SASS Updraft
Vol 12, No. 1, 2000

Did anybody notice? The sun is out!

7-9 P.M., Monday, March 20^th; Monday, April 17^th; and Monday, May 8^th at Rose Hill Junior High
(Meetings are held on the 2nd Monday of the month unless otherwise noted)

REMINDER: TIME TO PAY YOUR CLUB DUES.
The Treasurer reports that less than half of last year's members have paid their dues for 2000.
You can mail your check or give it to Charlie Baumgartner at the next meeting.
Charlie's address is 4638 133rd Ave. SE, Bellevue WA 98006-2140

You never know what the Richland winter weather will offer -- anything from howling gales with subzero wind chills to balmy sunshine with gentle zephyrs and big, bombastic thermals -- all in the same day! Bring all of your gliders from HLG to combat to speed to thermal. And, be prepared for any kind of weather. We'll meet for breakfast Saturday morning, 7 AM, at the Summit Inn on Snoqualmie Pass. From there it is about a two-hour drive to Eagle Butte. Don't miss this trip to the premier NW slope. Remember, when it's raining in Seattle the weather is very likely to be dry and windy at Eagle Butte and the surrounding environ.

One important administrative detail -- our yearly Eagle Butte permit fee: each of us who plans to fly at Eagle Butte this year needs to make out a check for $10 to the Mid Columbia Soarers and mail it to Mid-Columbia Soarers Treasurer, John Reck, 1913 Forest Ave, Richland, WA 99352, phone 1-509-946-3264. Do this right away so that you are cleared to fly at Eagle.

Here we are in this new year. The Puyallup Model Expo and several days of flying the slopes on Whidbey Island are already behind us. We are assured the use of the field for the year thanks to the diligent and can we say tenacious work of Bob Brewer. What do we have planned for this season?

I know my calendar is going to be full. As usual, I need to add time to repair old airplanes and to build new ones. Can’t forget to get out to the field and shake off the cobwebs on the thermal ships before the contest season starts, So what is it that we can do to improve the recreational sport of RC sailplane flying? I would like to ask each of you what can be done to make your area of interest better. In addition, I would like each one of you to think about contributing a little of your time to improve one other area of the club.

Are we having fun yet!

Lauren Anstead Q

Eagle Butte Reminder
by Waid Reynolds (Adapted from a note received from Wil Byers)

Rumor has it that springtime is just around the corner and that many of you are probably planning soaring trips to Eagle and Kiona Buttes. Please note that both Eagle Butte and Kiona Butte should be treated with the utmost respect and care if we are to be allowed to continue our use of these fine flying sites. In order to fly at Eagle Butte you must be an AMA member for insurance purposes, and you must follow all AMA safety codes. The same is advised for flying at Kiona Butte, which is overseen by the Bureau of Land Management.

John Reck
1913 Forest Ave
Richland, WA 99352
Phone: 1-509-946-3264

AMA membership may be purchased through the Academy of Model Aeronautics at http://www.modelaircraft.org.

Pilots who are found in violation of these simple requirements will be asked to terminate flying at these sites. Please understand that you will benefit the soaring community at large by following the rules. Lastly, ALCOHOL CONSUMPTION WHILE FLYING IS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN AT EAGLE BUTTE. Don't open a beer until your flying is over for the day. Q

Note: Actual balance at end of 1999 is $3516.86 when Year 2000 membership dues are included.

Income: Membership income was almost unchanged. A significant items was the donation of miscellaneous equipment by Kenn Wilson which generated $1222.- at an auction.

Expenses: Two items were major expenses this last year. One is the material purchase for the construction of the two new frequency boards (labor donated by Pete Hinze), the other is the acquisition of a new canopy.

2000 Club Meeting Schedule
By Lauren Anstead (lanstead@aol.com)

Note that March and April were not available for second Monday, as the custodians will not be on duty in the evening unless we wanted to pay $150 extra for those days. Q

Icarus Bleriot lll
by Don Bailey

I got one of those way-cool slo-fly airplanes from Santa this year, an Icarus Bleriot III. What a fun toy!! Thanks, Santa (I hear he flies one, too!) You can get them for under $60 from Hobby Lobby or from Alberto at Hobby Club, or at the local hobby shops.

http://www.hobby-lobby.com/ http://www.hobbyclub.com

I already happened to have a geared Speed 280 motor for it, the Titanic Airlines 3:1 unit, available from Model Air Tech for $27.95. You can see it at http://www.modelairtech.com/gear.html. This is a good motor, and the reduction unit is a nice nylon spur and pinion gear assembly with ball-bearings, so it is quiet and smooth. I also happened to have a 7 cell, Sanyo 350mah battery pack from my Nora that fits in the pod along with my Micro 555 receiver. I used two CS21 servos for the tail feathers, and the Icarus speed controller for throttle (6amps continuous, BEC, no auto shut-off). All up weight is 11.5 oz. It took me all of three hours to build the thing, since most of it is prefab. Piece of cake.

Steve Dentz called me up the day after Christmas, and it turns out he got one too! So it was off to 60 Acres for some low-level racing at break-neck speeds. We tossed our Bleriots into the cold December air and immediately climbed to the lofty height of more than 11 feet above the ground, and proceeded to speed along at up to 8 mph, following each other around in big lazy circles with the little motors whirring away. We dipped and swooped and climbed and pivoted around like a couple of drunken butterflies. I chopped the power and dropped it down right in front of me, rolled maybe two inches to a stop, and then picked it up and tossed it out there again. We were getting up to ten minutes on a charge, as the little 280 motors slowly sipped the electrons. Man, this is fun!

If you haven't already seen it, Fred Guilfoyle has a webpage that describes the Bleriot III with pictures, at http://www.emeraldnet.net/~guil/bleriot.htm. Here is where you get a really good idea of what it looks like, and how little work goes into it. Fred and I like to fly our Bleriots right out on our street, taking off from the pavement and circling around in the cul-de-sac. The kids love it. You can practically run underneath this thing as it wings along slowly overhead. I like to fly mine at night, under the streetlights, taking off from the pavement and flying up and down the street. Once in a while a car comes along and I have to step up onto the curb, so I buzz the guy as he goes by. ("Whoah, there's some big bats in these woods, Martha!")

Fred and I have the balsa boom version of the kit, where Steve Dentz has the aluminum boom version. Steve's kit has injection-molded plastic wing joiner fittings with snap-lock retainers, while Fred and I have aluminum plug-in tubes with no retention. Also, Steve's kit has larger gage leading edge and trailing edge spar rods, so his wings don't flex much under flight loads. Fred and I, on the other hand, had to go with flying wires to keep our wings from flexing upward at a ridiculous angle, and to serve as a retention system. Other than that, there is not much to do in the way of modifications to the kit. I suggest you avoid flying when the air is moving around a lot, certainly not in any kind of wind. I made the mistake of flying mine on a thermally day with slight gusts of maybe five mph, and ended up kiting in on a landing and busting the wing. It was an easy repair, with some of the kit-supplied glue and some tape, but I should have known better. These things have such a low wing-loading, and fly so slowly, that any major upset cannot be corrected fast enough when you are near the ground. If you have some altitude,

the Bleriot will handle a little wind with no problem, but you gotta land sometime.

The new frontier in the hobby these days is with micro-gear, like 7gram servos and 11gram receivers and tiny little "bump-on-a-wire" ESCs with BEC and brake. With this kind of gear, you can go really small with walnut-scale R/C CO2 airplanes, or you can go the other direction with 450 square inch slo-fliers like the Bleriot. I'm one of those hobbyists that likes everything, and I've really become an enlightened new convert to the Slo-fly movement with my new Bleriot III. Now, run down and get one so we can race!

---

By Lauren Anstead (lanstead@aol.com)

Thanks to Pete Hinze, John Oberto for the setup and teardown of our booth at the Puyallup Model Expo. Pete, John, and the others who manned (or is that personed) our booth during the two day event did a magnificent job of keeping our club visible to the modeling community. My son, Dave, and I were there on Saturday. We put in tour of duty in the booth while the main crew went to lunch.

My observation is that the Expo had a few less exhibitors and a few less displayed models. What it did not lack on Saturday was people. I know the aisles were impassable at times. By the way, I looked and I spent money.

Thanks to Ole Skotvold, we have enjoyed several great days flying on the slopes of Whidbey Island. Ole watches the weather and sends out the all-important, e-mail invitation to becomer a target.

This year has shown the Boomrang to be the combat ship of choice. In the light and variable lift at Sky Meadows, the lightweight Boomrang has proven to be more than a match for the slighter heavier Zagis. A dozen or more pilots have shown up to challenge Ole as King of the Hill.

Do-It-Yourself Decals
By Waid Reynolds waid@aa.net

While waiting for a prescription to be filled at the local pharmacy the other day, I noticed a rack of various inkjet printer media offered by Hammermill Papers. The particular product that caught my eye was their "Clear Decals" for inkjet printers. This looked like it might be an opportunity to make some attractive decorations for my planes without the need for much, if any, artistic expertise. The decal material is pricey at $16 for 10 sheets. But, a little money never stood between a kid and beautifying his toy gliders! To make a long story short... I printed some small SASS logos that I had long ago created in Corel Draw onto the decal material using my Epson Color 600 printer at its highest resolution of 1440 X 720 dots (drops?) per inch. The resulting copy looked very good. After allowing a day for the ink to dry thoroughly I cut out a couple of the logos, peeled off the backing (you need a razor blade to initially split the backing from the decal) and stuck them on the tail of my Spectrum. They looked good! No telling how long they will last in sun, wind and rain, of course. I'll find out the hard way over the course of the flying season. Even if their lives are fairly short, they are easy to replace. This decal material gives those of us with inkjet printers and some graphics software an easy way to gussy up our aircraft, toolboxes, winches, cars, etc.

I haven't looked, but I imagine that Office Depot and other stores of that ilk also carry the clear decal material by Hammermill. Other vendors may produce it, too. And, you can probably get it cheaper on the Internet. It might be worth an electronic search. Add some color to your hobby -- give the stuff a try! Q