Safety Comes First!
BEFORE getting into a discussion of the contents of last month's mailbag, let me point out that my home address (which used to appear at the end of each Safety column) is no longer valid! I've moved-temporarily-to an apartment until a new home is completed sometime in the spring. Meanwhile, any mail to "Safety Comes First" should be sent to the magazine and marked to my attention.
Safety Comes First!
SINCE I'm writing this column on New Year's Day, let's begin by talking about resolutions for 1984. A worthwhile New Year's resolution for modelers came to mind after reading about an incident involving an RC model aircraft in a Florida club's newsletter. The club and the modeler involved shall remain anonymous, to save embarrassment. However, I'm betting that similar incidents are not infrequent at flying sites around the nation simply because modelers do not routinely perform a Preflight Safety Check before attempting to bore holes in the sky. So, the New Year's resolution for RC modelers is:
Safety Comes First!
THIS MONTH'S offering to safety-conscious modelers begins in a humorous vein with a history of the propeller. If you believe it, you will believe anything and may even wish to purchase the bridge I have for sale. Titled "Little Known Facts," the following was extracted from Incidentce, newsletter of the Charles River Radio Controllers of Winchester, MA. However, it appears that the editor, R. M. Kosmala, stole the story from an AMA District VI AVP Report.
Safety Comes First
IF a home builder and a mortgage company are both telling the truth, by the time you read this column I should have moved into a new house! A recent inspection of this house triggered the subject for the first topic of discussion in this month's safety column-GFCIs. Readers who may also have moved into new homes in recent years will be familiar with what GFCIs are and what they do. However, for the benefit of others and for added safety in everybody's workshop (and perhaps the rest of the home, too), the following explanation is offered.
Safety Comes First
CREDIT for the subject of the first topic in this month's Safety column goes to the Lehigh Valley RC Society newsletter editor, Tom Bilheimer. Oddly enough, I read Tom's article in Prop Wash, the newsletter of the Detroit Aero Modelers RC club. The subject is wind. In case you are wondering how this affects the safety of our hobby, think about how many more crashes occur at the flying field on a windy day as compared to a calm day. How does wind affect the flight performance of a model airplane? In theory (other than CL models), it shouldn't have any effect at all once the model is airborne. Consider the following situation that was used by Tom Bilheimer to illustrate how a model's flight characteristics are not dependent on its direction relative to the wind direction.
