District IX
Contact
Jim Wallen, District IX Vice President [email protected]
States
- Colorado
- Kansas
- Nebraska
- North Dakota
- South Dakota
- Wyoming
Bruce Ream, the Associate Vice President (AVP) from Colorado, and Jim Tiller, AVP from South Dakota, accompanied me to our last Executive Council meeting in Muncie, Indiana. We had a great opportunity to tour the facility and attend two days of meetings with the council. Both found the trip to be informative and very enlightening. If you get the opportunity to chat with Bruce or Jim in the near future, pick their brain a little bit. I am sure they now have some new and refreshing outlooks about the very positive workings of the Academy.
Club Corner
Mike Brink of Arvada Associated Modelers brings us a great idea about working with your local hobby store to create interest and grow membership:
"Hobby Town USA owner Gary Kolm and Justin Mueller, owner/manager, have been staunch supporters of our club for some time with club donations, club activities, club newsletter advertising, and several special sales for AMA members.
"Right in the middle of the aircraft department of the store stands the popular RealFlight Simulator. This display is very popular with the customers and is almost always in use. Gary and Justin have allowed us to put one of our club information pamphlet holders on the simulator.
"We use a six-part colored folder with all of the pertinent information about our club such as location of the field, time, date and place of our meetings, training night information, AMA information, and a lot of other information requested by people over several years by those that show an interest in our hobby.
"What is the next project of help and support from these guys? Gary and Justin are planning to send all of their employees to a training night at the field to learn hands-on about flying.
"Most all of their employees are already versatile in RC but only in cars, not planes. Now that is what I call support! Does it work? As of our last club meeting we had 14 new members. Although there is no way of telling if that increase was due entirely to the display, you can be sure it does help!"
Remember, keep the sunscreen on to keep the cancer off!
Autogyros
On one of my trips to my old home state of Nebraska, I had the opportunity to meet a fellow from the Omahawks (Omaha, Nebraska) named Joe Cole. Joe was flying some very interesting aircraft called autogyros. In case you are not familiar with them, an autogyro—also known as a gyroplane, gyrocopter, or rotaplane—is a type of rotorcraft that utilizes an unpowered rotor in autorotation to develop lift, and an engine-powered propeller, similar to that of a fixed-wing aircraft, to provide thrust.
Joe promotes and advertises autogyro flying at air shows and flying clubs. If you have questions about autogyros, email Joe at [email protected], check out his blog at http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1224813, or watch a video of his maiden flight at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DFmBrlun3g.
What a diverse hobby we have chosen!
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
