National Free Flight Society

SEN 1965

Table of Contents – SEN 1965

  1. F1B for sale
  2. Meeting Suggestion
  3. Looking for an Audio tach
  4. F1C in it’s final stages
  5. Meeting Caution

F1B For sale:
F1B model ready to fly, build by Stepan Stefanchuk .

• wing span 1710 m”m covered by Icarex.
• variable pitch front end.
• mechanical timer
* The model is in good condition and fly very good.
* I can bring the model to Lost Hills in February.

For more details or pictures:
or.shabat1@gmail.com

Thank you
Or

Meeting Suggestion
From: Ross Jahnke

Every meeting of consequence is held at the Denny’s.

Ross

Ross – Denny’s is not big enough and it is maybe wise to have the meeting at a place where alcohol is not served 🙂 or is it 🙁

Looking for Audio Tach
Roger,

I am looking for an Audio Tachometer.

Gene.Wicks@frontier.com


F1C in it’s final stages?

Recently, I was looking at a bunch of old pictures and came across a shot of the scoreboard for FAI Power, Sept 4, 1965. This was in central California, Visalia, i think. Anyhow, the F1C event had 28 entries. Every one of them built and flew their own models, and most were their own designs. F1C now has a couple of foreign builders and maybe a couple of designers. The cost of a model, built by the flyer in 1965 was probably on the order of 50 bucks. I think I was making about 2 bucks an hour in 1965. Now a model is 3 to 4K, and will probably crash before it has a 100 flights on it. It is sad to see an event that was so much fun with the possibility that you might actually make the team and fly in the W.C.’s, finally fall to the point of only 8 flyers in the UNITED STATES compete for 3 spots. If something is not done to revitalize F1C it will be a goner in the next 4 years. Maintaining the status quo is not helping and is the reason we are where we are. The fact that there is, for all practical purposes, no stepping stone path to F1C. A flyer, who may be convinced he would like to get into F1C, takes a long look at it, he quickly realizes that his skill level in not at the skill level necessary to design, build, fly, and for that other matter, afford, three models so that he may be competitive enough to make the team. A possible solution tothis conundrum would be to allow models with the same weight and area rules, but with span limits like 1.5 meters with a 8 second run, 2 meters with a 7 second run. You see the gist of the suggestion and the numbers at this point in the discussion are not important . . . it is the idea we are discussing here, not the actual rules.

Think about it for a while. Whaat be the harm in trying it out on a USA only basis if the Rest of the world doesn’t like it.
Thanks for listening

Doug Galbreath

Douglas Galbreath
f1cdoug@aol.com


Meeting Caution

From: Stuart Darmon
Dear Roger,
while the Idea of a meeting at Lost Hills to discuss rule changes is to be welcomed- exchange of ideas has to be a good thing- may I add a note of caution? If such a meeting does indeed take place, any outcome it may produce cannot be considered a definitive answer to the question, since everyone who gets a say will, by definition, have the means to travel to one of the world’s best fields. I for one will be disenfranchised from this discussion because I have neither the time nor the thousand- plus pounds I’d need to get there. There will, of course, be those who feel that this is as it should be, and that flyers such as myself should not be considered significant. Be that as it may, even though most of the great and the good of F1 flying will be there, most of the world’s FF population will not, and any conclusions that may be reached must therefore be considered a highly informed, but statistically skewed, opinion.

Kind regards,

Stuart Darmon

Editor’s Comment

Stuart
I’m gob smacked . If I understand correctly from the modelling press there was a meeting in the UK at the end of last year, the Free Flight Forum where modelling issues of all kinds were presented and discussed. I’m guessing but think you probably attended the Forum. So what’s wrong with having a meeting at Lost Hills, or anywhere else for that matter. I also understand that at that UK meeting the proposal now referred to as the BFMA Proposal was presented and very little discussion permitted. I understand from the BFMA web site that you are on the Free Flight Committee that proposed the change ?
That proposal wants to change many aspects of the F1ABC events, and you think it’s wrong that those who fly those events talk about it ? They are the most affected.

You state that they are only a small part of the people that fly free flight world wide. That is indeed true, we are very fortunate that we have many classes to suit our preferences, or wallet, our family situation, where we live , our physical abilities, our work etc. For example I have a number of friends who fly the very popular FAC events in the USA, I watch them fly locally, my former F1B flying buddy Mike Mulligan flies it, maybe someday I will graduate to flying it too and I think that some of their rules are a little strange but no way would I dream of ever mentioning a change, let alone propose anything for an event I was not involved with.

Maybe there are some things that need to be changed about the F1ABC classes but to suggest that it is not appropriate or representative for those who fly the event in perhaps more indicative of the problem than the rules themselves.

We all know that the rules changes are voted on at the CIAM meetings. Sometimes the process seems a little mysterious and confusing, we need to make it better. Ours is a world wide hobby, sport or past time , it’s clearly not possible for every one to attend every possible meeting about it. With the advent of improved communications and social media some of the ways we did things in the past are coming under increased pressure. People expect to be better informed and have a higher level of participation, we see this all walks of life, if they are not they will go away. We have to do this too.

…………………..
Roger Morrell