ARE YOU A sportsman/sportswoman or
a hobbyist? Some say that the dividing
line between the two is whether you build
your aircraft or buy it ready to fly. Even
this line gets blurry because there are kits
available with a portion or most of the
work undone.
I was discussing the difference with a
friend of mine who is wiser than I am
(come to think of it, most of my friends are wiser than I am), and
he cringes when I joke about “playing with toy airplanes”
because he thinks it demeans our hobby (sport?). I think it gives
us power over an otherwise belittling term, plus it sounds funny
when applied to the sometimes serious and expensive pursuit of
aeromodeling.
I tend to see things from a hobbyist/builder viewpoint, which
is why I like to report on the safety angle of new tools and
gadgets. ARFs are great fun, but my enjoyment of this hobby
Safety Comes First Dave Gee | [email protected]
Wanna use the blades but not the bandages? These rubber handle covers keep the knives
on the table and not in you. Find them in the pharmacy section.
Your foam airplanes will love this super-effective glue in a mild
odorless formula for building and repairing foam structures.
Apollo XI Model Airport in Los Angeles as seen from a B-17 waist
gun! The busy site has fixed-wing and helicopter RC areas and CL
circles.
A great new glue for foam
Also included in this column:
• Hobby knives keep rolling
along
• Paper-towel injuries—no
kidding
• Can .049 starter springs
damage propellers?
• Range checking and electricpowered
models
• Dave is drafted by AMA
August 2007 99
08sig4.QXD 6/22/07 12:20 PM Page 99
100 MODEL AVIATION
peaks when I get a clean sheet of paper
and balsa and begin a new model. I have
a plug for something new that will please
the hard-core builders and the “open the
box, let’s go fly” types.
Ed Sussman is in the TV and movie
industry, in which breakaway propellers
and temporary sets are made from foam.
Time is money in showbiz, so a unique
glue system is used to build things in a
hurry, and flammable, smelly fumes are
not okay in the studio.
Ed realized that modelers would
appreciate those same features. He put
the special formula in hobby-sized
bottles and calls it X-1 Instant Adhesive
and X-1 Activator.
I watched Ed demonstrate this
product and was amazed by how well it
repaired a broken-off foam ARF wing in
mere seconds. This is not a
cyanoacrylate product, but a mild liquid
that brushes on and lets you reposition
things until the activator component
cures it permanently.
This adhesive is great for adding
balsa skin to a foam wing and for
assembling fuselage halves. It works best
on jobs for which there are large surfaces
to bond, but not so well on butt joints of
thin material.
AMA Plans Service
The AMA Plans Service has more than 16,000 model plans
for sale. The Web site and AMA staff are available to assist you
in finding that special design. The AMA Plans Service coupled
with the Academy’s vast reference library of magazines and
books is a feature that no other plans service can offer.
You can view pictures of MA construction-article plans on the
Web site, and the respective article is included at no extra
charge with the purchase of a set of plans. AMA members can
find MA construction articles published from 1975 to 2000 in
the “Digital Archives” section of the AMA Web site.
www.modelaircraft.org/plansmain.asp
(765) 287-1256, extension 507
Ed says that X-1 is nontoxic and
cleans up with water. The fast and nearly
odorless cure is great for workshop use
or field repairs.
X-1 may be available at your local
shop by the time you read this or you can
order some at www.purimcoproducts
.com. There is a demonstration video on
that site as well. The suggested retail
price for 2 ounces of X-1 Instant
Adhesive is $9.99, 4 ounces of X-1
Instant Adhesive costs $14.99, and 2
ounces of X1 Activator is priced at $7.99.
Awhile ago I asked for ideas for keeping
hobby knives from rolling off of
worktables since those once-common
triangular rubber slip-on handle covers
had become hard to find. I received tons
of horrifying stories about falling blades
landing on feet (yuck!) and many great
suggestions for modifying knife handles.
Now, just when things have quieted
down, I ran across those same little
handle covers at a pharmacy counter!
They’re marketed for arthritis patients
and called Pen & Pencil Cushions—part
of a line of easy-to-open pillboxes (great
for small parts) and other handy items. If
your local drug store doesn’t carry them,
try www.apexmedical.com.
Joe Wagner (MA’s “The Engine Shop”
guy) sent me a columnist-to-columnist Email
about a recent workshop adventure
of his. He wrote:
“As they say, ‘Safety is no accident.’ I
just had an offbeat one. Working in my
shop on a warm day, I wiped sweat off
my face with what I thought was a
reasonably clean paper towel.
“Unfortunately, something small but
sharp had gotten embedded in that towel.
Minor facial cuts can sure bleed a lot!”
With all the dangerous engines and
tools in his shop, poor Joe got nailed by a
paper towel. He is not the first person to
be wounded by camouflaged metal
shavings. I once saw a major supplier of
industrial shop towels lose a large
contract when it couldn’t keep metal
shavings out of its freshly cleaned cloths.
Some machine shop used the towels to
wipe up steel shards that didn’t wash out
of the fabric, and the rag company’s other
clients received towels with razor-sharp
surprises hidden inside. Bleeding
employees complained, and that was that!
I buy and launder my own shop towels for
work and home use because I’m cheap and to
avoid nasty surprises such as the one Joe got.
08sig4.QXD 6/22/07 12:49 PM Page 100
A much more pleasant surprise was
running into Bill Grove tending his swap
shop table at AMA Convention 2007. He
showed me a Cox 1/2A propeller with
deep score marks in it.
Bill said that he often sees where the
starter spring on these old engines has
rubbed against the plastic propeller and
left serious structural damage. He
wondered if any of these propellers had
failed while in use because of starterspring
damage.
I seldom run these little engines, but
I’ll bet some wise MA readers know all
about this. Have you ever seen this
phenomenon, and has it ever led to a
blade failure?
Please E-mail me about your
experiences with this and mention
“safety” in the subject line to set your
message apart from the loan scams and
chain letters. If you prefer, a letter written
on paper is just as good. Send ’em to me
at Box 7081, Van Nuys CA 91409.
Look at the aerial shot of my local RC
field. The photo was really taken out the
window of a B-17. It took me hours to get
the grin off my face after that ride!
From the air Apollo XI field looks
roomy and uncrowded. In reality it is an
extremely busy site where gas, electric,
and park flyer pilots coexist with
helicopters, jets, and CL action. It has not
been easy to set all that up and things do
not always go smoothly, but the local
club members deserve tremendous credit
for working out the necessary
compromises.
Nearly all the pilots I meet there are
polite and understanding about frequency
delays and such, and they are happy to
show a new modeler the various rules of
safe, courteous pit and flightline conduct.
Proper procedures are vital with so many
people around.
This all came to mind because of an Email
from Jack Duich. His home field is
far from Los Angeles, but the story he
tells is relevant to us all. He wrote:
“I recently observed a mishap during a
range check of an electric model. A flier
at our club set his electric ARF on the
ground within the starting area, plugged
in his battery pack after turning on his
transmitter, and then walked from the
model with his antenna retracted while
moving the sticks to check his control
surface functions as the distance between
the model and the transmitter increased.
A standard range check for gas models.
“At about 75 feet, where one might
expect to see servo twitching on a
standard ground test, the model suddenly
powered forward and struck another flier
who was in the starting area. Fortunately
no injury resulted.”
Jack said that several factors were
involved, as is usual in such an incident.
The airplane was not tied down securely.
Also, it was wired without a separate
switch on the motor circuit. The battery
was simply unplugged after each flight.
This is a positive disconnection, but there
are times when a conventional kill switch
is worth the extra weight and power loss.
Those of us who transition from gas to
electric sometimes have a hard time
remembering that our new power plants
can go from zero to full in an instant
without being “started” like a gas engine.
Therefore, we must guard against
whatever might happen if the motor
comes on at the wrong moment.
Apparently the pilot did not have a
helper to stay with his model while the
range check was being performed. I’ve
repeatedly seen how handy an extra set of
eyes can be, and the buddy system is
highly recommended.
Jack didn’t know the exact reason why
the motor came on. Maybe it was a servo
or ESC glitch, a weak signal, or just an
inadvertent touch of the stick. Perhaps
someone will avoid a similar incident
because of Jack’s willingness to share
this story.
I’ve enjoyed a certain independence
through the years because although I
write the safety column I was not an
actual AMA safety official. Well, those
days are over because I have been asked
to serve on the AMA Safety Committee.
In the future I will state clearly
whether any given opinion is the
organization’s or my point of view. The
official AMA stand on a safety issue must
be carefully thought out and, as far as
possible, applicable to all occasions and
conditions.
On the other hand, the discussions
between readers and myself should be
considered an informal search for the
truth. Sometimes it takes several months’
worth of letters and columns to get to the
bottom of an issue, but that does not
necessarily mean that AMA feels the
same way I do about it.
An example is the use of TV cameras
in RC models. Some modelers have used
the new super-small wireless TV systems
to fly their airplanes “from the cockpit”
while watching a monitor screen instead
of the model.
Current AMA rules forbid this
activity, but discussions are underway. If
things change I will let you know.