Radio Control Slope Soaring - 2006/12

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Radio Control Slope Soaring Dave Garwood
Let’s consider capped landfills as Slope Soaring sites
FIVE OF THIS month’s photos are
from a late-summer New York Slope
Dogs flying session at a pleasant Slope
Soaring site near Schenectady, New
York. One thing we like about slope
flying is standing on a spot that offers us
a view, and this one overlooks the
Mohawk River, part of the historic Erie
Canal route, which is still in operation
Rich Loud’s EPP-foam Dave’s Aircraft
Works Schweizer 1-26 on a fast pass at the
Jeff Blatnick Park slope-flying site, flying
over Mohawk River.
Also included in this column:
• A pair of onboard electronic
data-recording devices
Wayne Rigby’s Charlie Richardson Fun
One ODR (One Design Racing) slope
model works out in medium lift created by
an east wind straight up the hill at Jeff
Blatnick Park.
Dave launches his Dave’s Aircraft Works Schweizer 1-26 2-Meter. Note hydroelectric
powerhouse at Mohawk River Erie Canal Lock 7 in background. Rich Loud photo.
We don’t get east winds on sunny days in
upstate New York; that is a stormyweather
wind direction. Rich Loud’s 1-26
(bottom) and Wayne Rigby’s Fun One
against a cloudy sky.
today, although it is now a recreational
rather than commercial waterway.
We were flying this day at the Jeff
Blatnick Park on River Road in
Niskayuna, Schenectady County, New
York. Our flying site is a gently rounded
hill, with its 1/4-mile-long ridgeline
parallel to and approximately 90 feet
above the river.
The ground cover is meadow grass
and wildflowers, with stands of woods
on both ends of the cleared area, which
makes for plenty of friendly landing
spots. But one must pay attention to the
trees on each end of the course.
The only problem with flying slope
at this site is that it requires an east
wind, which is relatively rare in these
parts so we don’t get to fly there as often
as we would like. Web site addresses for
more detailed information and a
topographic map of the site are listed at
the end of this column.
The main hill in the park is a capped
landfill, which was converted to allow
recreational use. The use of capped
landfills for possible Slope Soaring sites
is the main subject of this column.
There comes a time in the life of a
solid-waste dump when it becomes full
or for another reason is taken out of
service and closed to further dumping. It
136 MODEL AVIATION
12sig5.QXD 10/25/06 12:34 PM Page 136December 2006 137
is often “capped,” or covered with an
impermeable barrier that separates the
still-decaying garbage underground and
other waste from the future surface uses
of the land.
The soil under capped landfills is too
unstable for construction, so you rarely
see inhabited structures built on them,
but the land is suitable for recreational
uses. Dumps often have one or more
man-made, sometimes steep hills, and
once capped they are covered with grass.
In some cases the grass must be mowed
for 30 years to allow environmental
inspection of the former landfill.
A large project to transform a huge
landfill into what will be one of the
largest and most diverse urban parks in
the world is the Fresh Kills Landfill
Project in New York City. I will
include four paragraphs from two
sources to give you an idea of the
magnitude of the project, including its
ambitious aims.
Because a project this large has
much written about it, we have easy
access to information that can serve as
background reading for those who
might someday be working with their
own city or a neighboring town.
I hope you will attend town
meetings and write letters, and help
transform closed landfills in your area
into future flying sites. Take a moment
to contemplate one project where a
landfill is being converted to
recreational use.
The following is from the Wikipedia
online encyclopedia.
“The Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten
Island in New York City was formerly
the largest landfill in the world and was
In the center is the main hill at Jeff Blatnick Park: a capped landfill.
“Cities all over the world have successfully converted landfills to
parks ... ”
The How High altimeter and R/C Reporter onboard electronic
measuring and recording devices from Winged Shadow Systems.
They are small, light, and work as intended.
New York City’s principal landfill in
the second half of the 20th century. The
name ‘Fresh Kills’ refers to its location
along the banks of the Fresh Kills estuary
in western Staten Island.”
(“Kill” is a Dutch word for stream or
river.)
The following is from the New
York City Web site.
“The City of New York, led by the
Department of City Planning, has
begun a master planning process for
the now-closed Fresh Kills Landfill
that will guide the site’s evolution over
the next thirty years.
“Fresh Kills, at 2,200 acres, is
almost three times the size of Central
Park. While nearly forty-five percent
of the site was used for landfilling
operations, the remainder of the site is
composed of wetlands, open
waterways, and unfilled lowland areas.
“Forty-five percent of the 2,200-
acre site is composed of four landfill
mounds, which range in height from 90
feet to 225 feet. The remaining 55% of
the site is made up of creeks, wetlands
and dry lowland. These land types
guide programming of the park. These
flatter areas and open waterways host
many things from precisely engineered
infrastructure to intact wetland and
wildlife habitats.
“Although there are limitations that
come with the reuse of a landfill, cities
all over the world have successfully
converted landfills to parks featuring a
range of activities, including nature
reserves, sports fields, golf courses, ski
slopes, sculpture gardens and more.
“The nature of the landfill waste
and applicable closure regulations on
sites included here are not all identical
to those at Fresh Kills, but these
projects provide relevant comparisons,
visions for the future.”
I learned that the Flushing
Meadows area of Long Island was
reclaimed from landfill use. It has been
the site of two World Fairs, and today
it is the site of Shea Stadium. With any
luck, and maybe your involvement,
perhaps some of today’s landfills can
be tomorrow’s flight parks—especially
Slope Soaring parks.
Onboard Electronic Sensory
Equipment: A photo shows the small
and light How High altimeter and the
R/C Reporter from Winged Shadow
Systems (Box 432, Streamwood IL
60107; Tel.: [630] 837-6553; E-mail:
[email protected]; Web
site: www.rcreporter.com).
The How High altimeter records the
greatest altitude reached during a
flight. The R/C Reporter tells the
receiver battery-pack voltage and radio
glitches received during a flight, and it
acts as a lost-model audible alarm.
OFB (old flying buddy) Jim Harrigan
and I examined and tested the devices,
and we learned that both work well
and are fun to use.
I mounted and flew the How High
altimeter. It plugs into an unused
channel on your receiver to get
electrical power, and during the flight
it records the peak altitude reached.
The precision altimeter is claimed to
measure and report altitudes as high as
7,000 feet above ground level with a
resolution of one foot.
12sig5.QXD 10/25/06 12:34 PM Page 137powered up, and an LED blinks
when operating to let you know it’s
working. The LED is also a sensing
device. To read the stored altitude
value after the flight, you wave your
finger over the LED, and it blinks
further to give you the value of the
altitude recorded during the flight.
After the flight, and before turning
off the receiver, you wave your finger
over the LED. It begins to flash, and
you count the flashes—one group of
flashes for each of four digits in the
altitude value. The instructions for
wagging your finger over the LED are
detailed, and I found it to work better
for me in open shade than in direct
sunlight.
The How High altimeter works as
advertised, and it is fun to know the
altitude you actually achieved in that
“speck-out” flight. I did not have
another way to measure my altitude, so
I cannot comment on this unit’s
measurement accuracy.
Jim tested the R/C Reporter, which
checks battery voltage before each
flight, records radio interference during
the flight and reports it at the end of the
flight, and it includes an audible lostairplane
locator. Following are his
remarks.
“The Lost Model Locator and
Voltage Monitor features require no
user interaction at all. Just plug the
devices in and they will work. In case
of a lost model, when the device
detects that transmitter signal has been
turned off it plays a melody.
“The way the ‘check the voltage
before each flight’ feature works is by
emitting a tone followed by a series of
beeps that represent the voltage. If
voltage is low, the warning given is a
repeated series of 3 beeps.
“The Voltmeter feature requires two
movements of the stick past 70% and
the Glitch Counter three movements,
but there is no annoying timing you
have to get right. It just works and is
easy and reliable.
“The way to measure the voltage
reading is by moving the stick twice
past 70% (within two seconds) and
listening for a musical tone followed by
a series of beeps. A series of five beeps
followed by one beep followed by three
beeps would indicate 5.13 volts.
“With a fully charged pack the
voltmeter gave a reading about .03 volt
higher than the two digital voltmeters I
had connected. This is well within the
specified accuracy range. The docs say
0.01v resolution and +-1.5% (FS)
accuracy. (That works out to about +-
.07 volts so that third digit of resolution
is of limited value.)
“As the voltage dropped near the 4.6
volt cutoff the accuracy was better and
was usually within .01 volt of the meter
reading. Once the voltage got below
4.6, the low voltage warning started and
I had about 2.5 minutes of simulated
flying before the servos stopped.
“Interestingly, the R/C Reporter
seemed to die about two seconds before
the airplane, so if you lose your
airplane because you ran out of
electrical power, you are not going to
have a lost model alarm to help you
find it.
“The glitch counter does a good job
at counting missing pulses as described
on the instruction sheet. However,
when connecting voltmeters to the
receiver circuit, sometimes the servos
would jump around a bit, and this did
not result in a reading.
“The device is not sophisticated
enough to look at the width of the pulse
and detect a pattern of interference that
is not characteristic of stick movement.
That would be very difficult to do
without circuitry being built into the
receiver itself and was not expected of
this type of device.”
Jim and I have concluded that the
two Winged Shadow devices work as
described. They are worthwhile
additions to model flying if having this
data is useful and interesting to you.