Indoor Radio Control Championships - 2004/01
THE NATIONAL Indoor Remotecontrolled
Aircraft Council (NIRAC), an
AMA Special Interest Group, organized
and hosted its first national championships
the weekend of May 31-June 1, 2003, at
the huge (240 x 300 x 82-foot) Oakland
Yard Athletics dome in Waterford,
Michigan.
Aerolympics II
THEY CAME from all parts of the globe-about 450 participants from 32 countries. They came from such diverse places as Japan, Australia, South Africa, Czechoslovakia, Thailand, Hong Kong, South Korea, New Zealand, Mexico, Brazil, Guatemala, Argentina, Chile, Finland, Liechtenstein, and Luxembourg. The 1989 combined RC World Championships, more popularly known as AerOlympics II, was the most international of aeromodeling events ever held in the U.S.A. The site was the Fentress Naval Auxiliary Landing Field in Chesapeake, VA.
Selinsgrove '91
FOUR DECADES ago, over Labor Day weekend, 1951, a group of Radio Control modelers met at the Penn-Valley Airport in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania to fly and to share innovations. The fliers, who included established RC pioneers as well as the yet to be famous, had such a good time that they did it again the next year-and the next. In 1958 the scene shifted from Selinsgrove to Indiantown Gap (also in Pennsylvania), but the atmosphere stayed much the same. The annual tradition came to an end in the early 1960s as participants grew more involved with families and careers.
Johnny, We Loved You
JOHN E. CLEMENS, November 3, 1913-June 13, 1991. AMA's 18th president (1971-1978) passed away in his adopted hometown and state-Dallas, Texas-after many months of complicated health problems. He had for years resisted the urging of friends and family to go into a hospital for proper treatment of his various ailments. He declined, apparently fearing that if he went in he wouldn't come out. That turned out to be true, although it was largely because he had gone too long without adequate treatment.
New Twist to Old: Compressed Air Power
Forget what you may have previously read or heard about compressed air as a model airplane power source. Compressed air motors are no longer antique (except for those who choose to keep the past alive by building and flying the types that were popular in the Twenties and early Thirties). Today, new technology developed in Italy by Paolo Zanin (who, incidentally, also produces pulse jet engines) has produced a modern compressed air motor and pressure tank that is literally revolutionizing this category of power. The new motor, named the Tiquattro MM3 by Z Models (Zanin's company) is small (.04 cu. in.) and light (42 grams or 1.5 oz.). The soft-drink-type transparent plastic tank that comes with the motor weighs 1.6 oz. (with balsa tail boom) and has 28 oz. of liquid volume.
