National Free Flight Society

SEN 2087

SEN 2087 – Table of Contents

  1. FAA Update
  2. Rubber Response

FAA Update

The AMA notified it’s members today about some legal actions it is taking concerning the FAA Model Aircraft registration requirement and has given its members advice on what they should do. This can be found at http://amablog.modelaircraft.org/amagov/2015/12/17/hold-off-on-registering-model-aircraft/ . Note the status on this will no doubt change on a regular basis so people concerned should always go to the AMA web site to check the latest status.

The NFFS , the National Free Flight Society, the Free Flight special interest group leadership is working with the AMA to get an official interpretation on the affect on Free Flight flying and clarify issues caused by the differences between Free Flight and Radio Controlled Flying. The FAA requirements were of course written primarily with R/C in mind. We believe that this discussion is best carried out in-committee by the AMA and NFFS leadership. Because of this we won’t be printing any comments on this for the time being. We did receive a few more comments, some of which were a bit off track.

Rubber Response
A 1/8” factory rubber box consists of 10 or more segments spliced together. The joint is usually marked by a black marking across the rubber, sometimes on both sides. Without a mark, a splice is typically a bit thicker – which was referred to as being lumpier. (Admit it could have been phrased more clearly.)

Each segment is made from a single mixing of natural and artificial rubber plus catalysts. So segments can differ in terms of their average energy and some of us try and find the better ones.

Although the thickness varies slightly along a rubber strip, variations across the strip are miniscule in comparison. So, if a 1/8” strip of rubber is thicker (thinner) over some interval, both the 1/16” ‘children’ inherit that feature. But an off-center production blemish will pass to one child.

Aram

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Roger Morrell