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NEWSLETTER FROM

NEW PLYMOUTH MODEL AERO CLUB

‘CONTACT’

May/June 2016

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New Plymouth Model Aero Club Officials, 2014-2015

Club Patron NPDC Councilor Harry Duynhoven

President Justin Whalley 7511442 noveandjustin@clear.net.nz

Secretary/Treasurer Keith Butler 7513087 keithbutler@xtra.co.nz

Recording Officer Andrew Robinson 7543224 a_robinson_nz@hotmail.com

R/C Steward Mike Pillette 7527059 mikelynn@xtra.co.nz

Free Flight Steward Andrew Robinson 7543224 a_robinson_nz@hotmail.com

Control Line Steward Andrew Robinson 7543224 a_robinson_nz@hotmail.com

Bulletin Editor Steve Blackman 752 0199 shb@xtra.co.nz

Committee Members Andrew Law 7520125 liz.and@xtra.co.nz

Trent Lochhead 0277528295 trentlochhead@gmail.com

Gary Pool 0276015808 dalgary@xtra.co.nz

Ole Bucker –

Christensen

Allen Lawrence 7539787 littlegables@clear.net.nz

Jono Hoy

P.O Box 660

New Plymouth

New Zealand

Ph. +64 6 759 2199

Fax. +64 6 7591139

Email. manager@pandp.co.nz

Website. www.pandp.co.nz

Plant & Platform Consultants Ltd has kindly donated the printing of this Bulletin.

New Zealand’s Leading Oil & Gas and Pipelines Engineering Consultancy.

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The wind and rain has arrived but the temperatures have remained temperate, meaning that while flying has been limited the projects in the workshop have been getting some attention. The Club’s annual dinner was well supported this year and it was great to have the club patron, Harry Duynhoven, there to present Don Robinson with the Macdonald Memorial Award. Good to see some new and repaired/refurbished models at the strip when the weather has cooperated. Gary has his Harvard back in the air and was demonstrating that he has mastered the landing tech-nique! My Seagull Models Percival Mew Gull has taken to the air with the NGH30 4 stroke proving more than ample top drag it round the sky. It’s a slippery little beast and a slow reliable idle is a must for landing! Float planes should be being fettled in preparation for a couple of scheduled events at Lake Ratapiko in late July and August. The re-surgence in popularity of water based mayhem with models has been aided no doubt by the great social time that accompanies these events. Being able to book and have exclusive use of the lake is a huge advantage as well. Time to get stuck into those winter projects. Feel free to share some words and pic’s in the next bulletin as well. Cheers, Steve B. Front Cover: Seagull Models Percival Mew Gull.

Editorial!

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President’s Report May – June 2016 What a great turn out for our club social/ prize giving night recently held at the Cobb restaurant. It was great to see so many familiar faces from now and the past. For those of you who could not make it we had a great night socializing with fellow modellers and their wives and part-ners as well as Harry Dynhoven and his wife Margaret. Harry assisted me in presenting Don Robinson with the McDonald award for his ex-cellent long service to Aeromodelling and our Club. Well done Don!!- This award is highly prestigious and only 27 members within NZ have received the award. I have had a month of sport, being involved in Junior Football with Jessica and Morgan which has taken me away from the flying field. Morgan has quite a talent for sport and he is trialling for a Taranaki rep team so fingers crossed for him. However I have heard reports of plenty of flying at the Radio site during the week and some in the weekends. Great to see all the hedging cut down out at the Radio site- Wow has it really opened things up, especially if you have a larger model which requires a longer approach from the southern end. Our site out there just gets better and better!!!! I can imagine the winter projects are being dug out and dusted off as I write this report; I even managed to get myself knee deep in balsa shavings today, something which has not been done for quite a while!!! With all these ARFs around building is really just assembly and fit out, no shaping or sanding to be seen, Luckily Rob fitted me up with a Falcon 40 kit which is coming together, if not a little slowly but it is coming together. I have even thought it could be a multipurpose ma-chine as I have a spare set of glass hobby-king floats which I intend to fit to the Falcon once I have flown her off the grass. Great to also hear Ole has successfully test flown his large FW 190 during a week day flying session. Ole has made a fabulous job of the build and I’m glade all went well for him. I’m sure we will see some photos from the lense of Andy Dodson soon. Looking forward to some winter Floatplaning coming up as well as R/C

Theme days

Till next time, Fly safe- over and out- Justin

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Macdonald Memorial Award

The Macdonald Memorial Award was established in June 1954 in memory of the founder of the NZMAA, Mr Fred Macdonald, and to date this award has been presented to twenty seven recipients. The criteria for selection of recipients of this award reflects the out-standing contribution that Fred Macdonald gave to New Zealand Mod-el Aeronautics and consequently, winners of this award must have made an outstanding contribution toward Model Aeronautics in New Zealand that has been willingly given for no personal gain whatsoev-er. For these reasons, this award is considered to be the most prestigious award that can be bestowed on a person for the most outstanding con-tribution in any sphere to New Zealand Model Aeronautics. In 2011 Allen Lawrence won this award for outstanding services to his club, NZMAA as Area Representative, competing in National and Inter-national competitions in C/L aerobatics and R/C Scale, and fostering/promoting C/L flying. In 2015/16, this honour has now been bestowed upon Don Robinson who has demonstrated the true meaning of dedication and encourage-ment to his chosen sport, Control Line. He has performed outstanding service to the NZMAA and its members as Recording Officer from 1955 – 1999 and has served on the Control Line Special Interest Group for many years. His dedication in the pro-motion and support to Control Line competition both in New Zealand and internationally is well documented. He is the holder of the MFNZ gold badge presented as having represented New Zealand in 5 inter-national F2B and F2C events. He has had a long standing involvement in the organisation and management of the Trans-Tasman, National and Club competitions. He was instrumental in establishing the control line circles at Clareville and New Plymouth and has served in various positions in this Club.

Congratulations Don Robinson

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Ole’s Workshop

I've come from humble beginnings, I have no photographs but my first

model aeroplane building space in New Zealand began in a caravan

some 15 years ago, I was also living in the caravan so this current

modelling room which is 9 by 6 metres is AWESOME! I built this

"garage" 4 years ago, the space has been transformed into an ideal;

model plane, motorbike and hunting room!

I have enjoyed building all kinds of models from my FW-190 Warbird,

Sport Planes and Jets. My biggest challenge to date has been the FW-

190, this project began over 8 years ago. I really did build this plane

from scratch! I've spent many hours researching, creating and building

plugs and moulds before I actually started to build the aircraft. I found

this work to be very satisfying.

Apart from the scratch builds, I have had a few, ARF's, unfortunately

my Corsair only had 6 flights before it crashed! I did decide to rebuild

and modify it!

Planes for me, do not come alive until you have researched, construct-ed and in some cases reconstructed, coloured and weathered them! At the moment I am building a Panther Jet and some foam planes with my son Søren.

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Control Line World Cup and World Champs By Don Robinson, Assistant Team Manager Responsible for F2C Team Race. All the New Zealand team race teams had arrived in Perth by the 1st of May with the only travel problem being Andrew Robinson arriving at Sydney airport minus two out of three cases. They were found to have been left in Auckland due to someone not reading the labels correctly and being off loaded at Auckland instead of being transferred to Syd-ney. Then Qantas forwarded them by an Air NZ flight direct to Perth which actually arrived later than if they had been forwarded by Qantas via Sydney to Perth. Andrew eventually collected them at the Perth airport at 10-00 pm on Tuesday evening the 3rd of May. Of course the models needed first were in one of these missing boxes so the An-drew Robinson/Brendan Robinson team missed out on two days of practice under Perth conditions. After Andrew got the case with the F2C models in it, I worked with him that night until after midnight assembling a third engine and checking all its specifications to ensure it complied with the rules. Andrew had only received, after arrival in Perth, a reconditioned cylinder with a new piston fitted. All NZ teams (and other nations) were trying different kerosene brands, and different fuel formulations trying to obtain 50 lap range consistently. They used both the available practice site (about 20 minutes driving away) as well as the official World Cup and World Champs flying site. Conditions in Perth were similar to what we nor-mally find at Clareville in New Zealand, with low humidity of 30% where as in New Plymouth we normally have a higher humidity of 60%. In Perth if it rained during the night (this occurred on several days), in the morning the humidity would be high and slowly come down during the morning. World Cup 4th – 6th of May. There was an official practice held before each official heat and three official heats or qualification heats to determine the semi-finalists. Glen Lewis/Robert Bolton's first heat did not go well as Glen accidentally stepped out of the centre circle at the first pit stop resulting in a DQ.

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The concrete centre circle in Perth was about 4 metres radius with the 3 metre flying circle marked with a painted line. The New Plymouth centre circle is 3 metres radius and the 3 metre flying circle can be felt with your feet where as in Perth you need to look down when landing to make sure you stay within this 3 metre radius circle until after the model is caught when you are allowed one foot outside of the circle. This was unfortunate as they had made the 50 laps at this stage. I im-mediately advised the other pilots of this difference and our team had no further incidents with this rule in the World Cup and World Champs events. Andrew Robinson/Brendan Robinsons first heat had an incorrect start countdown being at least 15 seconds longer than it should have been with the result that all teams went out with cold engines. A complaint was forwarded to the team race jury and this was upheld with them being granted a re-fly. We had been advised that the team race jury wanted a complaint to be issued first and then only if you disagreed with the answer to forward a written protest. This worked very well during both contests with I think from memory only two actual written protests in team race over both events. Our team race teams (and many others) found it difficult to obtain 50 laps range in official flights often obtaining 50 laps in the first tank but the model being in the mechanics hand at 98 or 99 laps, 2 laps or 1 lap short of the required 100 laps hence requiring a further pit stop adding extra time on to their race time. Graeme Christie/Rod Brown suffered this in their first heat and also went out cold. With lean engine settings if the motor is not hot enough before the start signal they struggle to pick up heat taking several laps before reaching full speed or even not ever getting to full speed. All NZ teams improved in their second heats and the Andrew/Brendan Robinson team improving again in their third heat with the other two teams obtaining a slightly slower time than in the previous heat. So after the three heats our times were Graeme/Rod in 9th place with a time of 3-15.7, Glen/Robert with a time of 3-30.8 and Andrew/Brendan with a time of 3-50.4. The semi-finalists were taken from the first 9 places so we had one team in the semi-finals. If you fly in the semi-finals your previous heat times are disregarded and the final placings are based on your semi-final or final times.

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There are two semi-final heats. During the semi-finals if a race has only one or two fliers then the next placings from the heats are asked if they want to fly in the semi-finals to make each race a three up race. This is to prevent a race with less than 3 fliers getting an advantage and in this contest the 10th and 11th placings were used in the semi-finals. To make the final in this contest you needed to make a better time than 3 minutes 12.0 seconds. Graeme/Rod recorded a best semi-final time of 3-16.7 which placed them in the final results as 7th, with Glen/Robert 15th and Andrew/Brendan 24th out of 32 teams entered. In the results for country, NZ finished in 4th position. Australian teams took the first three places in the final which is over 200 laps and was obvi-ously the first in the country results. I think this is the first time that NZ has had three teams entered in a World Cup for F2C team race. I believe that all the NZ teams learnt a lot in this contest which will hold them in good stead for the World Champs and future contests. World Champs 7th – 13th May. Processing of the models for F2C got behind schedule with tank test-ing taking a lot longer than programmed for. Also quite a few models failed the fuselage height and width dimensions needing tape to be placed on the models to make them comply This was mostly with one particular maker of models. Our models passed with hardly any prob-lems, Graeme needing to put tape on one model to get past the mini-mum fuselage height. Tanks are always hard to process but ours got through with a couple of attempts. Processing due to the delays was halted for the opening ceremony and then carried on after that. Luckily we got through before the opening ceremony. The opening ceremony was interesting and we were entertained by aboriginal dance group from the Perth area. This day was windy and due to this cold for the opening ceremony held late in the day on the flying site.

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The World Champs used a similar format as the World Cup with prac-tice on the official circle in the morning followed by a qualifying heat each day for three days. Practice for each country was allocated as 10 minutes for each team to be used as the team decided, so for us a time of 30 minutes as we had 3 teams. The team decided to basically fly two up, teams swapping around as required. This worked well. Andrew/Brendan decided to revert back to the fuel ingredients and formula that had given them the best results in NZ, while the other two teams continued trying to improve their laps and consistency. Grae-me/Rod got a time of 3-16.4 in their first heat but in their second heat stopped at 96 laps failing to make 50 laps in their second tank. If they had restarted and completed the 100 laps they would not have bet-tered their first heat time of 3-16.4. In their third heat they reverted to a faster 33 lap range but missed the catch at 66 laps. Glen/Robert got 3-58.3 in their first heat, 3-31.2 in their second heat and 3-31.0 in their third heat. Andrew/Brendan got 3-43.8 in their first heat, 3-32.9 in their second heat and 3-48.5 in their third heat. So at the end of the qualify-ing heats NZ had teams in 10th, 22nd and 25th placings. You needed to be under 3-14.0 to get directly into the semi-finals which was the first 9 placings this number being decided by the total number of teams entered. Dam we were only one place out of direct entry into the semi-finals, but as it was likely to be re-flies allocated during the semi’s then Graeme/Rod had a good chance of being called up to fly in the semi’s. This of course happened but unfortu-nately they had a bad run recording a time of 4-03.7 which unfortu-nately put them down one placing in the final results as the team be-hind them in 11th place at this stage put in a better semi-final time than they did. To make the final you needed a time better than 3-09.2. The final was two Australians and a French team. This was a most impressive race over 200 laps with all three models doing the same speed, passing basically only occurring during pit stops. This race was going to be won on pitting and flying skills. The two Australians were on the same lap for most of the race but Fitzgerald managed an overtake in the last few laps of the race. The three teams only had 6 seconds separating them at the end of the 200 laps with the winning time being 6-22.8.

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Hence the final results for the NZ team were Graeme/Rod in 11th place, Glen/Robert in 22nd place and Andrew/Brendan in 25th place out of 32 teams and NZ finished 5th country. This is the best ever re-sult for NZ in F2C and the first time NZ has been in a semi-final at a world champs in F2C,a great effort by all concerned. My congratula-tions to all the members of the New Zealand F2C 2016 World Champs Team. The NZ teams also put in better times than many oth-er well known team race teams that I thought would have performed better than us. There were two world records established in this contest, a new heat time of 3-03.0 and a new final time of 6-22.8. This shows how compet-itive this contest was.

During the World Champs on Thursday 12th, An invitational Classic FAI International Challenge was held. This consisted of invited teams from six countries, one team from each country. The models were all wind and tail types not modern wings. The representatives were:-

Great Britain, Malcolm Ross/Lawrence Court flying a Timeta 3 pow-ered by a Ridley Oliver Mk3, Australia, Andrew Nugent/Dave Nugent flying a Drazek Orion powered by a Parra AAC, New Zealand, Glen Lewis/Rod Brown flying a Klotzson powered by a Fora AAC, Ukraine, Valerii Kramerenko/Volodymyr Fulitka flying a 1972 own design re-tract model powered by a modern Profi, Spain, Alberto Parra/Sion Burns flying a Timepiece powered by a Parra T3 and from The Neth-erlands, Rob Olijve/Rob Metkemeyer flying a 1980 Turtle V powered by a FMV Steel. Two heats were held for each team and then the fastest three in a fi-nal. The three finalists were Australia (Nugent/Nugent), New Zealand (Lewis/Brown) and Ukraine (Kramerenko/Fulitka). During the final Kra-merenko’s model had a line break resulting in the destruction of the complete front of the model. The final was won by Australia with New Zealand second and Ukraine third.

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Graeme Christie flying in World Cup in yellow vest, Rob Fitzgerald (Australia) green

vest, Paul Liew (Singapore) red vest.

Andrew Robinson flying in World Cup in green vest, Grant Potter (Australia) in yel-

low vest, Nerijus Zuhauskas (Lithuania) in red vest

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For the Diary

REMINDERS 1. Please keep to the metalled access track leading to the RC

strip. 2. If you need access to the quarry to recover a model during

operating hours, go back down the access track and enter the quarry through the main gates and report to the quar-ry office to be given instructions. If outside operating hours, please contact Garry or Russell Marsh on the num-bers below to receive instructions. DO NOT ENTER THE QUARRY WITHOUT PERMISSION HAVING BEEN SOUGHT AND RECEIVED.

3. Flying is suspended at the RC strip during mowing opera-tions. Normal mowing time is Thursday 10am to 1.30pm but this is weather dependant and may vary.

4. Please pit to the north of the club container and only use the area on the mountain side for pitting if the northern end is full.

Contact Numbers: Gary Marsh 027 203 6680 Russell Marsh 027 443 8359

NPMAC SUBS ARE DUE Family $180 Senior $170 Junior $ 65 Associate $ 80 You can give your cheque to Keith Butler directly or post it to him at P.O. Box 574, New Plymouth Mail Centre 4340, or pay directly into the clubs TSB

Account: NPMAC, TSB Acc# 15 3942 0000964 00. Remem-ber to put your name as a reference and email to let him know it’s coming!

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COMING EVENTS

Control Line: Note:- Events may change to suit conditions or circumstances.

Practice until 2 pm, events start at 2 pm. Contact Andrew Robinson

PH 06 754 3224

Free Flight:

Start time is 9 am –9.30 am If weather looks bad in the morning ring

Andrew Robinson 754 3224 to check. It may be postponed to the fol-

lowing weekend.

Radio Control: July 10th HLG and ALES 123 NDC 17th Thermal A NDC 24th Floatplanes August 7th Thermal B NDC 14th HLG 21st Floatplanes

Competition events start time is usually 1.00 – 1.30pm.

Contest Directors

Thermal & Electric Gliding Allen Lawrence Pylon Racing/Scale Justin Whalley Float Planes Keith Butler

Contact details for these gentlemen are on the inside front cover

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‘CONTACT’ OFFICIAL NEWSLETTER

NEW PLYMOUTH MODEL AERO CLUB

c/- P.O. BOX 574, NEW PLYMOUTH MAIL CENTRE, 4340

www.npmac.org.nz

This space is available to advertise to the members of the NPMAC

for $50 p.a. If you’re interested in this

opportunity please contact the Bulletin Editor.

shb@xtra.co.nz 0274812575