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May Club Meeting Monday, May 4, 7:30 pm
Livonia Senior Center 5 Mile & Farmington
Ribcrackers Model Airplane Club
Thunderbolt May 2009 Club 2067
President’s Message Alex Stathis Alexopoulos
2009 Board of Directors
President Alex Alexopoulos 248-909-6869
[email protected]
Vice President Hank Wojcik 313-659-1677
Secretary Matt Jerue 248-348-5948 [email protected]
Treasurer Roger Wilfong 248-349-9079 [email protected]
Editor Don Unsworth 248-348-0961 [email protected]
We’re on the web! http:/www.ribcrackers.org
Dear Fellow Members
It is a pleasure to see everyone at the field again. I see a lot
of new models out there and I
have noticed that the models are much prettier and a lot bigger
this year. I'm sure we are all
looking forward to a very exciting flying season now that the
weather permits us to get out there
a little more often.
I am also looking forward to seeing everyone at our meeting on
MAY 4th at 7:30 p.m. at the
LIVONIA SENIOR CENTER.
We will be having our annual field maintenance day on MAY 9th. I
am counting on everyone's
participation and cooperation to get our field in tip top
condition for our upcoming flying season.
This will include trimming the surrounding trees and clean
up.
Another exciting event we have coming up is our SPRING FUN FLY.
This will take place on
MAY 17th at Ray Field. Don't forget to invite your family and
friends as there will be plenty
of food and drinks for everyone.
For the last few Wednesday's everyone has put their all into
making student night successful,
even when the weather didn't agree with us. I would like to
thank everyone who participated,
including our instructors and pit assistants. GREAT WORK!!
Weather permitting we will be
on schedule for our Wednesday student nights and have a chance
to teach our new members
how to have a fun and safe flying experience.
I wish everyone a great flying season and please remember to use
caution. Alex
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Ribcrackers April Meeting Minutes – April 6, 2009
The meeting started at 7:30 pm with Hank Wojcik
officiating. The March minutes were approved as
written and published in the April Thunderbolt.
Treasurer’s Report – the club remains solvent. See
Roger Wilfong for details. And don’t forget that
club membership dues should be in by now. Con-
tact Matt Jerue for details.
Editor’s Note - Don Unsworth continues to request
ideas for the Thunderbolt, so please send him a
note (or two) to help him out. Don’t forget that the
Thunderbolt will be sent to your e-mail account if
you notify Don. It helps to keep our expenses
down, so please accept your Thunderbolt electroni-
cally; you can read it on-line or print yourself a
color copy.
V. P.’s Report – The field is in excellent shape.
Don’t forget we have a “Spring Clean-up” sched-
uled for May 9th, so please show up and help.
Hank also offered to add a few starter kits to the
flight box, so if we’re out – let Hank know.
Discussion Items: The Warbirds Over New Hud-
son is still on and is scheduled for June 6th. All eras
of warbirds are welcome. Student night has begun,
so make sure you tell your friends that want to give
this hobby/sport a try. If you can help on Student
Night, please contact Warren Wells and let him
know. Instructors and helpers are always welcome.
Don’t forget that safety is everyone’s responsibility
– inside and outside the pits, in the air or on the
ground – let’s have an accident free season! Flight
patterns will be established by the 1st guy of the day
to go airborne, so please pay attention and fly the
established pattern to avoid mid-airs.
Club Raffle: Raffled off was an Airtronics 2.4 Ghz
radio with 2 receivers. Additionally, there were
servos and a foam flyer. Hey, the potential of win-
ning is great, so everyone should be happy with
these great offerings.
Models of the Month: Leon brought in a Maxford
“Mini-Bipe”. Blood red and powered by an Aero
Nuts 2820 motor. Dennis brought in a Herr “Little
Extra” – cream and turquoise and powered by an
Enya 0.09 engine. Juan is also into glow with his
Giles G-202 powered by a an OS61AX engine. It
was blue, white and yellow. And the winner was
Juan – nice planes by all.
Next Meeting: The May meeting will be at Livonia
Senior Center (LSC) Since May is always an iffy
month, it was decided at the April meeting to NOT
meet at Ray Field. The meeting will still start at
7:30 pm sharp.
The meeting ended at 8:25 pm due to the final b-
ball playoffs that evening.
Respectfully submitted – Dennis Robbins
UP COMING EVENTS
Spring Clean Up
On May 9 the field will get its annual clean
up. This year some trees on the west side
of the field will be removed. So sharpen up
the chain saws, gather up your shovels,
rakes, hand tools, trash bags, etc. and plan
on coming out to the field for this important
event. If you have a branch grinder let me
know. Also, Art and I just may throw some
hotdogs on the grill. This is a start on get-
ting the field ready and getting your work
hours in.
Hank Wojcik
313-659-1677
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Posted on the internet, dated April 21, 2009, is a news bulletin
from Australia describing a
close encounter of an RC 40 size airplane with a Boeing 737
passenger jet operated by Vir-
gin Blue airlines. The RC plane had a movie camera on board and
clearly shows the jet
passing in front of the plane just seconds from a collision.
Authorities are investigating the
incident and criminal charges could be in play. You just have to
wonder what the intent of
the RC flyer was. Whether this incident is true or not, it is a
good reminder for the justifica-
tion of our CLUB rule for using a “spotter” and following the
evading procedures when a full
scale is in the area. The planes landing at New Hudson are, for
the most part, flying slower
and lower. Perhaps a CLUB discussion on the importance of our
“spotter “rule is in order be-
fore the flying season gets under way in earnest.
To read the article and view the video go to:
http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/newshome/5513244
Close Encounter of the RC Kind
Model of the Month
Juan’s
Giles “G-202”
Dennis’
Herr “Little Extra”
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Roger Wilfong Roger on Electric Motors
Last time I talked about different types of batteries and
their uses. What makes modern electric flight batteries
practical is that they can be recharged - which brings us
to chargers. As there are different types of batteries
(Nickel & Lithium), there are chargers that are dedi-
cated to each type – some sophisticated charger can be
programmed to safely charge different kinds of batter-
ies.
The charger that everyone is familiar with is the wall-
wart charger that came with your radio system. This
type of charger is a low rate, constant current charger
intended to charge the NiCd or NiMH batteries in your
transmitter and receiver packs. It is preset to charge at
50-100 mA, which is about a C/10 rate to the stock 600
mAH pack that comes with the radio. Because of
losses, it takes about 14 hours to fully charge the radio
batteries. This is a dumb charger. It never stops charg-
ing and if left connected too long (weeks) it can cook
your radio batteries. Fortunately Nickel batteries are
very robust and don’t mind a short over charge at this
rate. The big problem with this kind of charger is that
it is slow – you don’t want to wait 14 hours to fly for
10 minutes.
Enter the modern charger. Most nickel batteries can be
charged at 2C-3C and some types as high as 10C as
long as the charge is terminated as soon as the battery is
fully charged. As a nickel battery charged, the terminal
voltage increases until the pack is fully charged and
then the voltage drops a little. Modern peak detecting
NiCd & NiMH chargers charge the pack at a settable,
constant current and monitor the pack voltage during
the charge. As soon as the charger detects the small
drop in voltage it automatically terminates the charge,
resulting is a fully charged pack.
Lithium batteries require a completely different charg-
ing mechanism. Lithium chargers use a two phase
charging scheme. The first phase charges at a settable,
constant current, like the peak detecting nickel charger.
However, unlike the nickel charger, a lithium charger
doesn’t look for a peak in the pack’s voltage. Instead,
it looks for a set voltage that is based on the number of
cells in the pack and the type of lithium battery (4.2
volts/cell for LiPo and 3.7 volts/cell for LiFe). Once it
reaches this voltage, the charger enters the second
phase. The second phase keeps reducing the charge
current to maintain a constant voltage across the pack.
The charger terminates the charge when the current
drops to a preset low rate (about 10 mA). An interest-
ing condition is that phase 1 of the charge cycle takes
about 20-30% of the total charge time, but puts 80% of
the total charge into a lithium battery. The final 20% of
the charge takes the remaining time. So, if you’re only
using say 50% of the battery’s capacity, you can get by
with taking the battery off the charger when it switched
from phase 1 to phase 2 (in fact there is a commercial
adapter that you can put between the output of a peak
detecting nickel charger and a lithium pack that will do
just that).
As I noted last time, there’s more to cover on batteries,
but for now we’ll close the introduction to batteries.
Next time I’ll talk about motors.
Club Outreach On Sunday, April 19, club members hosted a Boy
Scout
Troop that was visiting our area. The scouts were on a
weekend camping trip in Brighton. Club members set up
several flight demonstrations with several airplanes, both
electric and glow. The troop of twelve was very pleased
and hopefully it sparked some interest in flight and avia-
tion. Warren Wells, event coordinator, and all Ribcracker
members extend a big thank you to club members that
took the time to make this an enjoyable and learning ex-
perience for the Boy Scout Troop.
Alex Alexopoulos, Gus Dabringhaus,
Ralph Hegadorn, Dino Marashai, Ron McHale,
Errol Peschel and Hank Wojcik.
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We need Pilot Trainers
and Pit Assistants
The club still needs members to volunteer
for STUDENT NIGHT. Pilot trainers and
pit assistance is needed to get the stu-
dent’s planes ready for flight and doing the
necessary paper work. Guys, this is a
great way to get your work hours in.
STUDENT NIGHT is every Wednesday at
6:00 pm. So call Warren 248.437.2694 or
Alex and show up around 5:30 PM and
have some fun.
Recently I picked up a copy of the
March, 2009 issue of Smithsonian
Magazine and found an article on a
new display at the National Air &
Space Museum (NASM) in Wash-
ington, D. C. that features model
airplanes. The author reminisces of
his youthful experience with model
airplanes and his fascination with
the high tech R C planes used by the
U. S. Military.
“Today, in far more complicated and
vastly more expensive forms, RC
airplanes have gone to war. At the
NASM, a display of six unmanned
aerial vehicles (UAVs) demonstrates
what happens when the little air-
planes of my childhood get serious.”
Take the five pound, 45 inch wing-
span AeroVironment RQ-14A
“Dragon Eye”. Launched by hand,
or with a bungee cord, the tiny scout
plane is controlled by GPS coordi-
nates entered into its guidance sys-
tem with a standard laptop com-
puter. Once aloft on its mission to
transmit video images of territory
lying ahead of a marine infantry
unit, the little scout is completely
autonomous “The video is received
in special eyeglasses worn by one of
the two marines who operate the
plane”, says the NASM curator Dirk
Deso
The Dragon Eye has two tiny video
cameras in the nose cone looking
down and to the side with enough
accuracy for directing mortar fire.
The craft’s two propellers and two
electric motors allow it to stay aloft
for 30 to 60 minutes, depending on
wind conditions. “The goal is 60
missions and each battalion gets
three airframes and spare parts.”
says one of the systems engineers.
“We specifically made the system so
that any Marine trained to use Win-
dows operating systems could fly
the plane.”
“It’s a very forgiving aircraft. When
it makes a belly landing on its Kev-
lar underside, the nose, tail and
wings come off by design to dissi-
pate energy.” says a NASM curator.
It can take a beating having hit a
telephone pole in Afghanistan, so
the marines patched it together with
duct tape (sound familiar) and sent
it up again.
The military has launched some
6,000 UAVs since 2002. Dragon Eye
is being phased out (hence it being
on display) in favor of smaller
“bugs” that can fly into areas at hu-
man eye level, perch on a roof top,
and look around. Can you imagine
the price tag for one of those
“insects”?
To see more go to:
www.smithnsonian.com/object
Don
RC at the Smithsonian
Leon’s Maxford “Mini-Bipe”
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June 6, 2009
Warbirds Over New Hudson
Ray Field
Gus Dabringhaus
810-417-0350
May 4 , 2009
Ribcrackers Club Meeting
Livonia Senior Center 7:30 pm
Alex Alexopoulos
298-909-6869
Local Coming Events
Every Wednesday
Student Night
Ray Field 6:00pm
Warren Wells
248-437-2694
May 9, 2009
Field Clean Up
Ray Field
Hank Wojcik
313-659-1677
Some lucky member has to be pleased as punch for purchasing the
winning
ticket for a great prize. In case you missed the meeting and
reading the April
Thunderbolt, the grand prize was a Airtonics 2.4 GHz radio
system including radio, receivers,
batteries and charger. WOW ! Too bad I wasn’t there because I
just know that I would have
won it. Warren Wells, raffle coordinator, tells me that there
was a great response for the raffle,
so that translates into more great prizes in future drawings.
Better plan to attend the next meet-
ing at LSC and you too will be a winner.
Have you paid your
annual club dues?
R E M I N D E R
895 Grace, Northville, Michigan 48167
MONTHLY RAFFLE
FUN FLY Sunday, May 17 The club’s first fun fly for the season
will be May 17 at Ray Field. So mark the calendar, get the
family
together, dust off the tent and chairs, grab some blankets and
come out and watch some interesting fun
fly events. Hank and Art promise hot dogs and hamburgers on the
grill, so pack up a big picnic lunch to
compliment. There will be open flying after. HOPE for friendly
skies.
