Kansas City Radio Control Association— AMA Charter No. 390

Serving the Greater Kansas City Area Radio Control Hobbyists since 1953

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Hel lo f e l l ow members, flying season is offi-cially here. If you’re not fly-ing your late, a n d I d o n ' t k n o w w h a t you're waiting for.  T he vanda l s came back a couple of weeks a g o . T h e y broke out the plexiglass on t h e b u l l e t i n

board. I cleaned up the mess the best I could. I'm not sure if we as a club are responsible for replacing the glass. They tried to brake the weather vane but only bent it over. Thanks to whoever re-paired it. Our first night of flying after the month-ly meeting was great. Perfect weather and lots of gliders. I think it was around 11 or 12 before the last flight. Nice turn out with a bunch of gliders. Thanks to Jimmy C for working everything out with the Parks. I hope to see everyone out at the field.  Mike Ryken, President 

CONTACTSJune 2019 Volume LXV, Issue VI www.kcradiocontrol.com

The Official Newsletter of KCRC — An AMA Gold Leader Club

IN THIS ISSUE Communiqué from Mike . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Page 1 Thanks to Masters/ 2019 Events/Officers. . . . . . . . Page 2 Minutes of the May Club Mtg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 3 Safety Briefing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . Page 4 U-Control Fun Fly Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 5 Seen at the Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 6 The First Club Mtg at the Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..Page 7

June Club Meeting Wednesday the 19th

at the Charles Reed Memorial

Flying Field

FLYING WEATHER HAS FINALLY ARRIVED

U-Control Fanatic Getting Dizzy

U-Control Models Keeping Dry

Don’t forget to bring your own drinks to the Club Meeting this

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Serving the Greater Kansas City Area since 1953

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YOUR 2018 OFFICERS Mike Ryken, President(816) 419-6713 Ripnlips3@sbcglobal.net Phillip Lucido, Vice-president (816) 582-8167 lucido4405@gmail.com Bob Deskins, Treasurer(816) 461-5616 robertdeskins@att.net John Midgorden, Secretary(816) 769-2199 jomidgorden@me.com BOARD MEMBERS Duane Hulen (816) 516-4526 drhulen@sbcglobal.net Jesse Casteel (816) 254-7618 jcasteel@kc.rr.com Susan Calvin, Safety Officer(816) 478-8330 scalvin47@earthlink.net FLEMING PARK LIAISON

Jim Cianciolo (816) 645-3558 kcrcpilot@comcast.net NEWSLETTER EDITORJohn Midgorden(816) 769-2199 jomidgorden@me.com

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Date Event Location

July 6–7 Pattern Contest Reed Memorial Field

July 13 3–D Poker Fun Fly Reed Memorial Field

August 17 NMAD Reed Memorial Field

September 7 Warbird Fun Fly Reed Memorial Field

October 26 Toys for Tots Reed Memorial Field

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Membership Total as of 05/15/19

57

A KCRC Member Who Sees a Need and Does Something About It

Pat Masters doesn’t wait for someone to ask him to do a job, he just sees the need and does what is necessary. He recently paint-ed the Shed door after the Park spray painted a graffiti on the

door with a different shade of gray. Pat re-painted the door with a matching color. Ear-lier this year he paint-ed the shelter house posts and facia. I be-lieve he also repaired the wind vane after it had been broken by the vandals that seem to target our flying

field regularly. Last year Pat painted the flag/wind sock pole. Next time you see Pat express your appreciations for his work on our behalf.

Pattern Contest—July 6–7John Ford is the CD for the Pattern Contest and will need help from KCRC members. First of all, he needs to borrow 2 EZ-Ups. John also needs the concession gang to provide lunches on both Saturday and Sunday. Everything else he has under control. Thanks John for your work in putting this contest on again this year!

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Serving the Greater Kansas City Area since 1953

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The May 15th KCRC club meeting, held at the Charles Reed Flying Field, was called to order by President Mike Ryken at 7:00 P.M. The other of-ficers present were Vice-president Phil Lucido, Treasurer Bob Deskins and Secretary John Midgorden. There was a great turnout for this first meeting of 2019 at the field with 32 members and one visitor, Joe Crotinger. OFFICER REPORTS President Mike asked for a motion to approve the May minutes as printed in the newsletter. Motion re-ceived and the minutes were approved. Vice-President Phil Lucido had no report but encouraged mem-bers to let him know if they had any program suggestions for when we return to the EAA Hanger in the Fall. Secretary John Midgorden announced that the 2019 mem-bership number was nearing 60. Treasurer Bob Deskins gave a brief report of the Club’s May income and expenses. Park Liaison Jimmy Cianciolo mentioned that several KCRC members attended the Jackson County Volunteer Recognition Banquet held on April 30th. He also shared that he received permission from the Park for KCRC to have 2 times a month to fly lighted electric aircraft. For the rest of the summer the 1st

and 3rd Wednesdays (Club meeting nights) will be open for night flying. Since Jimmy didn’t hear from the Park in time for the 1st Wednesday in May they allowed KCRC to fly on the 2nd Wednesday, the 8th. Several guys did fly on the 8th. OLD BUSINESS Duane Hulen explained that the Pylon Race in April was a disaster because of the high winds and that the Race was cancelled on Sunday when the winds were even greater. There were a num-ber of planes lost because of the wind on Satur-day. NEW BUSINESS • President Ryken thanked the landscaping

crew for their great work keeping the flying field and environs mowed and edged.

• Susan Calvin announced that the Lee’s Sum-mit Airport is going to be one of the stops on the cross-country women’s aircraft race (for-mally known as the Powder Puff Race). If anyone would like to volunteer to help at the airport please talk to Susan.

• It was announced that the U-control fun fly is the coming Saturday, with Sunday as the rain date if needed.

• Jimmy C. suggested that the Night Flying start time should be 8 P.M. Richard Strickland brought a sign up sheet for those flying lighted aircraft. This will serve a dual purpose. If non-Club members come we need to know if they have a Park pass and AMA membership. It will also give KCRC important information about how the night flying is being attended and Jimmy can report this information to the Park.

• Visitor Joe Crotinger shared his RC experi-ence and his intent to join the Club.

Since there was no further business the meeting was adjourned for more flying and the wait for darkness to fly the many lighted gliders that showed up for the night flying. Respectfully submitted, John Midgorden, Secretary

MINUTES OF THE MAY CLUB MEETING

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Mike Ryken p e r f o r m i n g surgery on his P-38 nose gear. It was success-f u l a n d t h e Lightening flew great!

D a r w i n Ulledahl and his beautiful electric pow-ered U-control. It flew great also with little noise!

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Serving the Greater Kansas City Area since 1953

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SAFETY BRIEFING SUSAN CALVIN, SAFETY OFFICERFor those of you who don’t read “Model Avia-tion” regularly, the June 2019 issue had an inter-esting comment by Tyler Dobbs, Government Affairs Director at AMA. On page 9 there is a picture of a badly cracked automobile wind-shield. This windshield was damaged by a drone strike that occurred while the vehicle was in mo-tion. Apparently no one was hurt, but the inci-dent/accident became the subject of a Farmer’s Insurance Company commercial that was played on national TV. This presents a huge problem for we who are involved in model aviation. Naturally Mr. Dobbs wrote a letter to Farmer’s Insurance in an attempt to mitigate the problem of adverse public opinion. However, I suspect the damage is done. It’s an unfortunate fact of life that the public is grossly misinformed in such matters and this presents a great danger to our hobby/sport. I’d hazard it’s a sure thing that many people who saw that commercial called or wrote to their representatives in gov-ernment demanding that drones, and other fly-ing models, be outlawed or severely regulated. All this is because someone got careless, or per-haps even stupid. This statement may seem harsh, but I believe it’s justified when considering what’s at stake. The major consideration in such incidents/accidents is a legal issue called negligence. As I remember back to my college days negligence has four elements. First, in any accident/incident situation a person has a duty to perform his ac-tivities in a safe manner, then there was a breach

of that duty, followed by damage to other per-sons or properties, and the failure of duty to per-form in a safe manner was the proximate cause of the damage. The potential problem of negligence puts all of us under a very uncomfortable looking glass. No matter how many times we fly safely, it takes only one incident to erase all our good will and make us liable to some severe legal action. Granted, we are covered by AMA insurance, but it must be remembered that such insurance is often tied to our homeowner’s insurance. And an adverse judgment may very likely result in in-creased insurance rates. I remember many years ago, in my ancient youth, reading about models that got away from folks and crashed into cars and, in one case, even flew through a small house trailer. At that time models were smaller and less sophisticated (as apparently were small house trailers). Now we fly larger, heavier, more complex, and even higher performance aircraft. Additionally, times and public attitudes have changed. The public is more litigious, and they no longer consider our models as just interesting “toys.” They may still be considered “toys” but now those toys are more dangerous in the public’s eye. It is therefore much more important that we conduct our flying activities with a greater level of cautiousness, since we now have more to lose if we’re found negligent after one of our aircraft causes dam-age/injury to another’s person

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Earlier this month Neil McCumber lost a lot of his RC stuff when a LiPo battery went off in his parked car. He lost a transmitter, several air-planes and additional model stuff. The inside of his van was destroyed. Here is a photo showing Neil’s loss. This all brings us back to the safety of LiPo batteries and the proper ways to care

for them and properly store them. Your editor would welcome an article from one of our LiPo ex-perts on how to safely use LiPo Batteries.

ANOTHER SAFETY ISSUE

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Serving the Greater Kansas City Area since 1953

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A springtime control line fly-in was hosted by KCRC on Saturday May 18 at Jacomo Flying Field. This get together was not a competion but rather just an ex-cuse for us old guys to dig out our U-control models

and get dizzy. Just like last year, the weather was uncoop-erative. There were early morning show-ers with forecast of more afternoon rain. But that didn’t stop about 15 crazies from spinning in circles. Most fliers were from our club or from the area. We had guest from Wichita, Topeka and Pomme de Terre Lake. There was a $10 landing fee which

covered lunch and park permits for our visitors. We also had many spectators and helpers who showed up

to get a good laugh. When the drizzle fad-ed around 9, I rolled out my l ines and started turning nitro into noise. That got everyone out from the beneath the shelter house and soon we had three circles going strong. No one kept track but surly there were many dozens of flights with only one or two crack-ups. And as predicted the wind

and the rain rolled back in around noon so it was time to eat. The weather finally shut us down and we were out of there about 2 in the afternoon.

There is a phenomena that I have heard of but had never experi-enced before. The changing weather was causing lots of rum-bling thunder. When I made that first flight, as I climbed into a loop, I got a static electric shock through the steel lines into the palm of my hand. If I stayed low around

shoulder height I was OK. But climb into a loop or wing over, Z A P ! S p i n n i n g around on wet grass I became a human ca-pacitor and probably a lightning rod. Defi-nitely not a smart idea . T he c louds passed and so did the static discharge. But

when the next round of storms appeared and lightning hit the ground somewhere nearby, we knew it was time to call it a day. Jimmy C. Reporting

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Serving the Greater Kansas City Area since 1953

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On Wednesday, June 5th, there were a number of guys who came out to fly their lighted gliders on the Park’s authorized night. This is becoming a fun and well attended Club activity. Those of you who haven’t tried it yet, get yourself a glider and join in the fun.

That glow in the sky is not the moon, but lightening! Shortly after this photo was taken we

stopped flying.

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Serving the Greater Kansas City Area since 1953

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Serving the Greater Kansas City Area since 1953

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CONTACTSJune 2019 Volume LXV, Issue VI

MAIL TO:

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CLUB MEETING

June 19th

Come Early and Stay Late for this Month’s Club Meeting at the

Flying Field

7:00 P.M.

There will be hot dogs and polish sausages served at

6:30 P.M.

BRING YOUR OWN DRINKS

Flying before and after the short Business

Meeting. Lighted electric aircraft

flying after Dusk!

KCRC 17804 E. 29th Street S Independence, MO 64057

By Midgraphics

Lighted Gliders Ready to Launch