Southwest Aeromodeling Conference
The Southwest Aeromodeling Conference was held May 17-19 in Arlington, Texas, featuring over 100 booths, seminars, indoor flying, and a Modelers' Choice competition.
Keytwo
Easy to build and great fun in the air, this little RC sportster is an enlarged version of an original 12-year-old design. It's designed around modern .20 to .25 size two- or four-stroke engines and has a much-improved flight envelope. Over a decade ago I had a good deal of success with a model called Paskey that I published in Model Builder magazine. The airplane enjoyed some popularity, and quite a few were built and flown. In a spectacular tour de force that's still remembered today, Eddie Williams performed a "drunk pilot" routine with one of the earlier Paskeys at a Southwestern Model Airplane Championship contest. Hidden in the pit area, Eddie wowed the audience with stalls, inside and outside loops, and upright and inverted snaps and spins - all at very low altitude. It was a heart-stopper. Though the booze-logged, make-believe pilot got all the credit, Eddie's flying was magnificent.
Nickel
This sport design combines the Cox .049 Tee Dee engine with Ace RC's throttle sleeve for a three-channel model that just loves small-field flying. The best time to fly a model is usually just before twilight in the evening, and the best of the best times always seem to fall during the week! The Nickel was built to take advantage of those "during the week" best times. Easy and inexpensive to build, this airplane uses a throttled Cox .049 engine and a three-channel radio. If the batteries are kept charged, the model is always ready for some after-supper flight time. The Nickel is designed to take full advantage of the Ace throttle sleeve for the Cox .049 engine. Since that type of throttle offers little in the way of a midrange, the design must meet a unique situation - hence the unusual configuration. This airplane has to handle the rush of power when the Cox .049 is at full bore, and then stay in the air when the engine drops to a high idle. Nickel does both, and does them well.
Randy's Dime
IT'S ONLY FAIR to warn you. An RC sport trainer as versatile and economical as this one can be habit-forming. Dime suits just about any mood. Take it up for slow flight, just puttering around clipping weeds and doing endless touch-and-goes, or go for tearing up the sky with reckless abandon-all on a small fuel budget.
What's in the Box?
This piece is not intended to make anyone become an electronic technician; it offers some insight into the things that go inside the boxes we call transmitters and receivers. Failure of our equipment is rarely caused by a failure of one of the basic parts. More often than not, the cause is cell failure in a battery pack or a broken connection in the exterior wiring. Those are the weakest links in our systems-not all those little pieces on the inside! Let's take a closer look at what's in the box.
