district report and events that cater to your
specialty in the back of every issue.
I personally read everything in an issue
(including the rotor-winged stuff) because
you never know where you will find that
valuable information. Who knows, maybe
you will pick up an interest in another part of
the hobby?
The second challenge would be to join
your SIG (Special Interest Group) and read
magazines that specialize in helicopters such
as Model Helicopter World International or
Rotorworld. It is pretty unrealistic to expect a
publication that has such a diverse readership
as MA to be able to give you all the
information that you need or want.
If I were to have one wish for MA it would
be that every section of the hobby got a
couple of measly pages every month. (If you
haven’t noticed, some groups only get a
column every other month, and those are
fixed-wing related.)
I know you are saying to yourself that
these are fringe groups that are not as popular
(fewer participating members), but to these
people it is as important as helicopters are to
you. I know this wish is unrealistic due to
multiple constraints, but we can dream, can’t
we?
The last thing I would like to do is to give
all the people who make MA possible a pat on
the back. You probably don’t get the
recognition you deserve for putting it
together. You do a great job of doing the
impossible: trying to please a wide group of
people. Keep it up!
Eddie Graves
Tacoma, Washington
Satisfaction Guaranteed
As a Slope Soaring flier in Southern
California, I found the article on Brian Laird
in the “RC Slope Soaring” segment of the
April issue very well done.
In the article, Brian alludes to a “guy” who
hung out at Bluff Cove who made his own
airplanes and showed Brian how to cut foam
wing cores and make plugs and molds for
fiberglass fuselages. The name of this “guy”
is Jerry Tucker.
He was a crusty old character and a
regular fixture at Bluff Cove. He was
constantly trying different things and over the
years evolved a lot of the building techniques
we still use today.
In addition to the ones Brian mentioned,
vacuum-bagging wings and the use of carbon
fiber are a few. Although he made Slopers of
P-51s, Reno Racers, and Delta jets, his
signature airplane was the F-20.
I thought credit should be given to Jerry
for showing so many of us some really neat
model building techniques and the
satisfaction of designing and building an
airplane totally from scratch.
Jim Randall
Palos Verdes, California
The Challenge Is …
The negative letters and comments about
the lack of special interest coverage published
lately in MA are all missing the point.
The enjoyment of aeromodeling has
nothing to do with your choice of power. It’s
about how well you overcome our common
enemy: the forces of gravity and drag.
Producing flight with lift and thrust, that’s the
challenge.
Look at the list of columns. None have a
specific relation to power source. I can’t think
of one that excludes any power source, so all
of them are potential sources of education and
enjoyment for a reader.
Okay, most of them are specific to RC, but
that addresses the third unspoken challenge,
which is how well do you emulate our fullscale
brethren in flight? Radio control’s
popularity is a direct result of this emulation.
No full-scale aircraft I know of uses taut lines
from the ground to maintain control and
certainly none use no control at all!
This does not diminish the efforts of the
CL and FF enthusiasts. As a matter of fact,
these segments of the hobby require even
more engineering skill and daring than any
RC segment ever will.
When’s the last time you intentionally sent
an airplane into the sky with just elevator or
no control form you after launch? In RC you
call that a crash. In CL or FF it’s a way of life.
The letter from Chris Nenzel in the March
issue was heartening in that he did come back
to the hobby, but he is very much a minority
in that regard. I, too, remember struggling
with an RTF from Cox. In fact, lots of people
have the same memories.
Most of them never caught “the bug” that
I still have today. For me, the enjoyment
began that day and has not stopped since.
I have always enjoyed the challenge of
building and flying models and overcoming
the two forces of evil mentioned earlier. I
have always considered the AMA as a partner
in lockstep with me in my quest. I read every
article in MA with interest because I know
there may be something in there that I can use
in my next project or the idea for a whole new
project.
Thank you, AMA, for being there for me,
my son, and for my grandchildren. Keep your
focus where it always has been: the
enjoyment and advancement of aeromodeling
from every possible angle of attack.
Frank Mintz
Springfield, Virginia
Hooray for SPA
In mid-March I had the distinct pleasure
and honor of flying precision Aerobatics with
some really great guys with the Senior Pattern
Association. After a 15-year absence from RC
I rejoined the sport again just two years ago,
hoping to pick up and start anew.
So many things in my absence had
changed! 3-D, ARF, and Li-Poly were all
being spoken to this re-newbie.
Changes to our sport as far as I could tell
were for the better, but I wasn’t hearing about
the Pattern flying that I used to admire from
afar. I had flown in only two contests “back in
the day” before life diverted me from the
sport, so as I returned I longed to get back
into Pattern.
After a little research I discovered the SPA
and what its mission is. That brings me back
Aero Mail
Continued from page 7
to my opening sentence.
I spent that day in March trying to figure
out if I belonged in the SPA, and my
conclusion was “landing perfection.” For
anyone who loves to fly the old sequences
with an airplane that is modest in cost, yet high
in value, then this could be the place for you.
Those guys who attended the clinic in
Guntersville, Alabama, and shared with me
their tricks, humor, and sportsmanship make
me proud to be SPA 347. MA
Mike Robinson
Dalton, Georgia
that AMA could provide is staggering to
imagine. What if the rules cycle could be
shortened from three years to one? Effective
and efficient communication may allow that.
Working in the best interest of the
membership is what AMA is organized to do.
In this day and age, and for the future, the
Academy could serve the modeler even better if
it provided this online service.
One of my initiatives being exercised with
the magazine is that any feature article or event
that reflects AMA’s service will be highlighted
in that article as a reminder of what AMA is
doing for us. The notice will be a sidebar in the
article titled “AMA’s Take.” After all, it’s good
for the membership to be reminded of what its
community is doing to make the hobby more
enjoyable.
If there is a particular article that reminded
you or inspired you to take advantage of
AMA’s services, I ask that you please contact
me so we can share your story with the rest of
the membership. I can be reached by phone, Email,
or the postal service. We’ll discuss the
topic, and about three months down the road
perhaps some of those ideas will start showing
up in the magazine.
That’s the way we’ve been able to
communicate for decades, and I want it to
continue. But let’s go back to the Internet idea
and think for a moment how much faster and
more efficiently current events could be shared.
It’s as simple as point and click. Because
it’s so simple, millions (even billions) of people
have included the Internet in their daily lives.
It’s as natural as evolution, and people deserve
to have easy access to a hobby that gives them
so much fulfillment.
The magazine is a dominant voice of the
aeromodeling community, but AMA should
also have a dominant online voice if it hopes to
gain contact with the millions of people who
could connect with the hobby.
How many people think it would be great if
AMA had its own online forum? An AMA
forum could grow into a resource that not only
discussed association topics, but also shared
everything about aeromodeling. The
information online would be up to date and not
only bind the different segments of the hobby
together, but also connect the nationwide
community.
I know that being a member of this
association is an honor, and it makes me part of
something very big. I think an online voice
would enable AMA to maintain its community
and better service its membership. MA
Modeling Spoken Here
Continued from page 6
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