If you're faced with a forced landing, fly the thing as far into the crash as possible.

- Bob Hoover

December, 2004

November Meeting Notes

The November meeting of the Monroe County R/C Club was finally called to order at 7:10:40 (EST), after a Mr. Hoover got his portable computer into gear. There were twenty-seven people in attendance, including one guest. John Sparks (brother of Tim Sparks) is moving back to the Bloomington area & may be interested in joining the club at a later date. We told him he was welcome to visit anytime, even though he was related to Tim.

The 2005 club swap meet date of February 27 was confirmed by Brent Hoover. Several people were interested in posting flyers for the event. They will be distributed as soon as possible along with a PDF computer file version suitable for e-mailing & posting on the web page.

There were no new nominees for club offices again this year, so the election process went without a hitch. Mark Sexton is your president for 2005. Bruce Hoffman is your Vice President and Brent Hoover is your Secretary/Treasurer. Please be sure to thank these gentlemen for their continued service to the Monroe County R/C Club! They have done a fine job for several years in a row.

We should consider ourselves lucky to have people willing to serve & be railroaded into the same positions year after year!

The annual Christmas dinner/party/meeting will be December 8 at Hoosier Bar & Grill. We’ve had good luck there the past couple of years and hope this year will be no exception. This is a family gathering & everyone is invited! There are two doors at Hoosier. The East door says you must be twenty-one to enter but the West door enters a private room where our gathering will be held. Bring the kids, wives, & or girl friends, just work out the thing between your wife & your girl friend in advance! Hoosier Bar & Grill is located in Richland Plaza, on the North side of highway 46, East of Ellettsville & West of SR 37. There’s a McDonalds across the street, on the South side of 46, that makes a good landmark. Hors d’oeuvres will be served at 6:00 P.M. and dinner orders will be taken between 6:30 & 7:00. The club will pay for the hors d’oeuvres & you will be responsible for your own dinners & drinks. There is usually some entertainment provided by Bruce Hoffman & a 50/50 drawing, with proceeds going to “Jill’s House”. There will also be a “brief” business meeting. It’s always a good time! Hope you all can attend!

Dues renewals will be accepted by club secretary/treasurer Brent Hoover during the first quarter of 2005. All paid-up club members will receive a club membership card as their receipt. You may renew by mail by sending your payment to:

Mr. Hoover will mail your membership card/receipt back to you. Please save your receipt in case of any question later on as to your paid-up membership. The goal is to have this process finished by the end of March. Unpaid members will be taken off the paid-up membership list at the end of March. A current AMA card is still required for membership. Please make sure Brent has your AMA number, address, & telephone number for the data base.

Delbert Davis is keeping a radio frequency data base for the club. If you buy a new radio or change frequency on a old one, please send Delbert an e-mail at deldavis@insightbb.com or give him a ring at 765-342-7240. There is a spread sheet print-out in the frequency cabinet, at the field, if you want to see who is on what channel.

The rented port-a- pot has been removed from the field & will be back in May. The old facility is still in service but in need of some repairs. If you would like to volunteer to help fix it up a bit, please contact Bob Shireman at 765-342-0480 or e-mail him at bobshireman@insightbb.com.

Joe Rogers has been ill but is back to work & doing much better. Glad to hear you’re on the road to recovery Joe!

Tony Bezzy is nearly finished with the new pit fence at the field. The only details left are hauling off the old fence & rails, setting some cement pads in the gateways, & replacing the “Pilots Only” signs. Robert Jenkens has volunteered to make some more signs & Bill Black has volunteered to work on the gate opening pads. Tony installed two-hundred sixty-seven feet of fence at $3.00 per foot. Here’s a photo of the working man next to the new fence.

Figure 1:

Tony Bezzy, standing next to the result of his hard work.

Thank you, Tony!

Robert G. Shireman, the club safety officer, has suggested that all pilots use a little common sense and not do any acrobatics over the runway or in the pattern, when the pattern is busy. Go out over the bean/corn field to do your tricks unless you have an agreement with all other pilots on the flight line. There have been too many close calls in the busy sky over the runway. Please give special consideration to other pilots who may be training or trying to trim out a new aircraft.

Our old AMA windsock has seen better days. It’s tattered, torn & just plain looks bad. The membership voted not to take any action until Spring.

We had a surprise visitor at the November meeting. Vargha Manshadi drove here all the way from Oklahoma with his family, bearing gifts, just to attend the meeting & to test fly his new Hangar 9, 1/4 scale Cub. Vargha also volunteered to assist Steve Bryant with the club’s web site. He will be getting a new e-mail address soon & I’ll pass that along as soon as I get it. Thanks for your assistance Vargha & your continued support of the Monroe County R/C Club from Oklahoma! Vargha plans to vacation back to Indiana again in December & hopes to attend the Christmas dinner.

There was a glider wing found in Bloomington. It has the words Voltz & Shreadair on it. It also has a couple of servos in it. If it’s yours, or you know who it might belong to, contact Brent Hoover. His contact information is at the top of this newsletter. Tim Sparks tried to get rid of the Dork Award that was awarded to him last month. He had this scheme worked out about a glider mishap on 1/1/04 that he didn’t witness. He was informed that callbacks to yesteryear wouldn’t get the Dork Award off his back. You can expect Tim to be spending more time at the field, watching very closely for somebody to screw up. It shouldn’t take long! The meeting was closed at 8:02

Things U Should Know

Thinking that being awarded the Dork Award was an honor, young Damon Ferguson & Mo Pfeifer both offered to take it from Tim Sparks at the meeting.

Damon found out the hard way that metalic covering film takes more heat to adhere than standard colors. His newly covered chrome wing panel shed it’s covering on take-off. Charlie Thompson is repairing the resulting crash damage for Damon.

Delbert Davis is thinking of competing with Bill Black in the Kadet destruction sweepstakes. Bill prefers the Senior Kadet while Delbert likes the Kadet Senorita. The NTSB report found no good cause for Delbert’s latest swing through the pits on take-off and blamed the crash on gremlins. _ _ _ _ happens...

Training pilot Roger Newhart learned a valuable lesson the hard way. He was at the field one afternoon & there wasn’t anyone there to instruct him. He decided that maybe it wasn’t so tough to land & took off on his own. You can guess the rest of the story. Roger is back training with an instructor, using his brand new Kyosho Trainer.

Young Deven (Rocket Man) Mellott has been at it again. He had several launches & all with good landings on 11/21/04. He also went on a search & rescue mission, out in the picked bean field. While most other area hunters were hunting for deer, Deven was looking for a rocket that was lost during the club air show in August. He returned with the undamaged rocket, along with a wheel from his Dad’s 4-Star 60 that was lost in September. Good hunting Deven!

Rich Davis (or Rick Johnson, if you read the Martinsville paper) has a new Magic. If you haven’t noticed, he is perfecting the art of the flat spin. Good work Rich!

Bart Johnson is making some major headway with his 1/4 scale Balsa USA Cub project. After some alignment & control rod adjustments, Bart actually got to fly his airplane! He’s making a thrust angle adjustment & is going to try a different prop but is getting close to finishing a good flying Cub. Congratulations Bart!

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