material and some odds and ends. Prices varied but when the dust cleared the club made almost $200. Not bad at all.  

Next up was the Challenger building session, thanks to the efforts of Keith, Jeff Lange, Sina, Wayne, and Mike Moylan. The turnout was great and lots of fun. There will be Challengers out this year, wherever we fly.  

Our late winter gathering at Keith’s house was a rousing success. Keith, Sharon, and Bailey are wonderful hosts, the house is perfect for a gathering like this, and the twenty or so who attended thoroughly enjoyed themselves. It’s great to see and meet some of the ladies who put up with our eccentricities. Topping it all off was some fine jazz by Glen Peterson on sax and Norm Anderson on the keyboard. We do have talent in the club! By the way, if John Christensen talks you into a game of pool, it would not be wise to bet money on winning. I hope this winter gathering will be the start of a tradition, with an even larger turnout and more of the wives and significant others joining the fun. It is different without the smell of caster oil!  THANKS to Keith and Sharon for all their work! 

Finally, there is no real change on the flying site. Our friend at EPA has been out of the office working on site most of the month and has not been able to reach the right people at the company. With the change of ownership on the property, they aren’t all that easy to get to. Nothing negative is happening and these things move slowly. I will push more when I get back from VSC.  

One other point from Wes DeCour, the AMA site coordinator, most states, including Minnesota, have laws limiting property owner liability when the property is used for certain types of recreational activity. Ours would fall in that group. Combined with the excellent liability insurance we provide the property owner through AMA, this will be a real selling point when the time comes. Also, one of our members is checking on Fridley’s ordinances to make sure there are no “time bombs” there.  

Well, Toni & I are off to Tucson tomorrow for VSC and should be back before the next club meeting. I will continue to keep in touch with our friend at EPA while I’m gone. Meanwhile, I’m still spraying clear on the Tempest repairs. It will get rubbed out at Tucson, but since we’re getting there Monday and appearance judging isn’t ‘till Thursday evening, that won’t be a problem. I didn’t refinish the whole bird, just the nose and bottom center of the wing around the main gear area. This trip could end up being fattening, though, with three open house/buffets, one dinner, the banquet, and one nite for appearance judging. There go six evenings in Tucson. The long range forecast is temps in the low 70’s with clear to partly cloudy skies. Tough duty but someone has to do it!  

See you all at the meeting. I should have a bunch of pix to show if you don’t mind looking at airplanes, hobby shops, museums (aircraft and automobile), and scenery.

Jeff Welliver

Vice President's Column

The Piston Poppers have been busy since the last newsletter even though we have been in the depths of winter.  Now that it’s March, can the flying season be far off?

Our most recent event was a get together at Keith and Sharon Sandberg’s home on the evening of March 4th.  It is a lot of work by the hostess/host to set something like this up and I think I speak for all those in attendance that it was a wonderful time and much appreciated.  Just imagine providing the food and hospitality for a group our size!  One of the pleasant surprises was the “Jam Session” provided by Glen Peterson (tenor sax) and Norman Andersen (keyboard).  Both are very talented musicians. Their playing and improvisation meshed perfectly.  With the music provided by Glen and Norman, the food and beverages and welcome-ness provided by Sharon and Keith, it was a great evening at Club Sandberg. 

Prior to our social get together at the Sandberg’s, we had our mid-winter building session at the EAA building on Sunday Feb 26th.  I thought it was terrific and I did learn some new things to incorporate into my building style.  Many of the attendees at the session began building their Challenger, others came to enjoy the day and/or bring their own project to do some independent work.  Everyone was busy doing something.  Recognition needs to be given to the guys that made the Challenger project happen:

• Jeff Lange – made a brass wing-rib template that is a work of art and he found the time to cut out all the ribs.  By my count, he cut 176 full ribs and 160 half ribs for a total of 336 pieces.  And that doesn’t include any he may have rejected!
• Wayne Willey – cut many of the remaining parts.
• Sina Goudarzi – inked and copied the set of plans.
• Keith Sandberg – took leadership of the project, designed the airplane, bankrolled the project, cut parts and brought lots of necessary tools to the session (for those of us who forgot something).

So, many thanks to those that put the session together and to those that attended. 

I obviously think the building session was a terrific success and I’d like to see something like this become an on-going part of our non-flying experiences.  These sessions are an additional teaching and learning experience for club members, and a welcome relief from winter boredom.  It was such a good experience that I’d like to suggest that we consider incorporating building sessions for the winter season next year; 2006-07.  For example, we could:

• Establish building sessions for each month of the building season i.e. December, January, February and March on a selected Sunday.
• If we feel it appropriate, we could incorporate our regularly scheduled monthly meeting to be a part of the building session OR continue our meeting schedule during the winter (last Thursday evening of the month unless otherwise designated) and schedule a building session on a selected Sunday in December, January, February and March.

The purpose of these sessions would be to allow members the opportunity to bring a building project to the session, work on the project independently or with others and gain advice/information from others on techniques; i.e. how Wayne Willey makes such nice fillets, etc, etc.  I also think it would be a great way to interest current members to attend Piston Poppers activities in the off-season and also may be a way to attract additional members.  Whether or not we want to have a club winter building project would be determined by the participants; I am not suggesting our colleagues that made the Challenger project happen do the same thing on an annual basis.  

The only downsides I see are the cost and lack of interest/participation.  I believe we pay rent for the EAA building for each use so each building session participant may have to kick in a few bucks (cheap for an afternoon of enjoyment).  To get a handle on interest/potential participation, I would like each of you to contact me with your thoughts.  If there is interest, we can plan to incorporate building sessions into our schedule within the next several months.  Don’t wait, do it now.  Contact me at mikelyndamoylan@msn.com, or 952-544-7995. 

Mike Moylan

PAMPA Notes

Note much to report here this month. Stunt news is every other month so nothing new there. President Paul Walker and the directors have agreed on priorities for issues and are now beginning work on proposals. Important work, but it’s not glamorous. Very high on the list is a review of the bylaws. This will be done on a very careful basis and whatever eventually goes to the members will be well worked out and agreed upon. Beyond that, the transitions are going well with Tom McLain settling in nicely as Stunt News editor and the new board finding areas of agreement rather than of disagreement.

 Good leadership involves earning the trust and confidence of those you serve, drawing out and using the talents of those around you, and really listening to those who elected you. I see these qualities in Paul Walker as President and in Crist Rigotti as district rep (board member). I also try to show those same qualities as your club President, and trust that if I don’t, someone will gently remind me. Generally a tap on the head with a 2 X 6 will suffice.

Jeff Welliver

Norm's Design Page

Yes, I know it's been a long time since I've contributed to the newsletter, and I feel guilty about that, but by the looks of the last edition, my ramblings were neither missed nor needed.  That was a great newsletter, and I thank all the contributors for the interesting and useful material.  Now, if I can just remember what I've learned from all of you over the years (at the same time I'm actually working on an airplane or flying one) that will be terrific. 

While on the topic of gratitude, I'd like to offer a special thanks to the Sandbergs for the enjoyable gathering at their home recently.  The club was well represented, and several husbands even managed to talk their wives into coming – Wow! 

Keith's Firehouse Chili was excellent, and so were all the other contributions. Conversations covered everything from foreign travel to taxes to smoking cessation, or if you wandered into Keith's Factory of Flight you might have studied Wayne's latest hybrid Eindekker, learned more about filleting techniques, or picked up a narrower venturi for an old Fox .36. 

If you hung around the bar after dinner, you probably enjoyed Glen's great tenor sax playing, or watched Ryan being lured down the Devil's path by the presence of a POOL TABLE in our community.

(Yes sir, we got trouble, trouble right here in River City – editor.)  We will see if Ryan's newly found sense of physics, space, time, action & reaction, will play a role in his flying technique next season… 

To clarify my excuse for not writing "my column" for a few months, I'll claim: holiday interference, making hockey sticks fly, and health hassles. 

The latter began last fall with a couple months of insane itching, then a variety of tests and hospital procedures leading to a diagnosis of a rare liver disorder.  An additional invasive procedure (aren't they all?) along with various medications has offered relief from most symptoms, but is essentially temporary.  And, the most disturbing part was the probable liver transplant sometime within the next ten years or so – Yikes! 

For a self-employed guy who doesn't make much money and pays his own health insurance, all of this was a bit distracting from my normal "fun time" activities such as writing for this newsletter. 

Unfortunately, our membership boasts a litany of health problems (mostly because we're getting older), and I certainly hate to add to that list, but I bring up my case in that it may offer an important point relevant to our hobby. 

When I was a kid spending untold hours down in the basement breathing dope and glue fumes, one of my brother's friends would occasionally pass through and say, "Ya know, you're gunna destroy your liver breathing that stuff." 

But before that, I played with my Dad's rose duster filled with DDT – (it made such a great smoke screen).  And the village soaked all our trees with DDT until it dripped off the leaves, and in winter we were told not to eat the snow because it might be radioactive from the nuclear tests out west. 

And then there were the catalyzed acrylic enamels and organic solvents that I sprayed on sculptures as an artist, and the asbestos and mercury and leaded glass and phosphors that I used as a neon bender, and the welding and grinding of unknown metals, and the list goes on and on. 

Those chemical exposures may not have been responsible for my current liver problem, but I'm sure they didn't help any.  I grew up during the chemical revolution, and I suspect I bear the scars to prove it.  However, plenty of my exposure was not without warning, and those of us who like to "get the job done" sometimes skimp on the "irritating" protective measures.

For many of us, plenty of damage has probably already been done, but when you start thinking about replacing organs, it's a good reminder to limit one's exposures as much as you reasonably can, and even a better reminder to encourage the young modelers among us to really be careful about the chemistry they use in our hobby (and beyond).

 Norman Andersen

Observations From Outside The Circle

In last month’s column I wrote about getting seam lift at the Monokote/paint boundary after a season of flying. I found out from John Christiansen that a coating of Coverite Balsarite or Sig Stix It before applying the film would have eliminated the problem. Thanks John.

I bought an RSM Stuka Stunt. It is a very nice kit with good wood selection. It gives me a good opportunity to show you how I build a constant chord, non-tapered C-tube or D-tube wing and play with my digital camera at the same time. About 400 moons ago I built combat wings in a similar manner: 

The key to this is using angled blocks under the trailing edge. The blocks, in this case, are cut at an 8 degree angle and are of the proper height to make the centerline of the rib parallel to the building board. I blue tape the board, ink in reference lines for the ribs, and glue the blocks to the tape. The trailing edge is pinned to the blocks and the structure is held in place with weights. The wing leading edge is hanging over the edge of the building board so I can sheet both the bottom and top before removing the wing from the board. The method can also be adapted to tapered wings. The one problem with this method is that blocks have to be created for each wing. A table saw makes it quick and easy, but without one it is nearly impossible. If anyone wants a set of blocks, just let me know and I will make you a set. Bring your plans to the next meeting. I have a set for the Stuka Stunt and the Twister.

 Speaking of the Twister:

Why am I building it as a test bed for .35 to .40 engines? The short answer is that I don’t want to build an airplane for an engine and find out that I do not like the run characteristics of that engine. The long answer begins with an explanation. In this go round, I have experience with an OS .25 FP, OS .25 LA, and an OS .46 LA. The two LAs are extremely consistent and reliable. I never change the needle valve setting except to dial the power up or down and first or second flip starts are expected. When the .25 FP is on, it produces more power than the .25 LA. Unfortunately it is rarely on. It is a finicky starter, runs away if too lean, the needle valve setting must be worked out in the first couple of flights of every flying session, and warm starts require an electric starter. I am more than willing to spend time to get an engine set up and working, just not every time I fly. 

The simple solution is to use OS LA engines, but they are a bit heavy for a plain bearing engine and I want to play the field of less than $100 engines before I settle down. I have a Merco .35, a Thunder Tiger .36 and a Brodak .40. The Magnum .36 has been getting some positive buzz so I’m going to buy one. These four engines have different lengths and mounting spacing so they are mounted to metal pads and the pads mounted to the fuselage. 

Please send me some digital pictures for the newsletter. Don’t worry about size, resolution, or cropping. I’ll take care of that. It helps if there is high contrast in the shot so that it looks good printed in grayscale.

Ivars Greizins

Flash From Jeff Welliver

For the sake of your sanity, do not try to visualize Jeff flashing. Instead picture a banquet attended by about 90 modelers and their wives surrounded by cactus and stuffed Gila monsters. The skies are clear, it is 77 degrees, the winds are calm, and the forecast calls for more of the same. That’s what it was like at VSC in Tucson, Arizona when Jeff called. An old Piston Popper, Burt Brokaw, also says hello.