Free Flight Duration - 2010/05

Chinmay Jaju has good reason to smile; he made the Junior team
for the second time, in F1P Power. The FF World Championship is
this August in Romania.
2010 Junior FF world team
[[email protected]]
Free Flight Duration Louis Joyner
Also included in this column:
• 2009 America’s Cup winners
• Coupe front ends
• Rising off of water
Andrew Barron won F1A Glider in the multicontest, yearlong
America’s Cup for 2009. Results for the other classes are in the
column.
At the 2009 Nats, Oliver Cai checks out the air while his mom, Anna Chen, holds his
F1A Towline Glider. Oliver is one of three 2008 fliers who will repeat as members of
the 2010 Junior team.
EVERY TWO YEARS young modelers
gather from around the world for the FF
Junior World Championship. This year the
contest will be held in Salonta, Romania,
August 1-7. The US team members are:
• F1A Towline Glider: Oliver Cai, Miles
Johnson, Logan Tetrick
• F1B Wakefield Rubber: Brede Doerner,
Sevak Malkhasyan, Brian Pacelli
• F1P Power: Chinmay Jaju, Taron
Malkhasyan, Brian Pacelli
Oliver, Chinmay, and Brian were on the
2008 team. Then Brian was flying F1P; this
time he is doubling up, flying both F1B and
F1P. George Batiuk will again serve as team
manager.
To be selected, members had to make a
75-minute qualification time and compete in
two contests, for a total of 14 rounds of
flying, at the 2009 AMA Nats. Contestants
flew in the special Junior Team Selection
Contest on Sunday before the Nats and then
against Open-class modelers during the event.
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May 2010 121
To give you an idea of the level of flying these
Juniors do, Miles Johnson placed third in F1A—
18 seconds beyond the Open winner. Oliver Cai, a
fellow F1A team member, was sixth, finishing
less than a minute off of first-place pace.
Although the AMA offers support for airfare
and entry fees, the Junior team can use your
financial aid to help defray some of the costs of
competing in a contest in Europe. Donations can
be made to the AMA Junior Free Flight Fund.
If you are, or a Junior you know is, interested
in trying to make the 2012 FF team, check the
National Free Flight Society (NFFS) Web site for
information about rules and team selection
procedures. A considerable amount of help,
including kits and engines, is available to
qualifying Juniors, who are as old as 18 according
to the FAI classification.
The America’s Cup offers a multicontest format
that encourages modelers from the US, Canada,
and Mexico to compete in as many as 30 events
across North America. Points are awarded at each
contest, with a first receiving 25, second 20, third
15, fourth 10, and fifth 5.
Additional points are awarded depending on
the number of fliers in the event. The best results
from four contests are counted.
To encourage travel, only two competitions at
any one site can be counted; the other two results
must be from two other sites. In case of ties,
results from more contests are counted. You can
find detailed rules for the America’s Cup on the
NFFS Web site.
The America’s Cup winners for 2009 are: F1A
Towline Glider, Andrew Barron; F1B Wakefield
Rubber, Blake Jensen; F1C Power, Mike Roberts;
F1P Power, Dave Rounsaville; F1G Coupe, Mark
Belfield; F1H Towline Glider, Brian Van Nest;
F1J Power, Austin Gunder; F1Q Electric, Bernie
Crowe; and F1E Glider, Peter Brocks.
Results in all events were close. Only a point
separated first and second places in F1B and F1P,
and there was a 2-point spread in F1A. There
were three-way ties in F1G and F1H. The biggest
spread between first and second places was 6
points. In most events it took more than 100
points to win.
The America’s Cup, which the Southern
California Aero Team created and its president,
Jim Parker, administered, also recognizes the topplacing
Junior fliers in each event. For 2009, they
are Timothy Barron in F1A, Brian Pacelli in F1B, Brian Pacelli in F1P,
Sevak Malkhasyan in F1G, Miles Johnson in F1H, and Brian Pacelli in
F1J.
Last year was busy for Brian. His F1P score placed him third overall
in the America’s Cup standings for that event. Another Junior flier,
Taron Malkhasyan, placed fourth overall in F1P.
Coupe Front Ends: At the Nats last summer, I noticed a neatly
machined front end on Sergio Montes’s F1G Coupe model. A front end
is what we used to call a nose block. Instead of the bent wire, solder, and
plywood of old, the new front ends are typically machined-aluminum
marvels of engineering, and they usually mate with a turned-aluminum
nose ring fitted into a carbon-fiber or aramid motor tube.
This one was different. It featured turned and machined-aluminum
parts, a torque-actuated Montreal stop, and wire outriggers for the
propeller blades. But it was fitted into an old-fashioned plywood piece
that plugged into a rolled-balsa motor tube. Sergio told me that a fellow
Chilean, Edgardo Figueroa, made the Coupe’s machined front end.
For many years, Sergio has been in Australia, where he edits
Free Flight Quarterly. This year he is the editor of the NFFS
Symposium Report.
I followed up with an e-mail to Edgardo. He replied:
Edgardo Figueroa’s neatly made Rubber model front end has a torque-actuated
Montreal propeller stop and wire outriggers to support folding blades. Fitting at end
of each outrigger allows blade angle adjustment.
The ROW event is fun to watch. At the 2009 Nats, Bob Placier flew a Cox TDpowered
Hydro-Star: Sal Taibi’s 1960s ROW design.
Arnold Waldner flies a Bob Hatschek Spit Ball design from the early
1950s. It uses a single front float and anhedral stabilizer, to give
fuselage clearance for twin rear floats.
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“My front ends can take motors of more
than 16 strands of 3x1mm rubber; some
people have used them in Vintage rubber
models. Shaft and hook are 2mm diameter
piano wire, running directly in plastic
bushings or in ball bearings if demanded. One
design is fixed pitch, the other is variable
pitch.
“Prop hangers are 1/16 inch music wire
with the blade hinges at 40mm radius or any
other if specified by the customer. The front
end can be made to fit into any size nose ring
or motor tube.
“Weight ranges from 8.6 grams for the
fixed-pitch unit to 12 grams for the VP unit.
Since I am only an artisan (retired mechanic) I
don’t make them massively, only a few dozen
per year.”
The custom-made aspect of the front ends
would be a big advantage. With most readymade
Coupe front ends, you have to use a
matching nose ring, motor tube, connector,
and tailboom.
With Edgardo’s unit, you can have it sized
to fit any motor tube or, as Sergio did, have it
made to insert into a conventional plywood
nose block. This opens up all sorts of
possibilities, such as using it for small Rubber
models with built-up, square fuselages such as
Mulvihill or Old-Timer designs.
The torsion-activated Montreal propeller
stop would provide a more positive stopping
action than the traditional tension stop. This is
especially important for models with short
noses and long blades; tension-type stops
often lead to bad folds, with one propeller
blade caught on the wing and spoiling the
glide. The propeller outriggers could also be
made long enough to clear the larger fuselage
that is often encountered on older designs.
If you have ordered the two-volume
Coupe d’Hiver (F1G) Survey 2009 from
Free Flight Quarterly, you can find an
excellent article by Edgardo on his Coupe
design philosophy, as well as three-views
of one of his F1G designs.
For more information about the Coupe
front ends, you can e-mail Edgardo. He also
produces Kevlar motor tubes, lightweight
clockwork timers, and other items for the
Rubber flier.
Because natural disasters have been in the
news so much lately, I sent a message to
Edgardo about the massive earthquake that hit
Chile at the end of February. He replied:
“Thanks a lot for your concern about me
and my country. We shall prevail as we have
done from long time ago. Is a large one, this
one [earthquake], but we will remake the
country.”
Rising off of Water: In the old days of Navy
Nats, rise-off water (ROW) drew many
entries and even more spectators. For many of
us, ROW was a last-minute thing. Floats were
made the night before in the work hangar and
strapped onto whatever Gas model was at
hand.
Floats added not only weight, but also lots
of extra drag, so both climb and glide were
adversely affected. But getting the model off
of the water and into the air was the first
problem and the reason for the crowds of
spectators.
Given a too-hard push, the model could
turn into a submarine. Or torque could take
over, causing the water equivalent of a ground
loop. However, the worst scenario was for the
aircraft to skim along the top of the water until
it hit the edge on the other side of the ROW
tank.
The best advice I received about the event
was to hold the model by the wing centersection
and push the front float completely
under water, being careful not to let the
propeller tip hit the surface. Then release the
model without a push. If done properly, the
front float would pop completely out of the
water and the model would be airborne.
That did work for me at the 1961 Nats,
flying a cutdown 1/2A Zeek powered by a
Cox Space Hopper and ballasted up to close
to 9 ounces, to meet FAI Power rules. By the
time the ROW event rolled around, my 1/2A
FAI airplane was the only model I had left.
Its weight exceeded 10 ounces with floats,
but at least it got off of the water. The glide
was another matter. Anyway, it was enough
for third in Junior ROW.
A few people developed purpose-built
ROW designs throughout the years. The Spit
Ball by Bob Hatschek was featured in Frank
Zaic’s 1951-52 Model Aeronautic Year Book.
Designed for a .045 cu. in. Spitfire engine, the
model spanned only 30 inches projected.
In 2006, Bob’s club, the Brooklyn
Skyscrapers, selected the Spit Ball for its onedesign
model, to celebrate the group’s 70th
anniversary. The airplane could be flown in
Pee Wee 30, Early Nostalgia Gas, ROW, and
1/2A Gas.
You can read more about the Spit Ball in
the Issue 1, Winter 2006 edition of Skylines,
which is the Skyscrapers’ newsletter. It is
available on the club’s Web site.
A later ROW-specific design came from
one of the Skyscrapers club founders: Sal
Taibi. His Hydro-Star was a 280-square-inch
design with a 43-inch wingspan. It was a
popular kit in the 1960s, both for ROW or,
with floats removed, for 1/2A Gas. Plans and a
short kit are available from Bob Holman
Plans.
Errata: As several readers have pointed out,
my February column about carving propellers
used the wrong term for the trigonometric
function used to find the blade angle,
knowing the height and width of the block. It
should have read “arctangent” instead of
“cotangent.”
The arctangent is what you get by pushing
the second function key and then the “Tan”
(tangent) key on a scientific calculator. I was
getting the correct answer (26.57° in the
example in the article) but using incorrect
terminology.
In the same column, I forgot to include
a mailing address for Alan Abriss’s
Homegrown Productions. He wants to
accommodate MA readers who do not have
Internet access so they can order the Nats
video. His information is in the source
listing. MA
Sources:
National FF Society
www.freeflight.org
Edgardo Figueroa
[email protected]
Free Flight Quarterly
www.freeflightquarterly.com
Brooklyn Skyscrapers
www.brooklynskyscrapers.org
Bob Holman Plans
(909) 885-3959
www.bhplans.com
Homegrown Television Productions
94-20 66th Ave. Suite 1G
Forest Hills NY 11374
www.homegrowntv.com