National Free Flight Society

SEN 2984

  1. CIAM
  2. Lee Hines – Mr. Baseball
  3. LEE HINES
  4. Where is your Vortex
  5. Waegell  Wind

CIAM

From: FFn

The Plenary remote voting on the technical proposals has just
been completed. The meeting has confirmed all but one of the
items which were recommended by the Free Flight Technical
Meeting reported in the April FFn. The exception is the F1Q
flyoff change which was missed from the voting list. It will be
considered at the Plenary meeting on May 7 and, since it was
unanimously recommended by the Technical meeting, I do not
foresee anything other than the meeting accepting it.
The 2022 CIAM General Rules volume of the Sporting Code
has finally been published and can be downloaded from the FAI
web site. Go to https://www.fai.org/page/ciam-code, Select
“Sporting Code – Section 4 Aeromodelling”, expand that to the
list of volumes with the ? indicator (not the ? or you will
download all the volumes) then select CIAM General Rules or
F1 Free Flight, or whichever volume you want and press the
download symbol ? by that volume.


As a reminder these are the FFSC proposals from the previous FFn.  Non-FFSC items removed
Volume CGR

This clarification of the markings allowed on a model was
unanimously approved by the meeting with amendment to
replace “FAI licence number” by “FAI unique ID number”:
number” by “FAI unique ID number”

Volume F1

The proposal from FFSC to better define the processes in
holding an altitude flyoff were accepted by the meeting with one
change. The time for returning altitude evidence is increased
from 45 minutes to 60 minutes.

The FFSC proposal for a small clarification of the definition of
timing F1.2.6 as accepted unanimously by the meeting.
The next three proposals concerned F1.2.7 Electronic evidence
of flight time in a flyoff.

The FFSC proposal to let those with
EDIC approved altimeters to avoid the “signature dance” was
unanimously approved by the meeting.

The FFSC proposal to reduce the F1Q flyoff working time from
10 minutes to the 7 minutes like used in F1A F1B F1C was
unanimously approved by the meeting.

The FFSC proposal to clarify that moveable control surfaces are
not allowed in F1S was unanimously approved by the meeting.


 

Lee Hines – Mr. Baseball

From: Benjamin Coussens
I will always remember Lee for his incredible memory and his love for all
things free flight, jazz music, cuisine, and baseball. I was always the
snot nosed loud mouthed kid riding various bikes and doing hand launch
gliders and catapult, using little models that barely stayed up in the air
for 15 seconds. But Dallas Parker and I would watch Lee, chuck these HLG’s
a mile in the sky and just be in awe. Lee always wanted to share some fun
story about an event that I was most definitely not born before and would
always know the names of every person at that event.

Beyond my adoration of F1A, I always loved baseball and as I got older, Lee
would sit down and tell me about a game he had recently watched and
something he witnessed that was special about it. Every contest he would
find me and we would talk baseball. He would soon start bringing books
about baseball that I still have to this day, in my office. Facebook came a
long and I grew up a bit and ended up moving a way from Southern
California…Lee would find me on Facebook and message me about baseball. We
actually had shared a message about it less than a month ago about how
happy we were that the lockout was over and that a summer without baseball
would be a sad one.

Lee visited me here in Texas a few years back on his way home from the
Nats. We sat and had lunch together and reminisced of great memories on the
field and various meals we had enjoyed with the usual suspects like Jon
Davis and coach Jim. He got to see my son who he affectionately always
called Mungo due to his build…Lee loved his people and remembered them
often…I am grateful to have been one of Lee’s people. His last words to me
were “I always love chatting with you Mr. Baseball”.

The feeling was mutual and he will be missed greatly.

Ben Coussens


 

LEE HINES

From: FFn
It was sad to read in SEN of the passing of Lee Hines. He was a
supremely able modeller for many years in F1A and Hand
Launch Glider. an absolute authority on them and always keen
to discuss and advise. He represented USA in five World
Championships – 1979, 1985, 2001, and 2009. He achieved one
podium place, taking third at the 1979 event in USA at Taft
behind Per Grunnet proxy flown by Thomas Koster and Per
Quarnstrom. Lee was an encyclopedia of knowledge on
championships results and was often querying various detail
aspects of my database of championships results. He also
seemed to have an equivalently deep knowledge of American
presidents, but I am in less of a position to judge that!
In recent years he took up the less energetic E36 class and also
kept coming to events to observe and talk. He will be really
missed.

(Sample plans of his models are on the previous page, including
the key F1A Mean Machine and HLG Sweepette. Both of these
were from NFFS Symposium Reports. Only in FFn of course)


 

Where is your Vortex ?

From:  Mike Fantham  ?
The video that Gil took us to worried me a bit.  The graphics were a bit sloppy and so was some of the reasoning.  A forum I belong to had a reference to Newton’s Third Law and its rôle in lift production so I started a thread to talk about it.  (Rabbit hole warning – do not click link if you don’t want to be distracted from building you next world beater)
https://www.barcs.co.uk/forums/topic/11299-where-does-lift-come-from/#comment-187293
There is also a section in the video that implies that you can do something to tip vortices to reduce drag.  I think if you stop the tip vortices forming on a finite span wing the lift will stop.  Winglets are there to effectively increase span and move the vortices further apart.
I am a structures man, not an aerodynamicist but physics is physics.


Waegell  Wind

From: Fred Terzian

Briefly to all I will submit a better report on the Nor Cal FF Champs held
at Waegell Field this past weekend later on. Lots of paperwork to fill out
and clean out the car for what was taken to run the contest.
The theme of the 32nd Annual Nor Cal is in honor of legendary Oakland Cloud
Duster member Hank Cole who will turn 101 this year. As most of you know He
is a Hall of Fame member of the National Free Flight Society (NFFS),
Academy of Model Aeronautics (AMA), and possibly Society of Antique
Modelers (SAM). What you may not know is that he was also instrumental in
the success of landing Neil Armstrong on the surface of the moon back in
1969 while working for NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration)
most recently at Ames at Moffett Field in Mountain View. His daughter has
recently created a Facebook page for him and is listed under “Hank Cole”
Please contribute and request him as a friend if you are into social media.
I did not arrive there until about 4:45 pm Friday, getting a late start and
hitting all of the commuter eastbound traffic out of the Bay Area.
Presumably going home or planning early getaways to the Sierra mountains.
Wind was predicted the whole weekend, which probably discouraged many not
to make the trip, along with rising gas prices and travel distance.
Bill V, cancelled the flying events Friday and rescheduled Vintage FAI gas
to Saturday, which turned out to be one of the best days ever to fly there.
Early plans were to move the headquarters registration table to the top of
one of the Southeast hills, which meant my Cadillac DTS would remain near
the Porta Potties as it probably would have gotten stuck in a water channel
ravine!

The F1B Wakefield contingent (about four of them) decided to set up their
stooges on flat land rather than on the hill. A good choice and easier to
access with vehicles.

Flying conditions ran smoothly with the wind pattern heading slightly
Northwest towards Sunrise Blvd. It later changed to a Northeast direction,
which also gave us the best drift and chase pattern. Most flights aided by
strong thermals went almost directly overhead before drifting with the
gusts to locations not too far to retrieve on foot or by motorcycle.
Monday was predicted to have strong winds again by noon, so most present
began flying early starting at 8 am. When we broke for a barbecue lunch at
about 12, those who participated had to hold onto their paper plates with
either polish sausages or hamburgers, all prepared by Bill’s brother Loren.
The shade canopies threatened to become unstaked but held their ground.
Official flying was finished before 1pm and it was decided to have the
awards ceremony quickly so that all present could get an early start home.
Tradition has been to have five $100 bills given out between a series of
awards presentations, with each contestant getting a ticket when
registering. Bill’s purpose was to encourage contestants to remain for the
prize ceremonies. Would you believe that the first four names drawn had
already left the field?!!! This really increased (improved) the chances of
those present to win one of those bills. The outright winners of $300 went
to the Oregon guys: Glenn and Bruce Grell plus Bob Stalick. Paul Masterman
also won, but was asleep when his name was called! Maybe he should have
been disqualified. 😉 !!!

Despite the marginal attendance, I believe everyone had a good time,
especially with socializing and taking advantage of picking up a lot of
modeling merchandise that I was donating to the Tangent gang and offering
to those present for support of the NFFS Junior program. A coffee can
netted $175 for the juniors and many items were offered for free, including
many Tatone/KSB clockwork timers, engines, ten free flight kits, Tan II
rubber, FAI black/grey rubber (good for Catapult Glider launchers), and
balsa sheets, plus hardwood and accessories.
The field was pretty well cleared by 2:30 and those that remained were Bill
and Loren pulling their trailers, and me and my Cadillac. We were out of
the main gate at 3:30 after slowly moving forward through all of the
livestock that were being herded into large cargo trailers by six cowboys
on horseback and trailed by herding sheep dogs. I will have to add that
there was also an absolutely gorgeous young lady on horseback with the same
type of Western attire. I gave her a thumbs up out of the Cadillac’s
window, along with a wide grin. She responded in the same way! Still
wondering if she was the daughter of the livestock owner, or possibly the
owner herself!

On the FAI side, those who duked it out were in the F1B class (Walt Ghio,
Mike Davis tied for a later flyoff and Jerry Fitch). Ken Bauer represented
F1A with spectacular launches but in many cases, tough air picking results.
No matter, he won first place! No F1C. Some we expected were no shows
(Mennanos). F1Q was represented by Ben Tarcher and Jack Murphy, traveling
all the way from Utah. He also flew F1S, E-36, Electric A and Electric B.
Almost every class of Electric events. Most popular event was F1S with Jack
Murphy winning, Paul Masterman, Larry Norvall and Ben Tarcher placing in
that order.

A larger report will follow with contestants in all categories entered and
a breakdown of the results.

Fred T.