THE FIELDBOX August 2003

Intro

I’m attaching a copy of the local club flying rules this month for everyone to review. I know I said that last month, but now I’m over my bad case of cranial/rectal inversion.

If you have any ideas, articles, or stories for the newsletter, please email me, or call me to get it submitted. grippm@bellsouth.net

Club Officers

The elected officers for WTRC for 2003 are:

President: Tim Treneff

Vice-President: Jeff Layman

Secretary: Mike Grippin

Treasurer: Anthony Harden

Safety Officer: Dave Huff

Field Marshall: Jeff Cowan

Rants & Raves from the Safety Officer

          Hello all. I was a very close witness to a mishap last sunday at the field. It got me thinking about something. We had a guest at our field named Don ?? (sorry, bad with names) with a twin boom pusher prop jet. A beautiful plane. I helped him start it and carried it to the fence. The engine loaded up and it died. Dennis Patterson brought out his starter and it's running again. Cool! It still wanted to die on run up in the transition so, Don decided to have me hold it to get it up to RPM. I grabbed it by the horizontal stab and when the engine got up "on the pipe", yes it had a tuned pipe on it, I immediately knew I could have screwed up real good. The stab was about 8 inches behind a 3 blade Master Airscrew propellor that was turning 19,000 RPM's!!! Don nodded and I gladly let it loose. Take off was beautiful, graceful and fast! The plane then made that "you just spun your prop off with the starter" sound, we all know that sound, and the engine died. Don did an outstanding job of not getting rattled, kept his speed up, and made the turn and dove to the field. He didn't make it. He needed about 5 more feet of altitude. I've seen a lot worse at way slower speed than this particular belly flop. The plane will fly again.

       Upon further review, the prop did not come off. The blades separated at the hub. One of them went through the port side tail boom!

       So the question is, are we over-revving our props? Everything has limits. Do we know what the max operating RPM of our props is? We all have looked at our props while doing a ground run up and had some vision of a psycho meat slicer. Have we thought about blade separation? How fast it's going and where it ends up?

       Something to think about when you run those puppies up on the ground huh? Please pull your aircraft forward in the pits to get a clear line on the prop blades where if one separates it wont hit anyone. Point it into the arresting barricade, commonly known as a fence, and run it up! Just remember, if the prop, or a blade comes off, it can go in any direction, forward and/or side to side, from a line that runs down the leading edge of the
wing, and it'll probably zing for a pretty good distance too.

       Stay safe and have fun!
       Dave

President’s Corner

Tim must have had a pretty busy month, no notes to add here. But, if I try to think like him his words would be “Hats and Shirts, buy them now”

Field Notes

For those of you that haven’t been out lately, you’ll notice that the rope lines have been moved around. We have ceded back some land to JEA, but we still have plenty for parking. I would only ask that you drive carefully when you come in and out of the entrance, we need to keep that as solid as possible. The grass is still doing well, all that rain we’ve had over the last 2 weeks has really kept it growing. One more application of fertilizer is coming up, and that should hold it for the summer.

One note, please pick up any and all trash that you leave in your area, that includes those pesky rubber bands. Those things get wrapped up in the reel mower pretty quickly.

BS From the Hangar

Chop Talk

RICKY, TOM, where ya at buds. Not only do we need some input for this column, but we need to see the choppers out at the field hovering or flying.

Building & Repair Tips

I’m kinda short on info this month, so my best advice would be “Don’t crash it, and you won’t have to repair it” Also, “If you follow the directions, building will be easier”

Donation lookout

Looking for some simple stuff here, hoses, shelves for the shed.

Bag of Balsa of the Month

Well not too good of a month. I think I still led the way, crashed my Eagle 63, not sure what happened, but you know it couldn’t have been pilot error. I also did a pretty hard landing with a scratch built stik, as you all know, I really didn’t care about that one anyway. Clinton lost his Avistar, that darn tree monster just reached up and grabbed it from him. Luckily, I’ve made enough trips back into that swamp that we ended up finding it pretty easily. You’ll have to ask Rich about his F-16, beautiful plane and was flying great, but…….