RC SLOPE SOARING
met Don awhile back at Pickle Butte while Slope Soaring. He informed me that I had printed his name wrong on a photo caption. Sorry Doug—I mean Don. I sincerely apologize for my error!
I might just have to become a member; they were nicer than I remember! On a side note, the Nampa field does have a small ridge to the north of the runway. I sloped it many years ago, but let’s keep that a secret.
I haven’t built anything all summer. My kids keep me busy with all of their summer activities. While cleaning out the garage, I found one of my son’s old plastic bats. I had just seen a post online somewhere about turning one of those into an airplane. I mentioned this to my kids, and they looked at me with rolling eyes. I get that look a lot.
My garage is full of flying machines, building supplies, and crazy ideas. My youngest daughter, who is 10 years old, is just like me, and on our ride home from Swan Falls, she happily reminded me about my bat idea. She is always up for an adventure with Dad, and she likes taking photos. One of these days, she will hopefully figure out that she doesn’t need her finger in the pictures.
We stopped at Walmart and she led the way to where the bats were located. On the rest of the ride home, we philosophized and dreamt about how to build it. The next day, I hotwired a set of EPP wing cores for the bat airplane. She also informed me that I’ll be teaching her how to fly RC airplanes this winter. I can see more pink, purple, and sparkly things being incorporated into my future designs!
One last encounter before I wrap up this month’s article. A couple of weeks ago, my Uncle Gary visited from his home in Seattle. He was staying with my Uncle Bob. I enjoy spending time with both of them.
While we were visiting, the subject of Uncle Bob being in my April 2023 column, and not Uncle Gary, was brought up. After some fun back-and-forth banter, I snapped a picture of Uncle Gary holding the April issue that Uncle Bob was in.
Slope Soaring makes up most of my adventures, thought processes, and lifestyle. It’s cool how I seem to use it as subject matter to connect, from reaching out to other RC flying disciplines and finding common ground, making new friends and spending time with my family members who are interested in flying, to sharing your ideas or visions. One of my perks will be to continue giving my Uncle Gary a hard time.
SOURCES:
League of Silent Flight (LSF)
www.silentflight.org
Nampa Model Aviators
www.nampamodelaviators.org
www.facebook.com/groups/NampaModelAviators
BARKS
www.barks.us
www.facebook.com/groups/253368131372932
HeliDirect
(877) 439-4354
www.helidirect.com
BEFORE I START my discussion about the Flight Coach project, I want to urge anyone who is interested in model helicopter competition to visit the American Radio Control Competition Helicopter Society (ARCCHS) Facebook group, listed in “Sources.” This is a new group of like-minded competition enthusiasts with goals to help introduce or improve AMA, F3C, F3N, and Scale competition helicopter flying throughout the US.
The hope is to, with permission of the event directors, offer help at a multitude of events for any person interested in “demystifying” the competition aspect of flying model helicopters. It won’t matter whether someone is just curious about maneuvers, suggests gyro setups, or wants to understand the “perfect” maneuver and how to maximize scores from the judges. This team has a combined hundreds of years of experience to help.
Virtual Flight Coach
I have been flying model helicopters in competitions since the early 1980s. Depending on the circumstances of the model clubs I’ve been involved with, I have occasionally had people help me practice competition routines by providing feedback on a maneuver or calling out the placement of the model relative to the flag or cone on the field during hovering maneuvers. I’ve even tried using a drone overhead for hovering maneuvers to understand when to go in-to-out or out-to-in.
Overall, it’s been easier to get good feedback assistance from people for hovering compared with aerobatic flying. Aerobatic flying is much faster and it’s more difficult to make immediate corrections (as called out by a helper) compared with hovering. It’s also difficult for a helper to provide a quantitative suggestion for some aspects of maneuvers.
For example, some competition maneuvers have multiple vertical peaks. Although it might be obvious that the pilot did not meet the identical vertical criteria, it’s not as easy to determine that dimension and/or whether the model has moved in or out slightly during the ascent or descent (experienced pilots and judges are pretty good at this).
A while ago, while vegetating and looking at Facebook, I read comments from people about Flight Coach. Rather than a product, it’s based on people volunteering their time to produce a way to use off-the-shelf components to capture information from a flight and store it for analysis after the flight. All of the information is freely available on the Flight Coach website.
I know of a number of people who have constructed their own packages. I took the lazy way out and purchased a prepackaged module from Precision Aero Products that only needs a battery and a micro SD card to collect data. I purchased this module at full retail and feel that it’s a well-built, turnkey solution. I have not been disappointed.
Flight Coach develops data-driven tools for RC Aerobatics pilots and judges, with the aim of making the sport more objective. The project was started by a group of keen F3A RC Aerobatics and RC Scale Aerobatics competitors, but the work is also applicable to other RC and full-scale aerobatic disciplines.
Most of the work involves installing inexpensive GPS and altitude tracking hardware in the aircraft then post-processing the data on the ground to provide feedback. All of the Flight Coach outputs are free to use. (See specific license details
Downloaded to the free plotter image from the mounted flight logger, this shows the judge’s view of the double Candle with half flips and half rolls. The flight logger recorded the actual path of the helicopter during this maneuver.
This shows a maneuver from the top view. It’s difficult to quantify as a pilot or a judge.
