Wingtips. March Coming events. Editor: Brian Oakes

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1 March 2013 Wingtips Editor: Brian Oakes Photo: Grant Manwaring s Eliminator above the field. Why is it there? See p 3. In this edition: Dickson College UAV page 2 Practice for SAM, Canowindra page 3 Sensational Mid-air page 3 Featured Model of the Month page 4 Free-flight Lanzo Bomber page 5 Reading List page 5 Committee Contact Details page 5 Licence Thanks to the determined efforts of Wayne Harris, the club has now been given a licence by the Department to use the field until 31 March We may now more confidently plan for the intended extension to the runway and other works. Cloth badges. Roger Pinder and Darryl Barbour still have cloth badges (below) bearing the club logo. At $5 these are a bargain; you could consider buying two (one to wash and one to wear.) Coming events Military Day at Namadgi, Sunday 17 March. See February Wingtips for directions to the field Seniors Week, Tuesday 19 March. BMAC has invited senior citizens to our field as part of Seniors Week. If you re at the field this Tuesday, please make them welcome BMAC Scale Day, Sunday 14 April. You should have already received a flier and entry form for this event. Bring a scale model big or small, old or new, fat or thin and join in the fun SAM event at Canowindra, Easter weekend. See page 3 for more information Yass Old Timer 7-8 September. This is advance notice that the BMAC Old Timer event, usually held at the Yass club in May will now be held in September

2 Dickson College UAV flight training Page 2 by Jack Pittar [Some BMAC members may know Jack as an instructor at CMAC. Here s what he s doing at our field.] Students from Dickson College are practicing flying at the BMAC field as part of the Dickson College robotics program. They have been using the college s flight simulator to hone their skills when they are not at the airfield. As part of the larger Dickson College Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) team, they will travel to Kingaroy in Queensland in September to compete in the Outback Challenge. In this event, RC planes fly over a lost tourist in the outback, and drop life-saving supplies to him. The students must build the plane and fly it, and build a system that automatically drops the package using GPS. The flights are recorded via telemetry and can be replayed in Google Earth to give students further feedback. Other students, whom you may see at the field from time to time, build a media presentation that is assessed as part of the competition, and used in presentations to industry and government organisations. The presentations bring the students into contact with industry, which is a source of funding for the project. The contact sometimes leads to a career. The training aircraft are the good old stand-by, the Boomerang and the well-known Ugly Stick. I m experimenting with the use of the Ardupilot (photo above) to make the Ugly Stick fly like a trainer with lots of dihedral and a refusal to dive, and, later, a fairly hot Ugly Stick. However, with the use of the flight simulator, I fear that by the time I get it sorted out, the students will not need the training wheels anyway! If you see the students at the field, please say hi and ask them about the UAV program at Dickson College. For more information see: Photo: Andrew Moss with students Ryan1, Orlando, Zach and Ryan2 Late breaking news! On page 3, see an account of the amazing mid-air collision involving Jack s Boomerang! Don t forget For safety, i.c. engines must not be started, and electric motors must not be armed, in the pits. The start-up area is south of the concrete and rubble drain.

3 Practice for Canowindra It s easy to tell that the Easter is nearly upon us.page 3 Late news. Bob s Bomber (above) becomes a freeflighter! See page 5. Members are test flying models and practising for the Society of Antique Modellers (SAM) event at Canowindra to be held over the Easter long weekend as tradition demands. The photo at left does not show Bob Raadts Lanzo Bomber about to land on someone s hat! The Bomber is much more distant; the effect being caused by the telephoto lens used for the shot. Below, the owner of the hat, Allan Laycock has a stopwatch in one hand while he launches Grant Manwaring s Eliminator on another test flight. Below left, Grant starts the Eliminator s engine. Mid-air collision (From page 2). On Tuesday 12 March, Jack was on hand to teach Dickson College student Amy Blunt, seen in the photo, right, with Andrew and the Boomerang. Before the training session, Amy looked at the models then in the air and said that she d hate to be flying when there was a collision. We all told her that collisions were rare because there s lots of room out there and models that look to be about to collide always pass behind or in front of each other. But Amy must have known something no-one else did. Many of us saw the collision. Debris dropped from the sky, but both models landed safely, despite half of the Boomerang s tailplane having disappeared (right). Bizarrely, the arrow on the leading edge of Mike Ward s model s wing (left) indicates the spot that hit Jack s tailplane.

The photo below, from the May 1972 edition of RC Modeler shows the designer and the original Barnstormer.

4 Featured Model of the Month Chris Nugent s Mighty Barnstormer Page 4 Obviously, Chris Nugent likes to be different. His parasol-wing model, shown above, is a version of the Mighty Barnstormer, designed by the late UK modeller David Boddington. The photo below, from the May 1972 edition of RC Modeler shows the designer and the original Barnstormer. Chris drew plans using computer aided design software but enlarged the Barnstormer from the original 2235 mm (88 inch) to 2740 mm (108 inch) wingspan. Intended for rudder control only, the original had generous dihedral, but as Chris intended to fit ailerons, he reduced the dihedral drastically. He then sent off the CAD files to have the sheet balsa and ply laser cut not a cheap process, he says, but accurate. Assembly took about a year. The completed Barnstormer weighs a shade under 7 kg and is powered by a 210 kv Turnigy motor and two 4-cell Lipos in series. Photos: Top, the Mighty Barnstormer approaches for yet another smooth landing. Above: the prototype and its designer. Above right: Chris and his son Graham, aged 8 (hopefully an aeromodeller of the future!). Right: Chris demonstrates the Barnstormer s one-point landing - tail wheel first.

5 From page 4: Lanzo Bomber s escape to free-flight Page 5 Bob Raadts told Wingtips that, last Sunday, there was a distressing incident with his Lanzo Bomber (pictured above on an earlier flight). A moment after the noise and haste of the take-off he realised he hadn t connected the battery to the receiver. From that moment the Bomber was a free-flight model! It headed east and, eventually, after the engine stopped, was lost from view. Bob searched for it, without result. However a security guard at the Archives Building came across the Bomber, which had landed, unscathed, nearby. This resourceful fellow noticed the SAM 1788 sticker on the Bomber s wing, and a Google search of SAM 1788 revealed one site that had the phone number of a Canberra resident Allan Laycock. Needless to say, Bob and the Bomber are now reunited. This month s reading These two articles from RCM&E magazine explain about 2.4 GHz radio for aircraft models. If you re thinking of converting from 35 MHz, are new to aeromodelling or just aren t sure that you know everything there is to know about 2.4 Gig, check these articles. To see one, select a URL from below, and BMAC committee President: Chris Elliott Christopher.Elliott@booz.com Vice-President: Wayne Harris wayneharris@grapevine.com.au Treasurer: Darryl Barbour dbarbour@internode.on.net Secretary: Jim Henderson jchende@bigpond.com Field Officer: Rob Clayton robclayton@grapevine.com.au Safety Officer: Roger Pinder rpinder@hom .com.au Chief Flying Instructor: Steve Mercer steve.mercer@environment.gov.au copy and paste it into your browser. When you arrive at the page, click on the name of the.pdf file at the bottom left of that page. Wingtips Editor: Brian Oakes elle.bee@apex.net.au Committee Members: Henk Jansen lhjansen@bigpond.com Peter Hamilton peterrose@westnet.com.au Gavin Voigt gvoigt@vsb.com.au Wingtips the Belconnen Model Aero Club Newsletter published 15 March 2013

Wingtips. February Editor: Brian Oakes. Coming Up. On other pages

Wingtips. February Editor: Brian Oakes. Coming Up. On other pages February 2017 Editor: Brian Oakes Wingtips Coming Up BMAC General Meeting 25 Feb, see page 3 NAAS Fun Fly 24-26 Feb, see page 3 CAP Expo 25 March, see page 5 On other pages Seen at the Lake page 2 Seen