Author: Mark Radcliff
Edition: Model Aviation - 2013/04
Page Numbers: 140

AMA News District III - 2013/04

Mark Radcliff — Vice President

Indoor flying

As I write this in the eastern half of the country, we are in the middle of winter. The weather usually isn’t good for outdoor flying, so we turn our attention to building and indoor flying.

In District III, we have a couple of large events. One is the JR Indoor in Columbus and the newest is the Holiday Electric Indoor Fly-In in Geneva, Ohio. I attended both of these great events.

The Geneva event was sponsored by the Mentor Area Radio Control Society (MARCS) with District III Associate Vice President Tony Husak as Contest Director (CD). This gathering had more than 250 registered pilots. It is a sight to see and fun to fly inside the huge Geneva Sports Complex.

Something new this year was the first U.S.-sanctioned F3P competition. What is F3P? Basically, it’s indoor aerobatics. Yes, pattern flying is now being performed indoors.

Many of you have seen the Electric Tournament of Champions (ETOC) held at the Toledo Show and have been amazed by the models and pilots. F3P is similar in that you have a known routine that everyone flies and then an aerobatic musical flight similar to the flying done at ETOC.

The incredibly lightweight airplanes are made of foam, carbon fiber, and other materials and feature thrust vectoring, contra-rotating props, and reverse-pitch propellers.

The F3P World Championship will be held in Germany this year. The event in Geneva, Ohio, was the first step required for the U.S. to eventually field an international team, probably in 2015. I was privileged to help judge this event and, from what I saw, the future looks bright for the U.S. in international F3P competition.

Tea time

Those of us who have been involved in this hobby for many years and have club events such as fun-flys, contests, cookouts, etc., realize that we rely on the ladies of the club to help with these important events that keep our clubs happy and healthy. The women of the Greater Pittsburgh ARCS took time away from working club picnics, competitions, the smell of balsa, and the sound of engines, and treated themselves to an October Saturday afternoon high tea.

Hats and gloves could be worn, and the ladies were decked out in their best jewels, enjoying little finger tea sandwiches, scrumptious scones, and pastries while sipping their favorite tea during conversation and camaraderie. As you can see, they had fun.

I urge all clubs to think about the ladies of our clubs and suggest they do something like this for some fun away from our modeling activities. Remember, “If momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy!”

District III website

Last year we launched a new, redesigned website. Webmaster Roger Luther is doing a great job of keeping information current. Roger and I would like to ask a favor of everyone in District III.

Please visit www.amadistrict-iii.com and go to your club’s web page information. Look it over. Is the information correct? If you don’t see your club information or something needs corrected, please contact Roger at [email protected] so he can update the information.

If you have upcoming events or have pictures from an event that your club had, please contact Roger. While visiting the site, please sign the guestbook. We would love to hear from you!

The website is a great communication tool for our district and I encourage everyone to use it.

Until next month, see you in Toledo!

Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.