How To Do It: Exploits of an RC Flight Instructor
Are you "into" video games? If you want to quickly learn how to fly RC airplanes, video-game experience will give you a leg up! A case in point is my grandson Mike, a games nut for the last seven of his 16 years. Fight'em, dodge'em, drop'em, blow'em up or swallow'em-Mike even had one of those go-anywhere, Walkman-size devices. And he took to RC like a frog takes to a lily-pad: takeoffs and triple loops on his fourth flight! I doubt that Mike will displace Chip Hyde anytime soon, because his interest is not all that intense-at least not yet. Mike's feats were accomplished with our club's equivalent of a one-vehicle trainer fleet, equipped with buddy system transmitters.
Tri-Cities Nats Sampler
NOT FAIR? Of course it was fair for AMA to move the Nats closer to the Pacific! Those West Coast modelers do have a constitutional right to have the big competition shift into their own orbit for a change-even if we Easterners had to strap into a fullscale Boeing 727 in order to participate. Participate, eh? Perhaps, and perhaps not. Sheer frustration had your reporter composing a little poem at 4 a.m. one recent morning: (Don't look now, Willie Shakespeare!) "Eenie, meenie, miney, mo-I wonder if ever my Kaos will show?"
Spirit of Fentress
WHAT A SUPER flying site! Fentress NALF (Naval Auxiliary Landing Field) boasts 10,000 ft. of paved runway and hardsurfaced taxiway, with a 300-ft.-wide strip of mowed grass strip in between. It was a great location for the 1988 Nationals. Oh, it was hot alright. July in Tidewater, VA was like July in Anywhere, U.S.A. this year; with the rest of the country, we were staggering under an unusually prolonged heat wave. On Saturday night, temperatures rose even higher when we had a false-alarm fire scare at the Holiday Inn where many Nats activities were staged.
Custom Mods
If you're one of those people who can never just leave things alone, you can appreciate our author's approach to modeling. If you're not accustomed to modifying kits to better suit your needs, then read on. The modifying bug might just bite you.
Do-It-Yourself: Soft Engine Mount
CONFUCIUS ONCE SAID: "To squelch vibration and noise-mount motor softly." Or if Confucius didn't put it in exactly those words, Don Lowe, Howard Crispen, and Merle and Chip Hyde, among others, certainly have. Dutifully heeding their advice, I recently perused the magazine ads to see what's available commercially. I found that most of the commercial offerings are based on the Lord mount, a rubber (or other elastic material) cylinder with fasteners glued to both ends. Usually, one side of a quartet of such mounts is bolted to the firewall while the other side supports the engine-either on the rear cover bolts or through an add-on L-shaped engine mount.
