SCALE STAFFEL NEWSLETTER JANUARY/FEBRUARY, 2011
Matthew Dehnel with his Ace Pit Crew,
Grandpa - George and Dad - Russell. Ready to do battle in the Science Decathalon.
Matthew is now building the Grumman FF-1 from our last newsletter’s plans- his first scale model.
What’s In This Issue - “Landing Strip”-p. 1 - Events calendar - p.2 - The Indoor Scene p 3 - Member Bob Hodes’ “Workshop of the Month”- pp 4,5 - Roger Willis-on the weight costs of finish and décor – p 6 - Tools - a “rotisserie” jig for building roundish models – p 7, 8 - Building Tips – p 8 - Product News: A new XP-40Q kit from CB Model Designs p9 - Recent Indoor Contest results – p10 - Links to useful websites – p10 - This Month’s Plans Packet – (Emailed as a separate PDF) p10 - Photo page of outdoor fun-flys & contests - p11 - Back page - contact info for Scale Staffel officers & others, Roger Willis’s Dime Scale Staggerwing, plus maps to flying sites, etc Subject of this month’s Plan Packet
Landing Strip-January/February, 2011
Our apologies for the late publication this month; we’ll get you the next issue before March 10 –promise! Also John Hutchison’s President’s Landing Strip will again appear in every issue. Our year- end joint banquet with the San Diego Orbiteers at Giovani’s was a big success. Way more than enough great food, classy trophy presentations, multi-prize raffles, plus show & tell and good natured kidding all around. We’re especially grateful to the Orbiters’ Larry Miller and his lovely daughter, Melissa, for their orchestration of this super event, to club Presidents Don Bartick and John Hutchison in honoring our class winners, and to Arlene Bartick both for the streaming slide shows and her photographing of all our doings. John Oldenkamp ran away with most of the Orbiteers’ awards. Bill Hill and Roger Willis took the Scale Staffel Indoor and Outdoor trophies. This was the first year end banquet for me; I won’t miss another-most satisfying! This month’s news: The first of our three Scale Staffel contests for 2011 will be a joint event on April 27 with Dave Boals and his Black Sheep Squadron at the excellent SCAMPS field in Perris, CA. We’ll put a map to the field and local motels in the next newsletter. Note that this year we’ve added Dime Scale to bring the event total to nine per contest. See page 2 for the entire schedule. Don’t forget our club has a Monthly Indoor contest too (and it never gets rained out! ) The big news is that our new Scale Staffel website will be up and running this month. On it we will post all of our newsletters and plans packets, as well as contest schedules, a “what’s new” page, bulletin board, discussion page, photo gallery, fellow club postings, product announcements, etc. John Hutchison’s talented grandson. Guy Cope is our website’s creator and Kathy McLaughlin, John’s wife has generously volunteered to be our webmaster. We will continue emailing you all of our newsletters and plans packets along with posting them on the website. It’s remotely possible that you haven’t heard of the WESTFAC III contest to be held June 22-25, 2011 in Parker, CO near Denver. So we now have about 140 days left. Just the right amount of time to build some new models, dust off the good oldies, patch the hurt ones and flight trim them all (piece of cake right?) . Don’t be left out; this is our premier western region FAC event at the fabulous field of the Magnificent Mountain Men Free Flight Club. Check out the contest schedule and list of 20+ FAC events at this Westfac website: http://www.westernfac.com/westfac3eventpage.html . Roger Willis is now emailing registration forms to the membership. If you need the form, contact him at [email protected]. On my building board: A mildly crumpled Chambermaid needing longeron and tissue repair. Next up, Mike Mitkiff’s short kit Fokker D7. Hope to have both built & trimmed for our next outdoor contest. George Mansfield P 1
Events Calendar
Indoor Fun Fly and FAC Contests From 9 am to 12 noon on the first Sunday of every month at the Grossmont Community College “Lower” Gymnasium. ( for map see back page)
February 2011 Events: FAC No-Cal Scale, FAC Phantom Flash, A6
March 2011 Events: FAC No-Cal Scale, FAC Peanut Scale, Pennyplane
Outdoor FAC Contests
Outdoor Contest Schedule 2011 - WWI, II Combat & Racing Series Dates:
1. Sunday, April 17, 2011, Joint event with Grassy Knolls FAC Club Perris, CA, 8:00 am-12:30 pm
2. Sunday, August 14, 2011, Otay Mesa, 7:00 am - noon 3. Sunday, November 13, 2011, Otay Mesa, 7:00 am – noon
Events (all events follow FAC rules):
1. FAC Rubber Scale: Hand Launch 2. FAC Power Scale: Hand Launch 3. FAC Embryo Endurance: ROG 4. Jimmie Allen / FAC 2-Bit(+1) Rubber combined: Hand Launch 5. FAC Dime Scale: Hand Launch 6. FAC Phantom Flash: ROG * Special “Compressed Air Power” event (April 17th only) Mass Launch Events 7. World War I Combat: Wind at 0820, Launch at 0830 8. World War II Combat: Wind at 0920, Launch at 0930 9. Greve/Thompson Race: Wind at 1020, Launch at 1030
Special Award ROW Event on Nov. 13 only:
Any Power, scale or sport, best of 3 (>20 sec) flights, 120 sec max.
Prizes: All events - Awards for first to third place. First place trophies for WW1 and WW2 Combat events
Contest Director (Pilots’ meeting at 0800 on contest day) George Mansfield
5543 Barkla St. San Diego, CA 92122 Email: [email protected]
Lunch and Trophy Award Ceremonies: April 17: Mexican restaurant near Perris flying field (details TBA). August 14 and November 13: Brown Field, “Landing Strip Bar/ Café” after contest. Drive west on Route 905, turn right at Cactus Road into airport parking lot.
San Diego Orbiteers Club Outdoor Events at Otay Mesa Field for January-March, 2010
Jan 30, 2011: P30, Power
Feb 27, 2011: Power, P20, HLG, CLG, and small OT rubber stick
Mar 13, 2011: Coupe, Power, P20, HLG and CLG p 2
The Indoor Scene
Late in 2009, President John Hutchison conducted an indoor class/demonstration that grabbed the heart of Grossmont College Professor, Dr. Cary Willard. The romance of silent flight blossomed and she subsequently moved the college administration to provide a gymnasium for our First-Sunday monthly indoor contests. Our current venue is the single court gym (~25 foot ceiling ) , but negotiations are underway for us to use the Big Gym (3 court with a clean 30+ foot ceiling), 3-4 times a year. Many thanks to John and Dr. Willard for making our indoor program thrive once again.
Our monthlies are attended by members of both Scale Staffel and the San Diego Orbiteers. So the events this year are a mix of FAC and AMA: Phantom Flash, No-Cal Scale, Peanut Scale, A6, Pennyplane, etc. Science Olympiad/Decathalon flyers and their parents come too. We even get Dimer’s and Embryos coming for trim flights. Below are some still pics (my flight shots are even more blurry!) of some of our talented indoor flyers and their ships. Recent contest results are on page 10.
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Workshop of the Month from Bob Hodes, Las Vegas Vultures
Bob Hodes is a prolific builder of beautiful and great flying scale ships. Here are plans and photos of Bob’s enviably outfitted building shop along with his words to flesh them out.
The shop is the 3rd bay of a 3-car garage, which I walled off from the rest of the garage. I have heat and A/C, and an exhaust fan In this view toward the roll up garage door, you can This reverse view, shows the elliptical trainer see the workbench on the left and the drafting table on the right (to keep in shape for model. on the right. chases), and TV/DVD/CD/ VCR on the left for music & movies, and beyond, a fridge for rubber and beer.
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Bob Hodes Workshop (cont.) These are photos are of my models. I hang them from chains that I have run wall to wall over the work area. Sure saves a lot of space. (ed: Did I say “enviably outfitted”? And how! - check out the trophies in the bottom pic)
Bob Hodes p 5
A “WEIGHTY” SUBJECT by Roger Willis
Well..the Holidays are now history and most of us are staring at the scales in horror and wondering how to drop some pounds. Guess what..??? This also applies to us FreeFlight folks who continue [ rightfully so ] to be concerned about weight on those gorgeous models we are a-buildin'. As some of you may remember, at the last SCALE STAFFEL event in 2010, I lost my DeBut Embryo to the tall grass....of course I may have made a covering color error on this little baby (it was clear tissue with " green" trim), but its too late to complain about that now isn't it. Well I just finished a new DeBut and covered it in BLACK tissue....and Oh goodness, sprayed it with a coat of black nitrate. As I finished the bones , I decided to weigh the entire model including the Gizmo Geezer front end and all the scale plus bonus point items through various stages of finishing. Here is what I found: Stage Condition Weight Delta Wt. Delta % 1 Bones / tissue only 27.5g 2 + Clear Nitrate 50/50 28.6g +1.1g + 4.0 3 + Black Nitrate 50/50 29.9g +1.3g + 4.7 4 + Graphics 32.1g +1.2g + 4.4 5 + Chez DT 33.3g +1.2g +4.4 Totals: +4.8g +17.5% Roger, his beautiful DeBut, and a bevy of others Now, let's take a look at this. We added about 17.5% to the covered bones weight going through the finishing process. I used black tissue, sooo…. one could make the case for just a clear coat, but that just saved 4.7% on weight and (in my view) looked pretty bad. If I had made a ghost ship, i.e. no graphics or DT assembly, I could save some weight..about 13.5%. I will leave it up to the "engineers " to do some wing loading analysis and tell me what I might gain in duration verses loss of appearance. By the way, the graphics were just one thickness (flat white) . Be careful on multi-colored graphics . That weight really adds up fast unless you are using decals which I have found to be less in appearance (my opinion only here). I think I could have saved maybe 0.5 g by using a small button timer verses my usual Chez Timer and I certainly could have built the Bones lighter..... However, my purpose here was to give you some idea of the typical incremental weight deltas for the typical finishing process. You may want to keep a brief log on this for your next model. It would be interesting to compare your results with these and publish them here in our newsletter. Now comes the trimming of this little fella. I hope the black color will help me follow its course. ................... Many Maxes to All! Editor’s note: Applying the duration formula (2) from The “Geeks Corner” of the 9/10-2010 newsletter, we get the following ** “theoretical still-air durations” for Roger’s DeBut at various décor stages:
Stage 2: 93.4 sec, Stage 4: 82.9 sec, Stage 5: 79.8 sec. I watched this beauty fly high and long a few weeks back. Clearly, Roger’s accurate construction and very methodical flight trimming often carry the day, no matter what the math says!
** Assumes a duration equation K value of 265 (moderate drag), 50 sq. in. wing are , and a rubber weight of 13.75 grams for all stages.
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Building Tools
A “Rotisserie” jig for building roundish models George Mansfield
Back in 2000 I got the bug to build Don Srull’s 1980 FAC Nats-winning Shinden SRU canard fighter-my first round body model in a long, long time. Laying down the keel, formers and stringers for the first fuselage side didn’t look difficult, but the prospects for building up the second side “in the air” were pretty daunting. Also, at about this time John Laycock, our club’s super light builder, showed me how he simply glued the stringers on surface of cut-down formers, with their slots eliminated.. After looking at a few building jig designs I decided to make one that would provide adjustability, easier access to the all parts of the formered structure, and facilitate laying down the stringers along smooth loft lines. The result is shown below. All jig wood joints are glued and screwed. The pictures at the bottom of the page are of my Bob Holman-Globe Swift buildup on the jig.
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For the Globe Swift model, after fabricating only the keel assembly, I tack-glued it to scrap balsa sticks that were in turn glued to the jig’s aluminum angles. Then I glued the formers to the keel, followed by the stringers. For the Shinden buildup, with slot-less formers, I laid all the stringers dry on the formers, holding them in place at several stations with elastic thread wrapped all the way around the fuselage. Then it was a piece of cake to slide the individual stringers under the thread until they had even spacing and smooth loft lines. The wing nuts at the jig ends allowed me to rotate and lock the frame to set the model at any position for easier access and fast eyeballing of stringer alignment. Finally, I CA’d all the stringer-former connections. The job was finished by dissolving the tack glue joints on the scrap support sticks to remove the fuselage structure from the jig. Below are old pics of the fuselage structure and my finished Shinden. Note the thin (fragile !) sheet formers.
Note: If any local members want to borrow the jig, it’s nearly always available.
Building Tips
Rather than scanning and pasting abbreviated versions of good ideas, I decided to simply post links to a few detailed how-to sites that should be helpful in building better and/or more easily. (I use and really like no. 1)
1. A faster method for building stick fuselages: http://smallflyingarts.com/articles/faster-stick-fuselage/ 2. Making accurate box frame fuselages: http://smallflyingarts.com/articles/box-frame-fuselage-
construction/ 3. Shaping curves into longerons: http://smallflyingarts.com/articles/quick-tip-shaping-curves-into-
longerons/ 4. Making multiple equal size cross pieces (read all the comments):
http://www.hippocketaeronautics.com/hpa_forum/index.php?topic=4684.0 5. Improved Crocket hook modification:
http://www.hippocketaeronautics.com/hpa_forum/index.php?topic=4567.0 6. Use old video tape for strengthening joints:
http://www.hippocketaeronautics.com/hpa_forum/index.php?topic=3552.0 7. Vacuum forming videos on YouTube (there are 6 videos in all; see list on right side of Youtube
screen) : http://www.youtube.com/user/merlin2360#p/u/0/CzrGVK2BM4E (Our club has a very nice donated vacuum forming “machine” which has two sizes of platens and a self contained vacuum source-call me at 858-453-3857 if you want to use it- G. Mansfield)
8. Universal jig for molding propellers (This will be the subject of an upcoming NFFS Journal article-email [email protected] for copy after March 1, 2011) http://www.hippocketaeronautics.com/hpa_forum/index.php?topic=1809.0 p 8
New Product announcement from Clint Brooks, President of CB Designs Hi Scale Rubber Free Flighters, I thought you might be interested in a new rubber power scale kit I'm about to release under the CB Model Designs label. I think you have probably seen the prototype of this the last time I flew in a Scale Staffel contest at Otay in 2009 (boy it's been awhile-conflicting contest schedules). This is the Curtiss XP-40Q, the last of the P-40 series. The model is 1/16th scale, and as shown in the photo weighs 74 grams. I will be marketing this as a short kit which includes three CAD construction drawings, all the laser cut parts (Holman) including the 4 blade prop and spinner, plus the formed canopy, construction notes. The model will be available directly from me or through my website at www.cbmodeldesigns.com. There will be an announcement about this kit soon on the website, but I will not set pricing of offer for sale until sometime in February after test flights of the kit test builds are completed. The four bladed prop you see has already flown quite succesfully and really makes this model pop. Wingspan is 26 inches and around 105 square inches, overall length about 27 inches. Flies well on with 25 grams of rubber at about 15-20 in. oz. of torque. Instead of building another Gollywock you ought to build one of these!
Clint Brooks
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December 2010 Indoor Contest Results FAC Phantom Flash – total time for best 3 of 6 official flights First: Bill Hill 218 seconds Second: William Scott 90 “ A6 – total time for best 3 of 6 official flights First Mike Jester 352 seconds Second Joe Buko 334 “ Third John Hitchison 332 “
Links to Useful Websites & Email Addresses
This is for sure, only a very partial list of useful sites. Feel free to add more to our new club website:
1. Flying Aces Club: http://www.flyingacesclub.com/ 2. Flying Aces Club Headquarters: [email protected] 3. National Free Flight Society (NFFS): http://freeflight.org/Community/links.htm 4. Westfac Home Page: http://www.westernfac.com/ 5. Westfac III CD, Chuck Etherington: [email protected] 6. AMA District 10 Website (Larry Tougas, District 10 VP): www.ama10.org/ 7. AMA District 10 -San Diego Associate VP, Tim Attaway: [email protected] 8. Flying Models Magazine editor: [email protected] 9. Hip Pocket Aeronautics Builders’ Forum:
http://www.hippocketaeronautics.com/hpa_forum/index.php 10. Small Flying Arts: Free flight builders site-plans, photo galleries, builders’ forum:
http://smallflyingarts.com/ 11. The Plan Page-downloadable plans, construction articles for old time, scale, Earl Stahl and contest
models: http://www.theplanpage.com/ 12. Hobby Specialties: Lightweight balsa sticks, spoked wheels, DT components, carved balsa props,
very light indoor film: http://www.hobbyspecialties.com/ 13. RockyTop Models: laser cut kits & short kits, accessories, tools & jigs, tissue, etc:
http://www.rockytopmodels.com/ 14. CB Designs – (Clint Brooks): Scale, sport & contest laser cut model kits:
http://www.cbmodeldesigns.com/ 15. Amazing Magnets, Inc: Low price Neodymium- Iron (highest strength) magnets-wide variety of
shapes and sizes: http://www.amazingmagnets.com/ 16. A2Z Corp supplier of laser cut kits (including Peck Polymer designs), high quality balsa, tissue, tools,
etc: http://www.a2zcorp.us/store/
This Month’s Plans Packet
Under separate (email) cover, we are sending you a great dime scale plan ( plus 3-views and photos) of a great aircraft, the Beech Staggerwing. For the plan, our debt is to designer Rich Weber, our new National FAC Newsletter Editor. It was originally published in Crosswinds No 121, Newsletter of the Cleveland Free Flight Society. Give building it a try, it’s very easy (for a biplane) and looks wonderful in flight. Designer Weber’s first one flew right off the building board, then into first place at Geneseo! Many other FAC-ers have competed successfully with this model and it qualifies for this year’s Scale Staffel Dime Scale events
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Some Photos from our Outdoor Contests and Fun Flys
Mark Chomyn –Fokker D7 President John Hutchison John Allling – SE5
Bob Langdon and P30 (I think) John Oldenkamp & Mike Pykelny Dave Scigliano-Spitfire
Some of Dave Scigliano’s hangerful
Mark Chomyn & Tony Mike Eiserman’s Boeing Wing
Don Smith with Bob Wetherell and his diesel powered Puss Moth
Roger Willis & FA Moth Bob Overcash and Peanut George Mansfield & Barracuda P 11
Scale Staffel Model Airplane Club-FAC Squadron #41/AMA Chapter 915
Founded to encourage and advance the hobby of building and flying free-flight scale and sport airplanes Annual Dues: None Emailed Newsletter Subscription Fee: None (send your email address to [email protected]) Club Officers: President: John Hutchison 619-303-0785 Vice President: Bob Overcash 619-579-2174 Treasurer: Kathy McLaughlin 619-303-0785 Newsletter Editor: George Mansfield 858-453-3857 Indoor Flying Site: Grossmont College “Lower” Gym 8800 Grossmont College Drive First Sunday of every month, 9 am to 12 noon Zoom this page for clearer map details Outdoor Contest Site Map: Otay Mesa, San Diego, CA Flying field is on dirt road (southbound extension of Alta Road) see red star on map)
To Route 8
Lower Gym To Route 52
To Rte 805
