Newsletter Editor The Johnstown R/C Club Roger A. Luther raluther@atlanticbb.net April 2014 Newsletter AMA Charter # 718 2014 Johnstown RC Clubs 52st Year Upcoming Activities... Join us online at: www.johnstownrc.org My Favorite Model... Saturday, March 22 nd : Annual Club Banquet. 6:00 pm at the Belmont United Methodist Church Tuesday, April 1 st : Regular club meeting, Richland Twp. Municipal Building. 8:30 pm. Note the time change due to the start of Daylight Savings time. We meet on April 1 st, No Foolin! Perhaps we can fly before the meeting???? Thursday, May 1 st : Setup night for the Mall Show, 7 to 9 pm. Bring several planes to put on display. May 2 nd, 3 rd, and 4 th : Annual Club Mall Show, lower level across from the Bon Ton. Open during Mall hours. Plan to spend some time there manning the booth and selling tickets. Don't miss this one! Tuesday, May 6 th : May club meeting, 8:30 pm at the Richland Twp. Municipal Building. Flying at the field first, weather permitting. Ken Reesey and his.40 sized Escapade Ken's favorite plane for a long time was his Horizon Hobby Pulse XT, but after having quite a few of them, the replacement costs just went through the roof! Well, Tower Hobbies started to offer a lower cost replacement called the Escapade. This plane is almost $100 cheaper than the Pulse, and flies very well to be sure. Ken has also had several of these planes over the past few years and most evenings last summer, it was his plane of choice to bring to the field. The darn thing just flies well using a.40 or.46 sized engine and comes as an ARF. The plane itself runs anywhere from $99 if it's on sale, on up to the list price of $129.
The.40 sized GreatPlanes Escapade The nice thing about the Escapade is it comes to you in 3 days, and as an ARF, is easily put together in a short time, and really flies well. Ken was the first in our club to have one and both Roger and Bruce bought one a short time later. Great Planes now also makes a.60 sized Escapade, as well as an electric version to please everyone. It rolls, loops, flies inverted, and does an edge with no problem. It's just an all around GREAT PLANE... no pun intended! In the Tower Hobby literature it says "If you've mastered a trainer, you can fly the Escapade" This is so true as it flies flawlessly. It can be setup with 4 or 5 servos, using a single center mount for the ailerons, or dual servos mounted outboard. It comes with a slick removable canopy which allows easy access to the inner workings of the plane. The bolt on landing gear, steerable tail wheel, and wheel pants make it a really sharp looking low wing sport plane. The darn thing even comes with it's own painted pilot bust inside the canopy. Covered in Red and White MonoKote, it is one heck of a plane for fun after someone masters the basics of flying a trainer aircraft. Quite often over the last couple summers you could find Ken, Bruce, and Roger all flying their Escapades together. Their racing in formation circles kept the crowd watching, and even though they did this quite often, very few mishaps resulted! Roger, Ken, and Bruce pose with their Escapades at the field. All three guys have good things to say about the Escapade. When doing this three abreast flying, the rule is "Keep your eye on the Red and White Plane" LOL! March Meeting Recap... Sixteen club members met on a cold March evening (the 4 t h ) for our regular get together. The club has now re-chartered and has received back the necessary materials for our 53 r d year as an AMA club. President Sam Kaplitz also read a letter from the AMA recognizing our club for it's 21 s t consecutive year as a Gold Leader Club. This is the highest level and a record to be proud of. Not many clubs can boast 21 years with that level of accomplishment.after Paul read the minutes of last month, Treasurer Ken Shilling gave a treasurer's report and and we have started to receive money in for the banquet, as well as dues for the year. We seem to be in good shape going into the year with enough in reserve to take us through to 2015. Our Banquet is scheduled for Saturday, March 22 at 6 pm at the Belmont United Methodist Church, where it was held last year. As of this meeting we had about 25 signed up. We need to get the word out to those who didn't attend the meeting to get the attendance up to the 45 or so we usually have attend. We have secured a speaker for the banquet, it is Barney Custer, who is the chief flight instructor for MTT Aviation, the fixed based opperator at
the Johnstown Airport. Barney spoke at our banquet about 6 years ago when he worked for L. Robert Kimbal Enginnering in Ebensburg. Barney was their chief pilot and flew their folks all over the USA and Europe. He was very entertaining the last time, and has some new tales to tell us for this banquet! Annual Mall Show... Sam also covered the upcoming Mall Show and asked members to get a few planes ready to put on display at the mall. He also covered the Lebanon Flea Market which is always a big hit, and several of the guys are planning to go down on Saturday, March 8 t h. Toward the end of the meeting, Paul Yuhas showed us some video clips from past years activities of our club. The first one was an actual news cast that took place in the late 1970's and showed shots of our field with some of the "old timers" who looked rather young in the films. Paul, Jim, Caleb, and Jim Patterson were the only ones still active today. Later in other videos, we did see Fred Rohde on one. Some of the planes looked the same, but the electronics have really improved alot over the years. We are so fortunate to have been able to keep the same flying field for all these years, now approaching 40! Thanks Paul for sharing those films. Before closing the meeting, Sam told us all to get ready for flying, with the Daylight Savings Time now in effect, we should be able to get out and fly before dark this month! See you at the field! Bruce Thomas's P-51 at last years show It's almost time again for that three day fun weekend at the mall. Last year we had almost 50 planes and helie's on display, and it would be nice to match that this year. So, get a few of your planes dusted off, and bring them, as well as any new planes you might have gotten since last year. We set up on Thursday evening, May 1 s t, from 7-9 pm. We usually have a simulator or two for folks to try out, plus the paper plate airplanes we give to the kids. This event often times gets us a new member or two and almost everyone enjoys talking with our members and asking the normal questions about our hobby! How much do they cost? How high can you fly them? Do you ever wreck them? How fast do they go? How far away can they go? Did YOU ever wreck one? LOL You know the routine! It's always fun to talk with folks and answer those same old questions again and again! We will probably have a couple small electric helie's to fly there, as well as a Mini-Vapor, or Night Vapor. All in all it's a great weekend.
Above is a group photo of club members on Saturday at last year's show. I beleive this was the most we had at any one point in the weekend. 13 at one time, since I took the picture! This is another view from the escalator showing the whole display with the boys selling raffle tickets to the public. Don't forget to bring in all your money plus any un-sold tickets prior to the Mall Show so we can get them all sold. Remember, the winning ticket is pulled from the PA Daily Number on Sunday of that weekend. So please, have all your tickets and money returned prior to the Mall Show. This is the clubs only fund raiser, and goes a long way toward paying for our annual field mowing bill. Folks usually don't mind paying a buck for a chance to win $200, OR a ready to fly RC model airplane! Sell'em or Buy'em Guys! Above, Sam Kaplitz shows a youngster how to properly launch one of the hundreds of paper plate airplanes we gave out during the three day weekend. Meanwhile, Roger and Sam work at cutting out the planes for assembly. These new type planes really fly well, and have taken the place of the old egg-carton type we used a few years ago. See you at the Mall!
Cool Planes... The Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt sometimes better known as the Wart Hog! This famous plane was introduced in the 1970's and is a twin jet engine straight winged plane developed by FairchildRepublic for close air support for ground forces. It can linger for a long time over the battle zone, and is most famous for it's amazing gatling-gun style cannon. This thing fires 3900 rounds per minute in short bursts and 50 in the first second! The plane was actually built around this famous cannon, and can place 80% of its shots within a 40 foot circle and fires 30 mm ammunition. The Wart-Hog has very short take-off capability and is really tough. The pilot sits in a titanium bathtub like protection bucket and they have returned safely with so many holes it was hard to count. This plane was in the news lately as one of the cut-backs called for in the latest military reduction budgets. Many flyers will be sorry to see it go to the sidelines. Also, quite a few of us have flown models of this famous plane! One last chance for Dues Our club dues were due in January for 2014, but a few still have not paid up. This is your last chance. If your dues are not paid now, you will not receive a monthly newsletter and you will lose your flying privileges at the field. Send in your check now! Thanks!