Planes Over El Dorado
Final preparations are underway for the big race in Kansas. Loren has been testing his equipment at a few Dominator races and everything is looking great. Just to remind everyone, we will be flying this race under AMA sanction and there will be some new procedures we will need to get used to. Please help us out by paying careful attention to these changes when you get to the race and abiding by the rules that are in place. The first thing everyone needs to do is make sure that their aircraft meet the safety guidelines for Giant Scale Racing. These guidelines can be found at this address on the AMA website. http://modelaircraft.org/templates/ama/PDF-files/535.pdf . There are no big changes from previous years, but you do need to tether your engine to the firewall or other major structure of the airplane, and make sure your battery capacity meets the minimum stated requirement of 200mah per servo. You'll also need to make sure that your name, address, and AMA info are on the airplane somewhere, just like it is required for other AMA events. At the race, our timing and scoring officials will be located 300 feet back from the pilot's stations, and non-essential race personnel will also be back this distance as well. That means that only pilots and callers will be at the flight line during the race. Starting and launching crewmembers MUST clear the area and move back to the 300 foot distance. This is required not only to meet the AMA guidelines, but to also prevent someone from blocking the view of timing and scoring officials who must be able to see the pylons and the start/finish area. The staging area for the upcoming heats will also be in this area, and it is going to be important that you properly stage your airplane in the correct color position before your race. This will be the last opportunity for the timing and scoring officials to identify your airplane before you move to the flightline and we need to make their job as easy as we can. Loren has also developed a system to notify us when we are on our last lap, but it is important to note that the ultimate responsibility for completing all six laps is up to the caller and pilot. These new guidelines will take some getting used to, and we may find some unforeseen problems when we get going, but if we all do our part and follow directions we should be able to work through them together. Thanks in advance for your help!
APC Props
As I have mentioned before, we owe a big thank you to Fred Burgdorf over at APC props for developing and manufacturing our new F-1GT prop. With the help of West Coast Rep Fred Sattler, the design of the new prop allows APC to produce this prop using the gray plastic material, which gives us an inexpensive prop. The F-1GT prop and the T-6 prop were designed and tested for the loads that they would experience with a stock GT-80 and G-62 respectively. It would be a serious temptation of fate to bolt one of these props to an alcohol fueled, highly ported F-1 motor. It is a serious enough issue to the Board that we are making the use of the gray plastic F-1GT or AT-6 prop illegal in any other class other than what they are intended for. If you want to use these props for another class, you must special order them in the black carbon material. This injected carbon material will increase both the strength of the blade and the cost, but in the interest of safety we feel it is necessary. It would also not be fair to one of our most loyal sponsors to use their product for a purpose other than what it was intended for. Thanks for your understanding and cooperation with this issue.
OHIO!!!!
It's just around the corner….only six weeks after the Kansas race. I spoke with Tony Husak, CD of the event again this year, and plans are underway to make the race bigger and better than previous year's events. A lot of promotion is going into the race, including a flying demo of a Lancair at the Joe Nall fly in by Tom Keating and Chris Justus. Chris reports that he could hear the crowd "OOOHHing" and "AWWWing" when the racer whipped around the turns. The jet jocks were also impressed with the radar gun that read 237mph!! This year's race will be held in conjunction with a car show, so we are sure to have some spectators checking us out. I guess I'll have to shave! Entry fees are a low $120 for F-1 and F-1GT, and $150 for all other classes! The Saturday night dinner may be bigger than ever this year, and Scott Hanbury promised to take us back to Roman's on Friday night….If they let us back in!! Tony is going to send out a mailing soon, so look for it and sign up early. All of the race info is also up on the USRA website at www.usrainfo.org . Please support our races folks, otherwise we might not have any…
Blue Water River Run
Denny and Barbara Baker report that the race plans are going very well. The Blue Water Casino and Resort has joined Zenoah, JR, and CRT as race sponsors bringing the purse to over $10,000 in cash and prizes. The Blue Water is also offering a special room rate for contestants and is basing their future participation on the number of rooms we book, so make sure you stay at the Blue Water Resort when you come. The Resort is even putting on the banquet for us on Friday night! The race dates are set for October 23-26, 2003 and you can get more information about the Blue Water at their website www.bluewaterfun.com.
That's it for this month…Don't forget to bring your own hard hat to the race!
Ken McSpadden