OKAY, SO I KID around a little when I
should be writing serious safety stuff.
Longtime readers understand, and they
weed through the frivolity to find the real
modeling information.
Sometimes people don’t get the joke
when I write about the passing RC fad, and
that FF is how nature intended us to fly our
models, and how CL is circling back into
dominance, or how rubber-powered
airplanes are becoming rare because, after
all, that stuff doesn’t grow on trees.
Once in a while I get serious—but
entertaining—complaints about my techintolerance.
I tell them the real problem is
that in four decades I still haven’t learned
how to make a good landing—with or
without a radio.
Greg Alexander fell for it to the point
Dave Gee | Safety Comes First [email protected]
Close encounters of the animal kind
gussets. What a shame! Now, as Greg
said, “If only they could invent a building
material that would keep me from running
my plane into vertical objects.”
My good friend, Richard Cline, slithered
up to me and said he had a story for this
column. I said, “I’ll bite,” so he showed
me a photo of a large rattlesnake that
attended a recent FF contest. The pilots
normally welcome any warm body that
shows up, but since the rattler was coldblooded
(and poisonous!) it was asked to
leave.
As a Scale modeler, I was impressed by
the snake’s effective camouflage paint job.
It would sure be easy to miss such a viper
if someone was concentrating on tracking
an airplane!
When I read statistics on modeling
accidents, a great many of them have
nothing to do with models. People trip and
fall at the field, or get hurt in ways that
could happen anywhere, such as getting
bitten by a snake.
That serpent has thousands of relatives
across the country on and near flying
fields. The anti-snake rules are to watch
where you step and don’t put your feet or
hands where you can’t see.
The gentle creatures of the wild must be
Also included in this column:
• Danger waiting to bite you
• Lions and tigers and bears, oh my
• Dog sniffs propeller, fur flies
• Battery pack fire incident
• EDF failure causes injury
• 12 o’clock junior high
that he set aside his foam aircraft and tried
building one out of that quaint, oldfashioned
substance, balsa wood. He was
“blown away by how forgiving it was,”
compared to other materials.
Greg apparently flies as I do, because
he says he treed his model, bashed it into a
fence, and hit a wall without doing much
damage to the wooden-stick structure.
There is much to be said for a properly
designed balsa model. The stresses of
flying (and crashing) are dissipated
throughout the airframe in a way that foam
can’t match.
A whole new generation of RC pilots
has never tried anything but foam and
carbon fiber (actually, carbon fiber is
pretty cool stuff!) and they have no
memory of the old days of ribs and
Richard Cline encountered this large
rattlesnake at a California flying field.
Modeling hazards can sneak up like a snake
in the grass—literally.
Four engines, baby! Middle school
kids built a squadron of these
rubber-powered May B-17 models
and flight-tested them in the
schoolyard skies.
The owner of this sleek model
and tidy pit setup remained off
camera because lit cigars and
fuel don’t mix well. Good call.
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really stirred up, because Robert Moore
had his own story—a close encounter of
the feathered kind.
He wrote, “At our local ballpark flying
area there has been an increase in the
hawk population. These birds are
territorial. One of them flew up behind my
model and tried to attack. There was a
brief circling fight before the hawk, being
outmaneuvered, took off. What should be
done to prevent harm to these animals in
our hobby?”
Robert was worried about the bird! He
is a kind-hearted guy. If some foul fowl
tried to claw my nice new airplane, I’d be
thinking Shake’n Bake, not PETA.
Bird vs. model airplane incidents have
been reported since the earliest days of
modeling. Until recently, the model
usually got the worst of it, but now (as
Robert found) there is a possibility of outflying
and escaping a confused raptor.
In my experience, local wildlife soon
becomes accustomed to models and
mostly ignores them. A newly arrived
predator or the excitement of mating
season is usually involved in these
conflicts.
And to reassure Robert and the animal
lovers out there, the bird almost never gets
hurt. The creatures attack from behind,
and the model has no claws, so they get
disappointed when dinner turns out to be
an inedible wing rib.
To round out this Noah’s Ark of animal
stories, Mick Van Kampen wrote in from
Michigan about an upsetting moment.
Mick wrote, “I was tuning an O.S. .46
on a swamp boat (not at a flying field).
My dog was in the vicinity lakeside with
us and before I knew it her curious nose
got cut by the prop. Both the dog and I
were shocked. The injury was small but
we learned an important lesson from it.”
I’m glad Mick’s pal recovered. Pets,
like little kids, are at risk when exposed to
our hobby equipment, and we have to
protect them from dangers they do not
understand. No matter how loyal and true
our dogs might be, they still can’t grasp
the potential harm of a spinning propeller.
By sending the information to me,
Mick turned a sad incident into a good
lesson for all of us.
If you have a close-call story, news that
needs to be shared, or better information
when I get something wrong, please
contact me through email or with a letter
via AMA Headquarters. If you wish, your
anonymity can be guaranteed through my
Reader Protection Program.
I recently met a man who asked to remain
nameless. It was a beautiful flying day,
and I was wandering around an RC pit
area admiring the neato models. This
particular pilot had a tidy equipment setup
and I offered to take his picture.
He realized that he would have to hand
his lit cigar to someone if he was going to
pose next to the fueled airplane and
decided that finishing the stogie was more
valuable than mere fame. I like a man who
knows his priorities!
I photographed his immaculate model
and toolboxes while he stood beside me
puffing away safely.
On the subject of fire, here are the basics
of an emailed report via AMA
Headquarters. A modeler, who is an
experienced electrical engineer, returned
from a business trip to find that his
electric-powered helicopter had caught
fire and caused a serious fire in his
apartment. The helicopter contained a
3000 mAh six-cell Li-Poly battery, which
had been left in the model. The smoke
alarm did its job and alerted neighbors.
Although the fire department had to
break in, firefighters were able to
extinguish the fire, which was contained to
only one room, and resecure the
apartment. The modeler said that the
battery pack had been carefully cared for,
but had begun to “swell” slightly.
There is conflicting information
regarding “puffed” battery packs. Some
experts say it is a danger sign, and others
say the pack can continue to be used. Being
neither an expert nor a gambler, I discard a
pack when it begins to puff out, on the
theory that something in there wants to get
out and I don’t want to be around when it
succeeds. Maybe I’m wrong; maybe not.
Of course the storage of a battery pack
is important. There are many types of fireresistant
or fireproof containers available. I
strongly recommend using one of these
purpose-made boxes, bags, or jars that will
contain or lessen the effects of a burst pack.
You may never have a problem, but don’t
trust it to chance.
One day, there may be a consensus of
experts on the treatment and prevention of
puffed packs, but for now my advice is to
use great caution in the handling and
storage of your power cells.
Electric ducted fans are fun! The early
ones barely flew, but now the power-toweight
ratios on these units are incredible.
There are so many cool aircraft designed
for them. The AMA Safety Code (which
keeps getting longer despite extreme
efforts to keep it concise) says that metal
propeller blades are forbidden. Thus,
electric ducted-fan assemblies (EDF) are
commonly made from some type of
reinforced plastic.
This situation came up twice recently,
and I’ll tell you about how things were as
this column went to press. First, I read a
long Internet “thread” about an awful
accident where a plastic EDF assembly
exploded while being bench-run. Shards of
material flew into the modeler’s face,
100 MODEL AVIATION
breaking his safety glasses and impacting
his eye. He was seriously injured, and at
this time it is not known if he will recover
sight in the wounded eye. His safety
glasses may have saved his life.
To prevent injury from this type of fan
failure, he would have needed an industrialstrength
cover all around the EDF unit. Not
a standard workshop accessory, of course. It
sounded as though he had taken reasonable
precautions and simply had an unfortunate
accident. I hope that by the time you read
this he has made good progress in his
recovery.
Coincidental to this, I visited a hobby
importer who wants to market aluminum
EDF assemblies, and hopes for a change to
the AMA Safety Code that would allow
metal fans. His products are CNC-machined
from high-quality material and are as
beautiful as jewelry, with prices to match.
The assemblies have an amazing
scalelike sound. I have little experience
with fan-powered models so I asked plenty
of questions. The dealer had deliberately
given his products extreme abuse, trying to
get one of the metal units to fail, but had
not succeeded.
Would an aluminum fan-and-shroud
assembly be better or worse than plastic in a
catastrophic failure? Nobody seems to
know just yet.
I am concerned about the possibilities of
lesser-quality metal EDF assemblies
coming to the market if the AMA
restrictions are lifted. After all, we have
low-quality and even counterfeit radio
components now, and some even have fake
FCC stickers on the cases. Will a cheap
knockoff be as good as the original?
Probably not.
What do you think of this situation? I’d
be interested in your opinion.
To wrap up this month’s column, I
included a photo of a middle school pilot
launching a four-engine May B-17 Rubber
model. The students built three of these
aircraft during one hectic lunch period, and
then test-flew them the following week.
There were some crashes and field repairs,
but each of the airplanes put in a good
flight.
Winding and launching such a model
requires many willing hands and plenty of
teamwork. Note how the adults are
stunned to see one of my designs actually
flying. MA
Sources:
AMA Headquarters
5161 E. Memorial Dr.
Muncie IN 47302
AMA Safety Code
www.modelaircraft.org/files/105.pdf
