From: Alan Hieger
Date: Mon, Mar 14, 2016 at 9:10 AM
Subject: VCB Weekly Nag 3-14-16

Dateline: Marana, Arizona

Today is Monday, and another week of flying opportunities presents itself.

Let's get to it.

Official Club Business

Charter Renewal

Per Ray Firkins, all the official paperwork has been transmitted to AMA, and we are an official club in good standing for another year.  Crisis averted.  Well done, everybody.

Membership Roster

At this point, the updating process is nearly complete.  Antone and Kestas, please provide Stan Kitzes with accurate phone numbers.  If anybody has occasion to be in contact with John Patwell, we still need full information if he intends to continue with the club.

May Meet

We are still gathering info on members' preferences regarding the upcoming May gathering.  Remember, get your wannas to Ray Firkins by 6 am Wednesday.  The sanction deadline fast approaches, and Ray will have to make some executive decisions soon based on stated desires and available resources.

Bylaws

I am the grateful recipient of bylaws presently utilized by other clubs in the area, but still am completely in the dark concerning ours.  Does anybody have a copy of this document, or a working knowledge of its contents?  If our current bylaws are deemed adequate by the membership, there may not be any action actually required on this project.

Basin Field Activity

Since I'm currently out of state, I have no idea what may have transpired at our field during the week.  If you find yourself at the Basin on a given day, think about dropping me a quick note on who all was there, what airplanes, and anything unusual or interesting which transpires.  I'll include same in the Weekly Nag to keep everyone apprised of club activity, and hopefully provide some inspiration to stoke turnout.

Unofficial Fun Stuff

New Feature: Our First Centerfold!

Extensive interaction with children over the past week has yielded the technology needed to introduce photography to the Nag.  So long as suitable subjects continue to magically appear in my inbox, my intent is to ply you with a weekly centerfold.  Go on, tell people you read the Nag for the articles!  The big question was: what bird should serve as our first Playmate?  Ideally, our first should be something spectacular.  In the end, there was only one conceivable choice:

Chris Forbes's Spiderman Gieske Nobler

 

According to Chris, power is provided by a Brodak .40 turning a 10.5 x 4.5 APC prop (although the one in the photo looks more like a Brodak BY&O replica to my eyes).  The exhaust note is modulated by one of Scott Dinger's custom mufflers.

That amazing finish?  Sig dope (all butyrate) over silkspan.  Fillets were made using West system microlite fairing filler.  SZS zinc filler provided the substrate across the open bays.  Regarding the insanely complex trim scheme, Chris "designed (the) spider web vinyl paint mask with ACAD program, lots of sanding and rubbing."

Despite the fact that the extensive black trim was not back-masked, all-up weight is a very reasonable 42 oz.

I first encountered this remarkable ship at VSC 2014, where it finished second in Pilots' Choice by the merest hair to an similarly impressive semi-scale Martin-Baker MB-5.  It has to be seen close up to be believed.  Each black trim section has two acute and two obtuse points.  Each corner is individually perfect, and all are in perfect alignment as well.  Chris, buddy, I ain't never going to be this good!

Making Canopies

By Terry Thorkildsen

If you can’t purchase a canopy for your latest model you may be able to make one out of a 2 liter plastic bottle.  I used minute maid pink lemonade for my plastic bottle.  There is a definite learning curve to making it but it does give you a technique for when you can’t buy one.  The original article on how to do this appeared in the June 2004 issue of Flying Models so if you have that article dig it out.  I made a canopy for a Chipmonk C/L using this technique but it took me about 4 or 5 tries to get a really good one since the curve at the front of the canopy was quite pronounced.

First you need to make a plug form in the shape you want out of balsa with the bottom having a thin laminate on it out of 1/32 thick plywood so it doesn’t crush the corners when the plastic bends around it under heat.   Wash out the residue from the bottle before you start.

Cut an opening at the one end of your bottle to slide in your form and then wedge in a piece of wood to force the form very tightly against the top of the plastic. The tighter the better since it will help the plastic to shrink to the right shape. Do not cut along the length of the bottle. You only want to cut open one end just enough to get in your form and the wedge.  Make sure the plastic overlaps the form since as it shrinks to shape it will also contract lengthwise.

Slowly apply heat with your Monokote heat gun uniformly around the top and sides of the form.  The plastic will shrink to shape as you do this.  Wear a glove to protect your hand from the heat. Keep pressure applied to the form as you shrink it.  Once you feel it is shrunk completely around the form you want to look it over carefully since once you cut it off the form you can’t touch it up.  Be carefully when you cut it from the form that you don’t crack the plastic and you may net

When you are done glue it down with Formula 560 canopy glue since it dries clear.

The Nosferatu Saga Continues

When we last left Rocky and Bullwinkle. . .no, wait.  That wasn't it.  When we last visited the Ringmaster from Hades, the venturi was rattling around in the Enya's crankcase, and it still remained to rub out the finish.  During the "workweek" (What do you call Mon-Fri when on vacation?) I was over at U of A doing science with the ex-roommate who puts me up when I'm in Tucson, so I didn't get back out to the field until Saturday.  I did take most of two days to rub out the finish.  Yes Terry, I managed to stick my finger through the covering on the top side.  The ancient Sterling silkspan fairly explodes into paper splinters when stressed, and I found myself staring at a roughly dime-sized hole which couldn't simply be stitched shut with dope or glue.  Not having any silkspan with me on this trip (because I'm a frickin' naive optimist, that's why), I "elected" to seal the breech with a patch of kitchen napkin, seriously overdoped to encourage some modicum of tensile strength.  Other than this moderate aesthetic setback, I was pleased with the enhanced shiny factor, and headed off to the field in a mood of cautious optimism.

The conditions were breezier than I like, and at the Basin I might not have chosen to fly, but Tucson is frequently like this, and it seemed prudent to practice in the conditions which were likely to prevail on contest day.  I got two OTS patterns in fairly quickly, starting to work on getting the "x" out of the intersections and on bringing the bottoms down to 6-8 feet.  What quickly became apparent was that the overweight Ringmaster winds up substantially in the wind.  Landings continued to look like a kangaroo on a pogo stick, even on the grass circles.  At one point I hammered the tailskid flat, even with the fuse bottom, and it needed to be pried back into position and reglued.

The out-of-towners had begun to arrive in significant numbers, and at this point I ran into an old friend, Jim Lee of Topeka, Kansas.  Jim is a Nationals-class flyer and a professional machinist, and he always travels with an SUV-load of engine parts, tools and jigs which he vends to help defray trip costs.  Dontcha know it, he had a custom machined Delrin venturi for the Enya right at hand.  Air leak problem solved!  Of course, this meant the mixture on the next flight was way too rich, and I bailed from the pattern after the inside loops.  Increasing wind speed brought the day's flying to a close.  At Jim's suggestion, I also made up a plug for the tank's overflow vent out of fuel tubing and a BB which Jim provided gratis.

Sunday dawned equally breezy and  cold (forty-something), and I waited until about 9:30 before I felt warm enough to fly.  Leaning the engine to a usable setting, my first pattern of the day revealed some interesting facts.  One was that fuel efficiency had improved, taking the load required for an OTS pattern down to about two and three-quarters ounces.  Second was that the engine run had changed from a near-uniform fast "4-cycle" to a pronounced, classic 4-2-4.  Hmm. . .interesting.  It also appeared that the motor was running significantly slower inverted than when upright.

Taking a second flight to verify the above, I found the wind had brought back the windup problem, and coming out of the vertical eights, I ran out of elevator and pancaked the bird hard.  No primary structure damage.  Wiped out the prop of course, and ripped out the inboard gear straps.  No biggie, but the covering damage was something else.  Four damaged bays on the wing bottom, two rips running the full chord, and the outermost bay completely AWOL.  I think my comment to Jim Lee was, "I hate myself today."

Crash ghouls (otherwise known as modelers) are at their sympathetic best in such situations, and a gentleman whose name I do not know (yet) handed me a softball-sized wad of silkspan and told me to return the unused portion later.  I headed off to obtain repair supplies.  Now there are exactly two hobby shops in the greater Tucson area which are not misnamed toy stores, and it turns out that neither one is open on Sunday.  Two wasted hours later, I slunk back to my FBO to effect repairs.

The rest of the day was spent stitching the "seams" closed using the magic Saran Wrap method (the subject of an upcoming short how-to), and patching the open bay.  I think the donated silkspan wad is of the new batch you guys are always complaining about, because four attempts at water shrinking have done nothing to reduce the slack or remove the wrinkles inherent in a wad.  Yecch.  It does, however, seem fitting that this resurrected corpse turn up for its official flights looking suitably scabrous (Look it up in your Funk & Wagnalls.).  I will be at Hobby Barn at 10 a.m. sharp to pick up thinner, a bigger brush, and new landing gear clips.  Crosstown to get the first coat of 50/50 on the bird, then back crosstown for the 1 p.m. judges' meeting, crosstown for another coat, crosstown for a 4:30 meeting with U of A faculty, crosstown for another coat. . .you get the picture.

I approach tomorrow's competition in my usual even-keeled emotional state (Do you people even know me?).

I expect Chris Forbes to be making his appearance out here shortly.  Look for the final installment of this adventure in next week's Nag.

Anybody Wanna Fly?

Per my ever dutiful spouse, the weather out your way has been less than ideal, and the coming week's forecasts are less than promising.  Nevertheless, this is Southern California, and the guys from my old stomping grounds in District II would gladly conduct arcane rituals (not really being the killing type) for weather we moan about.

Go on, keep nagging each other, and get out there and have some damn fun.

TTFN

Seven days till I annoy you again.