COORDINATOR: TBD

PILOT MEETING: 10:00 AM

LOCATION: Sod Farm

The December contest was cancelled by consensus at the December meeting. A poll of members present at the meeting resulted in no monthly club contests until April, 2006.

from the National Weather Service Web site

Wind chill is not the actual temperature but rather how wind and cold feel on exposed skin. As the wind increases, heat is carried away from the body at an accelerated rate, driving down the body temperature.

Exposure to cold can cause frostbite or hypothermia and become life-threatening. Infants and elderly people are most susceptible. What constitutes extreme cold varies in different parts of the country. In the South, near freezing temperatures are considered extreme cold. In the North, extreme cold means temperatures well below zero                                     

      .

Frostbite is damage to body tissue caused by extreme cold. A wind chill of -20° Fahrenheit (F) will cause frostbite in just 30 minutes. Frostbite causes a loss of feeling and a white or pale appearance in extremities, such as fingers, toes, ear lobes or the tip of the nose. If symptoms are detected, get medical help immediately. If you must wait for help, slowly rewarm affected areas.

However, if the person is also showing signs of hypothermia, warm the body core before the extremities.

Hypothermia is a condition brought on when the body temperature drops to less than 95°F. It can kill. For those who survive, there are likely to be lasting kidney, liver and pancreas problems.

Warning signs include uncontrollable shivering, memory loss, disorientation, incoherence, slurred speech, drowsiness, and apparent exhaustion. Take the person's temperature. If below 95°F, seek medical care immediately. If medical care is not available, warm the person slowly, starting with the body core. Warming the arms and legs first drives cold blood toward the heart and can lead to heart failure. If necessary, use your body heat to help. Get the person into dry clothing and wrap him/her in a warm blanket covering the head and neck.

Do not give the person alcohol, drugs, coffee or any hot beverage or food. Warm broth is the first food to offer.

ECCO 8 Electric helicopter

Cost $189.00 selling for $100.00

3D Kit — T3D, 35 inch wingspan

For speed 500 or brushless motor

Selling for $40.00

Pilatus Porter — Dumas Kit Park Flyer

45 inch wingspan, elevator, rudder, throttle

Selling for $30.00

Contact Tom Blaszak

313.248.1915 Days

313.585.3351 Evenings

FINAL ANNUAL POINTS 2005

Any volunteers for contest coordinator in 2006?

The schedule is posted and if you would like to pick a date let me know.

Norm Sorensen

nlsorensen@aol.com

248 347 1160

by Jack Frost, Education Coordinator

Does your club hold a training night on a regular basis to help new club members learn to fly? What kind of training is accomplished during these sessions?

Many clubs hold training sessions at regular intervals during the flying season, and most training seems to consist of getting into the air and back on the ground with a flyable aircraft. I’ve seen takeoffs, circles, horizontal eights, loops, rolls, and landings practiced. Is this really enough?

I know that some clubs must do this, but I have never personally seen any club provide a ground school before a newbie was allowed to put his or her airplane in the air. I’ve seldom seen flight emergencies such as out-of- trim airplanes, failed servos, or even engine-out emergencies taught or practiced.

I’ve seldom seen anyone practicing crosswind take-offs and landings, yet students are signed off as solo pilots without this training.

I have seen newly soloed pilots crash aircraft unnecessarily because of fairly routine problems. I have even seen airplanes crashed in low crosswind situations because the pilots were never trained to fly in the wind.

Some might say that it is too hard to learn all of these things; this hobby is supposed to be fun, not work. I can understand that, but I also feel that learning to be a proficient and safe pilot doesn’t have to be work. It can be

fun.

I know that not everyone is into competition, but we can all still learn things from competitors. Watch the way a competitor practices. I don’t care if it is RC Pattern, or CL Stunt, they all have one thing in common: purposeful flight. They fly with specific goals in mind. They practice until they have mastered those goals. Should we be any less demanding of ourselves as instructors or students?

by Jay Mealy, AMA Programs Director

Much has been written about safety. As it relates to model aircraft activities, safety is a word that is used in almost every paragraph written or conversation spoken. It is a must use word in our area of interest—if for no other reason than it sounds good.

But what does safety really mean when it comes to keeping a flying field?

In the Webster’s New World Dictionary, safety is defined as “the quality or condition of being safe; freedom from danger, injury, or damage; security.” Good definition. It sounds right, and pretty much describes the condition we would expect to find at a safe flying field.

However, is that the only definition of safety? Hasn’t Mr. Webster pretty much nailed it? Doesn’t that say it all? The answer is no!

Let’s set up a scenario. Say there are five other people at your flying field, and if you ask each one of them what his or her definition of safety is you would get five different answers. So now Mr. Webster has five other definitions to compete with plus yours which makes six. What I’m getting at is that there are probably as many definitions for safety as there are people.

You may say, “Maybe we can’t define safety, but we all know what it is,” or “You have to be safe so you can enjoy your hobby without getting hurt,” or even “You must be safe so others are not fearful of not enjoying their flying activities because of your unsafe behavior or vise versa.”

What we are really bringing to light is that safety is nebulous. It’s a tough concept to get your arms around and even tougher to appreciate, comprehend, and most importantly to

put into action. For the time being; however, let’s assume

that everyone has a good grasp of what safety is all about and return to our original question of what safety means when it comes to keeping a flying site.

There are two problems clubs are faced with: external problems and internal problems. External problems are those involving neighbors, community, or any entity outside the club that may pose a problem that the club cannot control. On the other hand, internal problems are those such as “How do we get more members to the meetings,” or “What is the best way to keep the gophers off the runway?”

When a call comes into the AMA Headquarters from a club with an internal problem, the number one item of discussion is safety. Maybe there’s a member who never quite got the hang of making right turns so he flies behind the flightline and over the pits.

Or perhaps there’s a show boater who ignores the field rules to selfishly fulfill some personal need for attention. We all could add to this list and we have all experienced this type of behavior. The clubs that recognize this behavior as inappropriate and call for assistance are the clubs that survive. We can provide recommendations about how to correct such problems and provide examples of what other clubs have done in similar situations. The clubs that allow this type of behavior to continue unchecked are possibly setting a course for extinction.

The majority of modelers operates in a safe manner and is uncomfortable with the unsafe actions of others. If the club as a whole is not doing anything to end unsafe actions, then the members will begin to compensate for their discomfort in their own ways.

Unsafe flight operations are like a rust spot on your car. If you don’t take steps to eliminate the rust it will eventually consume your entire car or at least make it unusable. The same thing can happen to a club and its flying site.

It begins subtly. The number of active fliers at the field on any given day starts to decrease, fewer members show up at club meetings, and less people participate in club functions.

Members may start participating at other club sites or just decide to back off flying their models for awhile. Whatever their cure, they are going to pursue it because they are not having good, safe fun at their own flying site.

The negative results of unsafe flying practices can take many forms but the end results are the same: loss of a club, loss of a flying site, or heaven forbid, something much worse. For these reasons it is imperative for clubs—and all members—to take a strong position when it comes to safety at the club field. Don’t allow people to do dumb things in the air, on the flightline, in the pits, or anywhere else.

Clubs that operate safely have more fun, make more friends within the club and within their communities, and virtually guarantee their longevity and success.

If you would like to be part of the Flying Site Assistance column in Model Aviation, please feel free to share any success stories—or not-so-successful stories—with Joe Beshar and Wes De Cou. Often the successes and/or mistakes of others can be learning experiences for us all.

by David Nuetzel, RCAM president

I started a log, which started the whole world crying! A joke, right? No, not a joke.

I hope the Bee Gees don’t mind me misusing a line from one of their songs, but my memory of the past is in constant flux if I don’t write it down. The memory of crashing an airplane could very well become a “halfway decent save” a couple of years down the road. History has a way of always changing. There is no stopping that.

As long as people are willing to study it, it will keep changing. Some day that long sought after, critical piece of evidence will surface that proves either the Australians or Lieutenant Brown shot down the Red Baron. Until then, you can take your pick. With each different viewpoint taken, George Washington’s historic image can go from semi-god to great leader, but would his image have been diminished if his personal letters to Martha were not destroyed?

The term historiography is not in my 20 year old dictionary, so my unofficial definition of the word is that it is the study of historical viewpoints that make up history.

History is therefore made of viewpoints that are voiced and heard or read by the historian. Who is to say that there wasn’t an irritated farmer near the western front taking pot shots at the red triplane and exclaimed, “I got him.” His story will never muddy the history of the death of the Red Baron because he only told the story to his wife, and she didn’t believe him anyway.

Accurate history is very hard to come by. The most accurate history is recorded immediately after the event and includes as many view points as possible (or at least the viewpoint that has the greatest following). Then we record the history of that event to give praise to the good and study the bad or to learn from our mistakes.

We all make mistakes and would probably rather forget them. The downside is that we will most likely repeat those mistakes if we don’t deal with them. The most costly mistakes are those we deal with the quickly. A series of little mistakes that lead to a bigger mistake is much harder to correct or learn from because the first couple of mistakes become insignificant in our memory and forgotten. We find ourselves thinking, “If only I had recorded these events with their minor problems, I could figure this out.”

Logbooks or journals are not for everyone. It would be another obstructive task during the flying day (like cleaning the airplane). Then there is the problem of forgetting to write in your logbook/journal. Here’s a tip to help you keep from forgetting: If you rubber band your wing on, put one of the cleaner bands on your wrist when you disassemble the airplane at the end of the day. Don’t take the band off until you have written in your logbook.

You can record what you like, but I like to record an overall view of the day. Including the field I flew, weather conditions, and what airplane I flew—a couple of sentences about each flight and how long they lasted. The more accurate the information, the more it can help you later on. Knowing how humidity levels effect the mixture setting on your engine from past experience, can allow you to set your mixture properly before you take off.

They can also give you an accurate record of usage. You’ll know if an engine has had 1,000 flights or if a flight pack has been fast or field charged more than 100 times. You could keep a record of how your batteries have performed on the cycler in the back of your log book instead of sticking post-it notes all over your workbench.

Information such as this can add a level of safety to your flying. It’s also a fun way to look back. Going back in your log and finding a picture that your flying buddy gave you brings a smile to your face instead of wrinkles on your forehead from trying to remember. Now this is time well spent, and it’s not just another task at the end of the flying day.

from the Roxbury Area Model Airplane Club, Roxbury NJ