A Tale of Two Blogsites

Just when you thought you had this figured out...

Along comes someone with another blog address. What's going on? 

We're just playing with them at this point to see what will work for our club. Blogger (the host of the blogspot address) is nice, but seems to lack some of the user-friendliness of Wordpress (the other host). Since we'd like everyone to be able to take advantage of the blog's features, it behooves us to settle on the blog that's easiest to use.

Another thing we discovered when comparing the blog hosts was a significant difference in email notification. This is the process by which the system notifies everyone "following" the blog that there's a new post, comment or reply. Posts to the Wordpress blogs produce notification emails almost instantly, and that's an important feature for spur-of-the-moment and up-to-the-minute communications.

We're running both blog sites through their paces. We've signed a few people up as "Authors" on the blog. This gives them the access needed to originate new items (posts) to the blog.

Anyone can view the blogs, and even post comments or replies without any special access requirements. To be an Author, simply contact us and we'll send you an invitation. You'll just need to create a user name and password for writing to the blog.

How do I make sense of it all?

We're planning a presentation for our monthly meeting, wherein we'll review the purpose and features of the blog as well as how to become an author. I suspect we'll do this at the April meeting, but in the meantime contact me if you have any support needs or want to start authoring posts!

In case you missed it, Blog test site B is at Wordpress.com, and is found here:

www.svccropdusters.wordpress.com

Have a look and let us know what you think!

Thanks,

Skip O'Connor

Blog Guru

Aerospace Industry's Perspective: drones in the news

An item of interest for your perusal:

Here's a recent blurb from an Aerospace Industry technology newsletter, distributed by Global Spec.
This is a perspective from the non-R/C community, from the manufacturing and applications designers and providers.

Aerospace Technology News

From GlobalSpec - a leader in industrial and engineering product news and information

About this eNewsletter

Frequency: 26 issues/year

Description: GlobalSpec's Aerospace Technology free eNewsletter covers new technologies impacting the aerospace industry. Topics and technologies featured include design and production involving power plants and propulsion systems, avionics, electrical and electronic systems, mechanical assembly, materials technology, hydraulics and pneumatics, flight controls and instrumentation, software, as well as manufacturing and engineering services. This free email publication gathers the latest technologies and products from all of these engineering disciplines to help subscribers design and build the most cost-effective, high-performance systems possible.

Markets Served: Electrical, Electronic, and Mechanical Components; Materials, Coatings, and Finishes; Fastening, Joining & Assembly; Fluid Power; Robotics Systems; Design & Analysis Software, Supply Chain Management, Material Handling

Deploy Your Own Drones

What's going on over there? Soon you can find out. Monitor the neighbors with your personal unmanned aerial vehicle. For about $50, the MeCam UAV promises to stream video to a paired iOS or Android mobile device. Still under development, the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth-enabled quadrotor features an ARM Cortex-A9 processor with a GB of built-in RAM. Commercial availability is targeted for next year.

Phantom Eye Flies Higher, Farther

Reaching 60 knots at take-off and climbing to a top altitude of 8,000 ft, Boeing's Phantom Eye unmanned airborne vehicle stayed aloft 66 min in its second flight. This recent flight brings the UAV, powered by two 150 hp liquid hydrogen engines, one "step closer" to the goal of four days autonomous ISR — intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance.

Posted 3/19/13 by S. O'Connor

AMA Clubs Encouraged to Participate in First Annual National Model Aviation Day, August 17, 2013.

AMA Clubs Encouraged to Participate in First Annual National Model Aviation Day, August 17, 2013.

Here's a link to this update from AMA Insider.

Never too soon to start planning!

Skip

Ski Time!

The Little Clipper ready for ski action!

Finally! Got the Clipper out Saturday as the sun warmed the snow to forty degrees. Had a little trouble running last time out, but it was 24 degrees. In the photo she's ready for a test-run, hence the missing cowl. Fired up the O.S. 40 four-stroke and throttled on--- and she sank in the four inches of wet snow.

Okay, well, my Dad gave me his old Arctic Cat Jag which hasn't run in ten years. I'd been thinking about some kind of groomer for winter runways, and the snowmobile would be perfect! So I had some work to do to get the "Zamboni" running, and by afternoon I was running it up & down the main east-west runway.

The Zamboni

So, after a couple of hours we were back at the runway, and it was packed down a bit between ski grooves, but enough to give it the old Bush Pilot Academy try.

Clippy's view of the runway

It doesn't take much for the little Cub to get airborne, and this little plane was eager! After ten feet she took to the air and we had a sweet flight over the snowy fields and pines. Brought her in to the lower end of the North-South runway where the snow was smooth and undisturbed. Thought she might just sink into the snow, but she shushed down on one ski, then the other, and settled to a stop at the edge of the first snowmobile berm, idling!

Not straight- but smooth!

She came to a stop at the berm, idling.

Sunday I had hopes of doing t all again, but this time breaking out big sister Scarlett, the 68" Decathlon with the .70 four-stroke. She was fitted with Maiden USA Skis last year, yet flew just once off the broad expanse of Engleville Pond. She hadn't been out on her skis this winter, and the runway was "groomed"!

Alas, the wind gods had other plans, and by the time we had a chance to make the airfield, the wind was blowing 10-12 mph. We made it outside, but had to settle for a photo shoot.

Scarlett and her Maiden USA skis

Here are a few pix of the Maiden skis.
They're really a nice product, and quite an improvement over the plastic DuBro SnoBird skis. The DuBro skis are nice, and inexpensive, but the mechanism to lock the ski to the axle leaves a bit to be desired (and often failed, leaving a ski hanging down) The suspension system, too, could stand a little improvement, but they're good for $15 skis.

Maidens cost $40 a pair, but they're well worth it. Hopefully these photos will show you enough, and if you're interested you can see them in person sometime. They use two lock bolts opposed at 60 degrees to positively grip the axle, and a simple spring gives them some suspension flexibility. Even if the spring pops off, the travel of the ski is limited to about 5 degrees either side of level, so you'll never have an "unintended air brake" and can still land. (See "Ski Club", 3/6/13).

Anyone else get any ski-flying in this season?

Wheels...er...skis down!

Skip

Ski Club

Max places Clippy on the line at the Hoosick Aeromodelers

I've only been out flying off of skis once this year. That was last weekend with my grandson Max. We put Du-Bro Snobird skis on his Nexstar and flew off the home field.
Of course one of them flopped straight down right after takeoff, hanging like a speed brake! Max flew out the flight anyway, good practice flying a plane with a problem. I took it back to "ditch" it, hoping to flop it down in the brush without the ski hanging up on anything, but I missed the mark and set her down in two inches of snow and promptly ripped the mains out. (See, it's not something I do only at the club field!)

Well, in true Engleville Bush Pilots Academy form, we headed for the Eagle's nest (the shop) and cobbed some wheels onto the Moose. Second flight was nice and uneventful, until Max declared "I'm going to land it.".

Max is a serious student pilot.

Max is ten years old, has a number of hours on sim, and quite a few instructor flights. His last attempt at landing was a great approach which drifted a little right after coming through the key. At the Bush Pilots Academy, we land on a postage-stamp runway about 20 feet wide and 100 feet long, and I still scrub off to the side once in a while myself!

His first approach was high, and I grabbed control to show him a centerline pass descending through the key. He took it back and duplicated my pass, dropped it in about two-thirds up the runway, about a foot off-center. The plane set down in the inch-and-a-half of snow, rolled out about ten feet, and stopped on the runway, wheels-down and idling! Cheers and congrats all around as Max makes his first successful landing, a perfect one at that! He's ready to solo!

I throttled up to taxi to the "top" of the runway (it's a bit inclined), and as I rolled across the concrete-hard frozen grass, I ripped out the remaining cobbed mains block, and we were done for the day.

Max in the Eagle's nest with his Nexstar "Moose".
(When it still had wheels)

I'll dig through the archives for some snow-fly pictures.

How about you? Done any ski flying this winter? Have any pictures to share?

Is anyone interested in doing some ski-flying? Maybe off Franklinton Vlaie?
I've flown off Engleville Pond near home. What could be better, perfectly flat and wide open.

Oh, but watch out for the tip-ups when taxiing!

Wheels down!

Scott (Skip) O'Connor

Spreading the word

Gail Rulison photo

I'll be sending an email out to the Cropdusters to let them know we're knocking around a blog idea.
It's a general invitation to have a look and see what interest it garners.

A blog is not a new idea, and has been suggested before.
This blogging thing is new to many of us, so we'll run a trial for a couple of months as the season approaches.

The way to make a blog work as a club communications tool is to have members add their email addresses to "follow" the blog (to subscribe to automatic notices to your email when someone posts something on the blog.)

All experimental at this time, so relax and just watch if you'd like.

The advantage of a blog is that it will notify everyone simultaneously of a new post if they're subscribed.
Well, why is that better than emailing people?

Main thing is, you don't need to maintain an email "address list" or "group". You don't need to "reply-to-all" in order to answer everyone in the conversation. Since each subscriber provides their own email address to the blog, as addresses and memberships change you don't need to update your lists.

Another aspect of the blog is that it gives us a forum for conversations. Everyone can respond to a central place for making plans to fly, planning events or work parties, sharing updates (including pictures!) about your own projects, shop ideas or flying adventures!

So chime in and let us know if you like it or hate it, or have other ideas!

See the "About" page for some basic info, including how to become an "Author" on the blog.

Contact me directly if you'd like, at:

oconnor@logical.net

And we're off!

Scott O'Connor & the blog pilot team.