AMA News District XI - 2013/04
Mike Mosbrooker
Vice President [email protected] 533 Birch St., Oak Harbor WA 98277 Tel.: (360) 679-9139 www.amadistrict-xi.org
Free Flight overview
This month's column is about free flight (FF) in general, and specifically FF in parts of District XI. In contests, FF models are flown for duration. They may be powered or unpowered.
Common power types include:
- Gas
- Rubber
- CO2
- Electric (with a few variants)
In the AMA rule book there are:
- 41 Outdoor categories of aircraft events
- 24 Indoor categories
The AMA categories include the FAI categories flown in international competition. Each category may include subsets for Junior, Senior, and Open competitors, as well as up to three classes per event. For example, classes for indoor events specify the ceiling height of the facility. These numbers do not necessarily include categories developed by the Special Interest Groups, such as Nostalgia models, which includes aircraft and power plants from before 1956.
Personal recollections — 1/2A free flight
Early in my modeling career I was heavily into 1/2A FF. I generally built my own designs and they often did not last long. Maybe that is why as a young man I could start with a blank sheet of paper after school on Friday and fly the airplane on Sunday afternoon.
The flight profile then, as it is now, was to gain maximum altitude during the engine run and smoothly transition into glide mode when the engine stops. Under power, the airplane was intended to go as straight up as possible. Therein lay the problem.
There is a small difference between straight up and a slight deviation from vertical, which often brought the model back to the ground at a high rate of speed and then back to the blank sheet of paper.
There were two classes of people that were very popular at the outdoor flying site:
- Those with an automobile with running boards where a passenger could stand while chasing an airplane
- Those who were young, as I was, and who could chase models when the cars couldn't
Free Flight in Washington and Oregon (Bob Stalick)
Bob Stalick, an AMA Hall of Fame member and longtime member of the Willamette Modelers Club of Oregon (WMC), wrote about FF in Washington and Oregon:
"There are two active AMA-chartered FF clubs in the Northwest. One, SAM 8, is located in the Seattle area and for many years flew events at Harts Lake Prairie, Washington, at the military base now known as Joint Base Lewis McChord, a field which is currently unavailable. The other club is WMC, based in the mid-Willamette Valley about 65 miles south of Portland.
"WMC sponsors five indoor competitions each winter at the South Albany High School gym (a 36-foot-high ceiling Category II venue), and four outdoor contests. One is a small-field meet in the spring held at a large park near Bend, Oregon, and the other three are held in the fall, after the grass seed harvest, at one of several large fields near Tangent, Oregon.
"The Tangent-area contests are a mix of FAI, Nostalgia, AMA, and National Free Flight Society events, along with some local specialties such as Island Flyer and He Man HLG. A number of AMA records have been set at these venues.
"WMC also sponsors a couple of outdoor fun-flys each year in the spring, and hosts a Model Engine Collectors Association (MECA) Collectogether, an everyone-invited spaghetti feed, and an end-of-the-outdoor-season bean feed in the fall at the farm owned by club officers Glenn and Linda Grell.
"This year, WMC has taken on the sponsorship of the International Indoor Postal Contest, headed up by club member George Gilbert. Details about this event can be found on the WMC website. FF activities in Oregon are still strong, and the WMC will continue to sponsor FF events as long as the membership continues to support the activities."
Bob also sent a number of pictures showing models and modelers from the Northwest. One thing that is immediately apparent is the craftsmanship in the models. FF does not allow the "put-a-big-enough-engine-on-it-and-anything-will-fly" philosophy, as the photos show.
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
