SEN 2849
- Al Ulm
- DT rounds ?
- Wind Power
- A Falling
Al Ulm
From:Adelaide Machado Ulm
“Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you will have been, and there you will always long to return” (Leonardo da Vinci)
Anthony “Allen” Ulm, husband of Pat, father of Jeff and Gene, grandfather of Karl, Kurt, and Adelaide, and avid free flight enthusiast died April 30 at home with his family. His frequent attendance of contests at Perris, Lost Hills, Lake Elsinore, and Taft flying gas or rubber powered models ignited passion for free flight in his youngest son and subsequently his granddaughter. Even when Al didn’t fly, in recent years he could be found sitting with his dog talking to contests directors or passersby. He will be remembered for his youthful resilience and gentle optimism for his future, the future of his family, and the future of free flight.
Editor’s comment: In the 1980s when I came back to Free Flight I went to a USFFC at Taft. By mistake I parked with the F1B group. Pat and Al Ulm were there together with the Whites, Piserchios, Critchlows, Quinns and Hotards. They were all having such a great time, they pointed out the error of my ways in building a Dragmaster Nordic rather than a Wakefield and suggest what I should build and subsequently helped me a lot. One Saturday test session Al watched me struggling to get the rubber bands on the stabilizer and he came back the next weekend with a little hook he had made for me complete with a knurled handle he had turned on his lathe. This little gadget is still in my tool box many years later, I use it every time I fly and it reminds me of Al’s friendship.
DT rounds ?
From Aram Schlosberg:
Windy conditions in small fields are an unwelcome combination. A model that DTs at 3-minutes from a great height can land far away and/or in big trouble. Long retrievals can complicated by ground conditions.
One remedy is curtailing the maxes. But 2-minute maxes are just formalities for good ABCQ-models and a 2:30 max is lukewarm, far from being a Goldilocks solution.
Instead, when a round is expected to be windy, fliers would DT their models at 2 minutes and be timed to the ground. Here flights could exceed 3-minutes. The 2-minute DT requirement is announced before each round.
Models that don’t DT within 2:05 will be granted 120 seconds for that round. The same applies to models that tumble or stall to the ground. DT flights could be marked with an asterisk.
A contest could be a mixture of regular and DT flights. For example, results could be: 3:00 or 1:35 regular flights. 2:37* a DT flight 2:00* a DT flight with a delayed or poorly executed DT.
A contest with DT flights is CHALLENGING in small fields under windy conditions. In the unlikely event of tie, it could be resolved with a 2 minute DT flight to the ground. ///
Wind power
From: Gilbert Morris
Wow! Thoughts of wind power reach back to 1827 and more technically
discussed as early as 1985 as referenced in Moritz
Diehl’s paper submitted to SEN by Peter Martin. This was all news to me.
Terry Kerger asked for my opinion what I thought of the YouTube version
to which I replied:
It looks to me like the tether turns a crank (generator shaft) at the point
of towing so that the greater the circle in diameter the closer
the tether becomes perpendicular to the gen. shaft. The bottom of the plane
has to always be pointed down wind like a windmill follows the wind
direction. The four propellers are used to orient the plane at the start of
circling and again to hover when the tether is wound in for anchoring.
Otherwise they use flaps and stab trim to establish the size and speed of
circle. I think the plane they show circling is much smaller than what they
expect to end up with to get the kind of torque and KW’s windmills ideally
operate at. Frankly, I don’t see a better economy over the windmill.
A Falling
From comments on FB we understand that the “F1A Falling On launch DQ” rules proposal has been withdrawn. This was followed on FB by a quasi-political discussion on personal responsibility. Let it be said that there is some possibility of injury with that style of launch and people who fly F1A need to understand that, particularly concerning young people and old people, well maybe all people.