In The Air - 2009/12

INtheAIR
AMA HEADQUARTERS AND MEMBER NEWS
December 2009 9
It’s rare for an official to host one
world-class event, much less two, as
IRCHA President Dave Millner has done.
As event director for the 2001 and 2009
F3C World Championships, both of which
were held at the AMA’s International
Aeromodeling Center in Muncie, Indiana, it
was great to see competitors and teams help
each other.
Pilots were focused on the flightline.
But when the flying was finished, they
became friends and tried to help each other
and enjoy each other’s company.
Dave said:
“After being involved in the model
helicopter community for more than 20
years now, I was able to witness some of
the most impressive flying ever seen. The
dedication, beauty, and grace that the top
world team competitors provided was
nothing less than magical.
“When you walk away from something
like this, you can’t help but reflect and
reconsider what you think to be top-level
flying up to that point.”
Dave was assisted by a group of
dedicated people from around the world,
the IRCHA community, and the people of
the Muncie area who work full-time for the
AMA but found it in their hearts to
volunteer after-hours. It was a pleasure
working with all of them.
The AMA Publications Department bent
over backward to put together a daily
newsletter that everyone at the event
received. It is also something that the entire
modeling community can enjoy; you can do
so at www.modelaircraft.org/
events/f3cwc.aspx.
Also on-site for the entire tournament
was the RunRyder crew of Mark and
Jocelyn Ryder. Check out www.run
ryder.com for tons of photos and video taken
of almost every pilot at the contest.
Dave Millner and I talked at length after
the F3C World Championship and the
IRCHA Jamboree, which began August 11,
were finished, and he was excited.
“Interest in contest flying appears to be
on the rise,” said Dave. “The international
flare of the Jamboree was evident with
registration signatures in no less than four
languages.”
Next year, the AMA Nats will end with
RC Helicopter in August and lead directly
into the IRCHA Jamboree. If you’ve been
tossing around the idea of coming to Muncie
for the Jamboree or the Nats, you can do
both in 2010.
Following is a list of people who had
integral roles in putting on the F3C World
Championship and a partial results list.
Directing the contest was a tremendous
amount of work, but it was all worth it.
Would Dave do it again? In a heartbeat!
FAI Jury: Horace Hagen (US), Dag Eckoff
(Norway), Jo Hallman (Great Britain)
FAI Judges: Phil Noel (Canada),
Manfred Dittmayer (Austria), Lucio
Della Toffola (Italy), Shigetada Taya
(Japan), Carl Otto Strandh (Sweden),
Dave Sellars (US), Giovanni Lo Furno
(Belgium), Stefan Wolf (Germany), Frits
van Laar (Netherlands), Juerg Schmitter
(Switzerland)
Assistant Event Director: Chuck Birt
Flightline Coordinators: Tom Johnson,
Tom Erb
Officials: Matt Kolarik, Daniel Hiatt,
Gordie Meade, Ben Minor, Dan Monroe
(also scoring), Steve Herring, Tim DiPeri,
John Zankl, Tim Dawson, Steve Barredo
AMA Headquarters Personnel: Technical
Director Greg Hahn; Colleen Peirce, FAI
coordinator; Michelle Lamb, Competitions
Department; Executive Director Jim Cherry
Individual Standings:
1. Hiroki Ito (Japan), World Champion:
2,974.49
2. Scott Gray (Canada): 2,969.811
3. Ennio Graber (Switzerland): 2,949.987
Team Standings:
1. US
2. Japan
3. Austria MA
—Craig Bradley
25 Years Ago in MA: December 1984
• The cover shows Dick Hanson
tweaking the needle of a four-stroke
engine that powers his Dalotel, with
which he placed second in the Sportsman
division of RC Sport Scale at the Reno,
Nevada, AMA Nats in 1984. John Worth
gives us an overview, and various writers
bring us extensive coverage of all the
Nats events.
• Doc Mathews’ 4-40 (plans 460) is this
month’s RC construction subject. The
lightweight model is designed for a .40
four-stroke engine and four-channel
control. The 57-inch-wingspan airplane
performs any aerobatic maneuver, yet it
is gentle enough for a beginner.
• The subject of this month’s CL
construction article is Douglas Dahlke’s
47-inch-span Trixter Barnstormer (plans
461). Lou Andrews designed this famous
Aerobatics model, which was kitted by
Paul K. Guillow. It is still an excellent
flier for .25-.35 engines.
• If you like rubber-powered FF Scale,
Bill Noonan’s construction article about
the Pomilio PE (plans 462) might be for
you. Spanning 31 inches, this model of
the World War I Italian reconnaissance
aircraft could be considered for the
Jumbo category.
• Bill Evans writes an article about how
to build a lightweight foam wing for the
Simitar Slow Motion, and Bud Chappell
instructs readers how to build a
lightweight
radial engine.
• New products
this month
include the latest
in RC fashion:
T-shirts, hats,
and jackets from
Tower Hobbies.
World Engines
is selling high-quality wood propellers in
sizes ranging from 9 x 4 to 20 x 10. Ikon
N’West is kitting the Fleetwings 40 and
the Travel Air 2000, each of which is $60,
and Midwest Products Company is selling
its Das Little Stik for $49.95. MA
—Rich LaGrange
AMA Librarian
F3C Blowout in the Midwest!
12sig1.QXD_00MSTRPG.QXD 10/23/09 9:05 AM Page 9
In addition to guest speakers and more than 200 exhibitors, Expo
goers will have the opportunity to see a 1/3-scale F-117 stealth fighter
that Rich Crupi, an AMA member from Hopkinsville, Kentucky,
built. Also on hand will be a massive 1955 Curtiss-Wright engine
provided by aerospace engineer and restorer Joe Boc.
Capt. Tom Huff graduated from the naval academy and realized his
dreams of becoming a fighter pilot and then test pilot, yet he has never
totally left behind his childhood love of RC.
“I never let go of the modeling bug,” he said. “I still enjoy RC and
Control Line and sharing that with my kids and my brother’s kids.”
Tom has landed F-18s on carriers at night, been shot at, and tested
jet fighters to the extreme, yet he still has the modeling bug.
“My interest really lies in trying to make an airplane fly as
perfectly as I can,” he said. “Building it straight, rigging it, taking
control slop out, tuning the engines, taking your flying skill to the next
level—those are the things that are really where my interests lie.”
Tom is the consummate Navy test pilot—a captain in the Naval
Test Wing based out of Patuxent River, Virginia. He was licensed to
fly an airplane before he could get his driver’s license.
His club, the Patuxent Aeromodelers, works with local youth,
guided by the national STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and
Math) guidelines, even bringing rocketry activities to his air base.
“In talking with youth, the conversation often goes to the sUAS
(small unmanned aerial systems),” said Tom. “If I had known how far
the technology could go when I was flying RC models, I would have
retired early to sell sUAS equipment to the military! Things are being
done now that we couldn’t have ever dreamed of back then.”
When it comes to rockets, not many people have more firsthand
experience than Robert “Hoot” Gibson. He is a five-time space shuttle
What do speed, testing, and stealth have in common? AMA Expo
2010!
If you’ve never been to the Academy’s huge West Coast event and
have been waiting for a “good” year to go, 2010 is it. If you have been
to one before and expect the January 8-10 extravaganza in Ontario,
California, to be identical to those in past years, think again!
“For just the price of admission, we’re offering the chance for
attendees to listen to and interact with several aviation luminaries,”
said Jeff Nance, AMA’s director of marketing and programs. “And
there will be things to see and do that will thrill modelers and anyone
interested in aviation and space.”
On Thursday and Friday, January 8-9, the Ontario Convention
Center’s stage will feature such notables as Robert “Hoot” Gibson,
five-time NASA space shuttle commander and inductee to the
Astronaut Hall of Fame; Jon Sharp, pilot, designer, and builder of the
record-setting Nemesis NXT full-scale racer; Capt. Tom Huff,
commander of the Naval Test Wing, Patuxent, Virginia; and Dan
Kreigh, senior structural engineer for Scaled Composites—an
aerospace and specialty composites development company.
On Sunday, January 10, attendees will get the opportunity to hear
from Burt Rutan, founder of Scaled Composites, who is famous for
his private citizen’s trip into space and his around-the-world-withoutrefueling
exploits. All of these accomplished aviators started out as
preadolescent aeromodelers and continue to enjoy our hobby.
INtheAIR
10 MODEL AVIATION
Bitten by the
Flying Bug as Youth
Expo
AMA
Features
Aviation Pioneers
“I never let go of the modeling bug. I still
enjoy RC and Control Line and sharing that
with my kids and my brother’s kids.”
—Capt. Tom Huff
Tom Huff enjoyed the precision of
Pattern flying with his Dalotel in
his youth.
Capt. Tom Huff is a Navy
test pilot and former
fighter pilot—and he still
flies RC and CL models.
He got the flying bug at
age 6.
12sig1.QXD_00MSTRPG.QXD 10/23/09 9:05 AM Page 10
He also participated in the investigation of
the Space Shuttle Challenger accident, and he
helped redesign and recertify the solid rocket
boosters.
pilot, a retired captain and naval aviator in the
US Navy, and a retired NASA astronaut.
Hoot entered active duty with the Navy in
1969 and saw duty aboard the USS Coral Sea
and USS Enterprise, flying combat missions
in Southeast Asia in the F-4 jet. He graduated
from the Navy Fighter Weapons School, also
known as “TOPGUN,” and has flown more
than 111 types of aircraft.
Selected by NASA in January 1978, Hoot
became an astronaut in August 1979 and flew
five missions: STS-41-B in 1984, STS-61-C
in 1986, STS-27 in 1988, STS-47 in 1992,
and STS-71 in 1995. One of those included a
successful night landing at Edwards Air Force
Base in California.
INtheAIR
December 2009 11
Left: Looking much older than a fifth-grader, Hoot Gibson was an
accomplished AMA pilot.
Above: Robert “Hoot” Gibson is a five-time commander and
pilot of the space shuttle, a member of the Astronaut Hall of
Fame, and a modeler who was bitten by the flying bug at age 8.
“We’d load up the station
wagon, and on Saturdays
throughout the summer,
it was down to the park,
eating peanut butter
sandwiches, and flying all
day long. Al l that I ’ve
done started with that.”
—Jon Sharp, designer
Famed aircraft designer Burt Rutan has airplanes
hanging in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.
The flying bug got him modeling at age 5.
As a young man, Burt Rutan
was an avid competitor—and
winner—in model aviation.
He met and idolized Werner
von Braun later in life.
Hoot has another claim to fame; in 2008,
he was a contestant on the television show
“Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?” He
became the first contestant to make it to the
$1 million question without using any of his
“cheats.” Hoot answered incorrectly, but all
of his prize money ($25,000) went to the
Astronaut Scholarship Foundation.
When it comes to fifth-graders and kids
of all ages, Hoot has advice for families
everywhere.
“I encourage all parents to get in there
with your kids, spread some glue, make the
parts, put it together, and go out and fly
airplanes,” he said. “It’s a community thing,
a family thing that’s educational, fun, and
12sig1.QXD_00MSTRPG.QXD 10/23/09 9:06 AM Page 11
INtheAIR
12 MODEL AVIATION
keeps your brains spinning trying to make
things go faster, fly better.”
Flying fast models has been a passion for
Jon Sharp, who said:
“I got started in Radio Control back in
the late ’50s. I flew all kinds of models I
built myself, having fun, building bigger,
faster airplanes. I raced Formula One and
some 40-sized also.
“Along the way, I worked at Lockheed
Martin, working on a whole bunch of
airplanes such as F-117, U-2, F-22, F-35,
and so many others. I just trace all that back
to those days of flying in the park with my
little Control Line airplane.
“We’d load up the station wagon, and on
Saturdays and throughout the summer, it was
down to the park, eating peanut butter
sandwiches and flying all day long. All that
I’ve done started with that.”
Going fast in competition carries over to
Jon’s aeromodeling. Stroking a model racer,
he said:
“This is an airplane that we’ve set
probably a half dozen speed records with.
We won three consecutive Reno National
Championships with it, and it’s gone over
409 miles an hour on the racecourse.
“All carbon fiber made from molds, my
wife and I built all the parts here in our
hangar. I trace it all back to those AMA
model airplane days. It’s all gotten me to
where I am today in aerospace.”
Burt Rutan is no stranger to outerspace or
to the AMA. He is an aviation innovator and
American aerospace engineer who is noted
for his originality in designing light, strong,
unusual-looking, energy-efficient aircraft. He
was also an AMA CL national champion in
1959 and 1960.
He is most famous for designing the
Voyager—the first airplane to fly around the
world without
stopping or
refueling—and the
suborbital
SpaceShipOne
spaceplane, which
was the first
privately funded
spacecraft to enter
the realm of space
twice within two
weeks.
Burt has four
aircraft on display in
the Smithsonian
National Air and
Space Museum:
SpaceShipOne,
Virgin Atlantic
GlobalFlyer, Voyager, and VariEze: one of
the most popular home-built aircraft ever
designed.
“I don’t ask someone to design something
unless he’s capable of going out in the shop
and building it with his own hands,” said
Burt. “If he’s overlooked something in design,
so that it’s a problem to build and fly, he will
feel it.”
His company in California, Scaled
Composites, is well known for hiring young
people who have unbridled enthusiasm and a
hands-on curiosity about how things work.
Burt said:
“They’re all smarter than I was at their
age, by leaps and bounds. We used to spend
25% of our time just writing software, so we
could analyze or predict performance. That’s
all changed. But if somebody is a competitive
modeler or into home-built airplanes, they’re
doers, and they go to the front of the line, in
my opinion.”
Dan Kreigh (pronounced “kray”) is
another Scaled Composites innovator, a
former childhood modeler, and a lifetime
AMA member. He showed up at Burt Rutan’s
company for an interview with a van full of
models. It was a big hit and he got the job.
“They saw my passion for building model
airplanes and I saw that the kind of
construction they did at Scaled was not much
different,” said the trained aerospace engineer.
“I still do models 20 years later.”
What fires Dan’s jets these days is his
longtime passion for designing a workable
flying car—or, as he also calls it, a “roadable
airplane.” Dan said:
“One of the things that was kind of
bothering me about home-built airplanes is
that people spend an awful lot of money on
hangars for airplanes to just sit. But do you
take the wings with you or leave them
behind? Three or four wheels? One engine or
two? And the landing gear is the most
challenging thing for me.”
While Dan is working on this tricky
project, he has found success in a more
modest endeavor: designing one of the first
aerobatic indoor model airplanes, called the
IFO, or Indoor Flying Object.
“I demonstrated the IFO to a group of
indoor flyers out of Burbank,” he recalls.
“They’d never seen an outside loop done
indoors. I did a few rolls and landed it, and
they were just, like, quiet. Then everybody
just broke out into applause.”
Joe Boc will be available to attendees
throughout the Expo. He builds such
authentic models of full-scale aircraft that he
was asked to create airplanes for the awardwinning
2004 movie, The Aviator. The
biopic on Howard Hughes featured Joe’s
models of the H-1 and the Spruce Goose.
Joe restores old airplane engines, and he
is bringing a huge 18-cylinder Curtiss-
Wright to display at the Expo. Built in the
mid-1950s for Howard Hughes’ TWA
Lockheed Constellation, the 3,800-
horsepower, turbo-compound power plant
was the latest in piston technology; it was the
furthest that technology had progressed
before turbines and jets.
“When people see this, they go
absolutely nuts!” he said.
With more than 200 exhibitors, numerous
engaging displays, and this cadre of aviation
trailblazers, the 2010 AMA Expo will have
something for everyone to see, learn, and do
on a massive scale. It’s the largest
aeromodeling exposition in the country and
should not be missed by anyone who has a
love of flight. MA
—AMA Headquarters
Dan Kreigh, senior structural designer at
Scaled Composites, holds one of his IFOs—
Indoor Flying Object—one of the first
models to perform outdoor aerobatics
indoors. He was bitten by the flying bug at
age 5.
Jon Sharp, who got the flying bug at age 6, designed the recordsetting,
full-scale Nemesis NXT racer. He won numerous titles
and set records at this year’s Reno Super Sport races.
“They saw my passion for
building model airplanes,
and I saw that that the kind
of construction they did at
Scaled [Composites] was
not much different. I still
do models 20 years later.”
—Dan Kreigh,
aerospace engineer
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