National Free Flight Society

SEN 3178

  1. Book on F1B
  2. Pre-order Rubber NOW for delivery at Fab Feb Lost Hills
  3. About Time Update

 

Book on F1B

From: Masaru Koike

Now a book : “Free Flight F1B Technology and Science for Extending Duration”
is available. The cost is 9,000 yen The  book  is written in Japanese, with a supplementary English text translation (without figures) and shipping.
PayPal can be used. If you are interested, please contact me.
Masaru Koike, Mail: f1b67f230@gmail.com
Contents
1. Making rubber bundles, tool for it.
2. Adjustment and Trimming of the Climb Pattern
3. Glide, trimming, theory, correlation between wind tunnel and actual flight data,
4. Design and building of wing, propeller blade, tail plane, motor tube, pylon etc.
5. Wind tunnel data of AA29aifoil, Bob White, Ishii etc. Re=20,000 – 70,000
6. Turbulator, Is the boundary layer laminar or turbulent?
Velocity and turbulence distribution data.
7. Theory of propeller aerodynamics
8. Rubber energy, measurement tool, test results of recent rubbers.
9. Motor run simulation, methods and results.
Time course of speed, rpm of prop., attitude, altitude etc.
10.Recent technologies of F1A, C, simulation of super bunt of F1A.


 

FAI Model Supply will be providing rubber and supplies to all those who pre-order for delivery at the FAB February Contests in Lost Hills, CA.

From: Fai Model Supply  Sales
FAI Model Supply will be providing rubber and supplies to all those who pre-order for delivery at the FAB February Contests in Lost Hills, CA.

If you are interested in ordering items, we ask that you please send us an email to sales@faimodelsupply.com. Please do not order off our website to have it delivered to the field.  Please only order if you are positive you will attend.  If you order and do not pick up, we will charge you the cost of shipping the item back to our office.

We will confirm back to you with an invoice indicating your total cost from the group shipment to be collected at Lost Hills or prepaid arrangements available prior to the contest via PayPal.  Our plans are to distribute at the contest registration on Friday February 9.

We will need to receive your order by February 1  to guarantee delivery in Lost Hills.  Any order/request received after that date can not be guaranteed to be delivered at the contest.

We currently have a batch of rubber from December 23 and will be expecting a new batch at the end of January in time for shipping to the February competitions..

Thank you,
Charlie & Geralyn Jones
FAI Model Supply Inc.


 

About Time Update

About Time is the name of the project to evaluate the automated timing of Free Flight models using an onboard flight recorder that is being done Fab Feb contests.  This started off working with Flying Neuron to add some extra features to their Mini-Neuron device. This is one of the 2 certified altimeters approved for Free Flight contests. While this device and the other certified device, the All-Tee are certified as altimeters they are in reality flight recorders. They show a visual record of the entire flight in graphical format and keep the numbers behind that.

For us it is important that the devices are certified because this means they are up to a proper level of accuracy and security.  There are sometimes questions such as why do I have to use a certified device , I have a good altimeter I have used for years or my timer has one it.  For some of us this electronic stuff is a black box we trust, for others it is our daily bread and butter, something we understand and can easily make own and make it work what every way we like and report what we want , a Max every time !  So the builder of the model adds an extra dimension here. So let’s stick with approved i.e. certified devices !

Recently we had a meeting to review the status of the About Time project.  Both Flying Neurons and All-Tee representatives were at the meeting. Both of them use very similar techniques for determining the start and end of flight, the use of the altimeter to measure to decide when the flight starts and ends. One of the objects of the About Time project is verify in the field, independently, how well this is working.  Flying Neurons already had in their system a way of reporting the flight results back to a server on the internet for post flight analysis. The format of this data was not quite sufficient for our purposes so they have made some changes. The way it works is there is a “button” on their smart phone App that says either show me the flight time or report back the flight time.  They have offered to make the reporting back process available to other certified devices.  This would let All-Tee add this capability to their smart phone App. So now All-Tee is investigating this and there is a strong possibility that this would be available for Fab Feb.

There are a couple important implications here. One is that we need to define what data is reported back, for example, the flight time , FAI ID etc. and what format the data is in. This is something that would eventually go into the sporting code.  The other is specifying how the data is reported back to the event organizer, perhaps with options. There were a couple of examples in the previous paragraph, the flight time could be displayed on a smart phone and copied down or it could be fetched off the internet. The object of doing all the automated timing is to make it more accurate and easier.  While there is more prep work here, maybe it is easier that having to give every timekeeper an eye test to make sure they have 20-20 vision or even find enough timekeepers with 20-20 vision

This is maybe the time to take a step back and ask the question , why do we have that weird bit in the sporting code that lets a sportsman contest his time in a fly-off with his certified (or not?) altimeter ?  It is clearly because enough ‘serous’ sportsmen have gone to major contest, perhaps traveling quite some distance only to have a disappointing experience with sub-standard timing.  This is not to say it was deliberate on the part of the timekeeper, and it does not mean always that the serious travelling sportsman was under timed, it could be that another  sportsman was given the benefit of the doubt and generously timed.  We have the technology, there are issues, let’s figure it out and make fair for all and easy.  We do not have to use this for all events we need it when it matters.

So far we have about 85 people who have pre-entered the FabFeb  FAI events and 20 who have indicated interest in taking part in About Time, from World Champs, Masters and beginners


SEN Status

Our new web site is online with archives of SEN going back to 1997 plus many items about FAI Free Flight. It can be found at http://www.faifreeflight.org

Existing SEN subscribers can update their preferences by following the update your preferences link at the bottom of this page.

New users can sign up at  this link http://eepurl.com/crOnvj
or at the SEN website

 
…………..
Roger Morrell