FEBRUARY RC CLUB FLYERS
PILOT SPEAK By Ray Ihlenburg
RC models are being used to scare crows from blue berry fields, and towing targets for skeet shooting enthusiasts. A wild new twist to RC flying is aerial combat at many flying fields around the country. On Top of the World RC Flyers has a group of pilots that live for this stuff!
Aerial combat are contests that pit a group of pilots against each other in a crazy type of dog-fight. The basic idea of RC Combat is that each pilot tows a 30’ crepe paper streamer in the air and get points for cutting other pilots’ streamers, as well as for keeping their own streamer intact. Each pilot also gets points based on getting airborne on time and surviving the round of combat. A round of combat lasts 5 minutes, after the initial 1 ½ minutes to get into the air.
Our club’s format includes everyone in the air at the same time. It all starts with a preflight to ensure all planes are ready; then the call to ‘start your engines (motor since we fly electric) and launch in the next 90-seconds. Once all of the planes are airborne, a call “Start Combat” begins the 5-minute round where the dog fight takes place with each pilot flying to protect his streamer while trying to get on another planes “6” to cut the streamer. When the call “Stop Combat” is made no further scoring is allowed and everyone still flying must land.
Some events include the Combat event followed by a gloves-off, full contact session to decide the Ace of the day. This is like a last man standing oval demolition derby, with the option of a figure 8 format.
As hectic as this may seem, the Academy of Model Aeronautics AMA has a 32-page rule book covering several different classes of model. However, they each follow the basic format.
Our club flies in the Open class that allows a pilot to fly anything including and size propeller, motor, speed controller, and battery power system. The most important consideration is speed and agility. The most favorite model seems to be a design that uses foam board for economic reasons, durability and speed of building. The design features an ingenious method to change the complete power system and the receiver from a damaged airframe to another standby airframe; or a ‘spare for the air’.
The combat pilots are practicing and if there are enough planes remaining airworthy, we hope to feature Combat during the lunch break at our Spring Fun-Fly scheduled for April 18, from 9 am until about 1 pm. Since the field is to be moved to a new location, watch for further notice as to the location of this event.
“Fly Good, Watch Your 6, and Land Better”