Notice of SAMAA AGM

Notice is hereby given that the Annual General Meeting of the South African Aircraft Association will be held on 1 November 2006 in the Aeroclub Board Room at Grand Central Airport starting at 18h15.

All SAMAA members in good standing are invited to attend.

The Agenda will be:
1) Welcome
2) Chairman’s Report
3) Financial Report (Budget,Fees)
4) General Manager’s Report (Statistics)
5) Previous A.G.M. Minutes
6) Matters Arising
7) General

Here's a link to the F3B team trials from Sergi Valls Batalla's F3B at home BLOG in Spain

Link

Spring Pylon Race -- Theo Marnewick

As sent by SAMPRA chairman

Hi all,
Just a reminder that the Spring Pylon Race meeting will be held on the 9th & 10th September 2006 at RMAC. The program will be as follows.
1. Scrutineering will be held between 7.00 & 8.00 am on both days.
2 Pilots briefing at 8.30 am on both days.
3 Racing starts at 9.00 am on both days.
4 The intention is to fly 9 heats of each class, weather permitting, as follows. 5 heats of each class on Saturday 9th and 4 heats of each class on Sunday 10th.
5 Entry fee R100.00 for single class entry plus R20.00 for extra quickie class and R30.00 extra for Q40.
6 A payment of R50.00 per day will be given to each of the helpers for food and refreshments.
7 Fuel for both Quickie and Q40 will be supplied.
8 Gauteng's electronic timing system will be used and timing will stopped at pylon 3 on the 10th lap.
9 Racing and course layout will be as per the current rules.
10 Helmets are to be worn by all pilots and callers.
11 No test flying after 8.30 am each day.

Please not that lunch and refreshments will not be provided.

We look forward to seeing you all for a great weekends racing.

Glider Winches - can they be called safe? -- Howard Callaghan

I am by no means an expert on this subject, but they say that "only a fool will not learn from experience" and I now consider myself to be experienced in the dangers inherent in the use of glider winches.

The use of a bicycle speeds up line retrieval at Jomac and, whilst engaging in this simple exercise one Sunday, I found myself up-ended on the bike with the winch line happily eating away at my right leg. Field administering of the wound effectively prevented further complications, although the doctor consulted certainly informed me that accidents such as this can have disastrous consequences.

So what have I learnt?

The winch must be made safe when persons are handling the line!

Many winches do have very effective means of dis-enabling the motor. This includes key-locks and isolating switches attached to the winch frame.

Where no such mechanical means of dis-enabling the winch is available, consider the following when the winch is to be disabled..
A length of tube is attached to the winch and into this is inserted a red flag (similar to that seen at active shooting ranges)
Also, a simple cap (I used an aerosol spray can cap) is placed over the activator button, rendering this harmless.

Whatever the means of de-activating the winch, my advice is do this whenever anybody is handling the line -- I have proved heavy duty nylon takes no prisoners when it is abused.

Howard Callaghan.

Lionel Brink's report on the F3J World Champs

“Working time will start in 5 seconds..., 4..., 3..., 2..., 1..., ping! The tortured sound of line stretching & the snap of parachutes seconds later.”

In 2006, Slovakia played host to the F3J world championships & in true style, managed to achieve a magnificently organized event, with some of the best RC glider pilots from all over the world competing against one another.

Read more....(600k word DOC)

The 2006 Control Line World Champs -- Keith Renecle

This time the world champs were held in Spain in a city called Valladolid. The name is pronounced “Vaya-dolleeth” and it’s quite easy if you remove your teeth and thspeek like thees! Our South African representation consisted of myself, Loren Nell, and our chief supporter, my wife Bokkie. We normally have a 3 person team, so this time we were down to just two, and we entered in F2B aerobatics. There are four FAI categories for control-line events, and they are F2A speed, F2B aerobatics, F2C team racing, and F2D combat. An interesting fact is that the C/L world champs are the biggest event on the FAI sporting calendar, with around 350 competitors plus support crews. You can imagine the organization required to arrange for such an event. It takes around four years to prepare for this, and you need a really good crew of helpers. Well done to Yolanda Garcia del Fuentes, and her team for doing this. Just by the way, to see all the results, they are posted on the web on many sites, but a good one for all things control-line, is Goran Olsson’s Hemisphere of Fun at http://www.go-cl.se/cl.html.

Read more here..., (400k word DOC).

Round-a-Bout for August 2006

Read Round-a-Bout here

F3J World Champs

Evan sent in this photo of Craig, Simon and Ilma.
There's more where this came from. I'll ask Evan to post them on Flickr.

SA F3J team in Slovakia

Peter Eagle sent me this fine photo. I'm not sure who took it but as the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words.
More info here.