Safety Comes First
FIELD
SURVEY
TIME
By Dave Gee | safetycolumn@cs.com
SPRINGTIME IS THE RIGHT SEASON to carefully inspect your flying field. Statistically, our model aircraft are pretty safe compared with the dire hazards of just hanging around at the model airfield. We’re more likely to see lawn care injuries, picnic ground mishaps, incidents in the parking lot, and maintenance misfortunes.
Grab the safety officer and take a careful walk around the property. Check the mowing equipment, starting benches, spectator seating, entry gates, structures, and everything else. Look for situations that can be improved because it’s always better to avoid than react. Making your site as hazard-free as possible is a good policy.
Remember that visits might not be limited to club members during flying hours. I recently heard from a club that was experiencing vandalism issues. The club installed motion-activated wildlife cameras to take photos of the field at night. The club leadership was surprised to see an image of a local kid balancing on top of a starting stand table. We don’t want anyone to get hurt at our field—even nighttime trespassers with poor judgment.
Almost Out of Breath
My own wife, Sweet Diedra, loves to try new craft projects. She sometimes borrows my modeling tools and personal protective equipment when needed. Her latest interest is something about smearing decorative paint and glitter onto beverage tumblers. I’m not sure about the details because it seems dull compared to model airplanes.
She needed a high-speed rotary tool. As I dug out suitable eye protection,
it became clear that she was going to use lots of epoxy during the smearing process. Diedra didn’t realize that her craft room would require special ventilation arrangements. Without some changes to that small space, she could get very sick! We ended up getting her a proper respirator to wear, plus a bank of four exhaust fans in the window.
Non-modelers might not understand that certain hobby tools and products require more serious safety measures. It could be up to you to ensure the safety and well-being of an eager family member with a new project.
Charge and Retreat
My friend, Mike Myers, knows about battery fires. In fact, he knows more than he wants to, having had a rather scary episode! His RC motor battery ignited during the charging process, but fortunately, it was
inside of a ceramic chamber designed for just such things. The heat and debris stayed mostly inside the pot, but the batteries and cables were, of course, a total loss.
Most importantly, Mike’s charging setup prevented damage to the workbench and garage structure. He uses an old battery bunker container that is no longer available, but there are other products on the market that are designed to do the same job of containing a battery fire.
Of course, outdoors is the best place to charge, but a proper container is always highly recommended. Metal cans or ammunition boxes aren’t ideal because they can transmit heat and possibly short the wires. Ceramic pots or fireproof fabric bags have provided good results.
Scarlet Northrop, age 11, displays the new PuzzlePlane model. The great-granddaughter of Jack Northrop, she’s a princess in a royal family of aviation!
Mike said that he had a fateful momentary distraction that led him to accidentally interrupt the charge cycle then immediately restart it. He thinks that the charger got confused and didn’t shut off when it should have, causing an overcharge situation. Mike has resolved to make sure that each charge process begins properly from now on, and he will fully reset the system if something interrupts a charge cycle.
Mystery Airplane
This is an easy one to guess! I saw this beautiful example of a famous three-engine airliner at the fabulous Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation in Dearborn, Michigan. That alone is a big clue! This airplane was known for its strength and safety, in part because of the corrugated metal construction. It wasn’t the sleekest, but it was a trendsetter at the time.
The Henry Ford museum has a dazzling collection of aircraft and almost everything else you can imagine! I highly recommend a visit.
PuzzlePlane Prize Plans
Take a guess at the mystery airplane via email (my email address is at the top of the column) and I’ll send you digital plans for Bill Watson’s PuzzlePlane. This unusual design has no dihedral but is quite stable and easy to fly.
The name comes from the model’s jigsaw-puzzle joints, which are laser-cut and make this airplane a quick build. The commercial kit requires less than 10 minutes for the airframe’s construction! If you prefer scratch-building, you can butt-join the balsa sticks and do well, but you’ll miss the oddly satisfying pleasure of popping the puzzle-shaped joints together.
PuzzlePlane Postal Contest
Get busy and build one because there is a worldwide Postal Contest coming up, sponsored by the Secret Sky Squadron. A Postal Contest is where pilots fly and time their models locally then send the results in to the organizers. In the olden days, this was done with paper postcards, hence the name. Fly your PuzzlePlane during the 10-day contest window of July 28 to August 6, 2023, then post your best flight time on the contest website that is listed in “Sources” and you might be a winner!
No entry fee is required. Indoor and outdoor flights are allowed but airframe modifications are not. This is a One-Design contest, so build according to the plans. The two age categories are 17 years old and under, and 18 years old and older. In my case, it’s 18 and way older.
Howard Littman sells laser-cut PuzzlePlane kits on the website listed in “Sources.” He and designer Bill Watson have given the okay to distribute the plans for free so that scratch builders can enter the Postal Contest.
A word to those disruptive modelers who convert my giveaway plans from Free Flight to RC: Do you think that just because something is fun you can go ahead and do it? What would happen to this sport if everybody just went ahead and had a ball with their weirdo, modified models? Next thing you know, we would all be having a great time flying whatever type of aircraft we fancied. It could lead to chaos!
Sources:
Howard Littman Model Aircraft
(818) 426-8374
www.hjlmodels.com
SkyBattle 2023
PuzzlePlane Postal Contest
www.skybattle.org
PuzzlePlane model airplane
YouTube
https://youtu.be/umiQko-AGU4
The Henry Ford
(313) 982-6001
www.thehenryford.org
Canyon Crosswinds Flying Club
www.canyoncrosswinds.org
