More Saucery
Believe it or not, I now have two regular readers! I had a nice email from Bill Grenoble who has seen 34 UFOs, 5 while flying helis. Bill also wants me to write for him. You'll have to talk to Tony about that, Bill. I'm not too sure about this sudden popularity, but I'll try not to let it go to my head.
Officialdom and all that
For many years I have been associated in one way or another with the running of our national body, BMAE, er SMFA. (My spellchecker suggested 'sofa' for that one. The words 'armchair' and 'modelling' spring to mind). As you probably know, they have the job of approving the choice of people who represent us abroad at world championships, etc.
The actual procedure has not changed for many years and the job of running team trials is handed over to the relevant approved/affiliated body. The choice is then ratified by a council meeting. The last possible date for this ratification is the first full council meeting in the year of the championships. As I said earlier, this has been the situation for many years, like 15 at least.
Isn't it amazing that every year we hear that team trials have to be hastily arranged at the worst time of year because someone has just found out about the above well-established procedure?
Since writing the above, I have learned that one of the aforementioned specialist bodies has brought the date of one of its team trials forward a week after announcing to the world when they would be held. Only those in the know (i.e. their members) knew when the trials were actually to be held. Now, as they were holding those trials on behalf of the National body, surely every member of the BMAE/SMFA should have been informed. Official protests anyone?
Another feature of the constitution of all such affiliated bodies is that they are supposed to hold a minimum number of competitions each year which are open to all BMAE/SMFA members. After all, we wouldn't want the affiliated bodies acting like secret societies and holding competitions in camera for just their own members would we?
Note that I have not attempted to name any particular affiliated body. Let's just call it WICITY (Whatever It Calls Itself This Year). Right now, someone is saying "Aha! I know who you mean!" Well, you may be right.
Make your pitch
Sorry people, I'm going to talk about helicopters again.
I've been intrigued by constant references by both David Parnham and the editor to models that pitch up in a descent or autorotation. Intrigued because I have never experienced this phenomenon. Let me say here that I have performed over 13000 logged autos with some 15 different models over the last 11 years (360 autos so far this year), to establish my credentials. I LOVE doing autos.
Obviously, I am wrong, so I went out to check. Like a lot of British and all of the Japanese flyers, I fly Mode 1. This means that I can perform autos by taking my hand off the left stick, so I KNOW I'm not adding elevator (sorry, fore/aft pitch) unintentionally.
Obviously, The whole thing is confused if you enter a descent with any forward speed, or in a high wind. Fortunately, we've just had a couple of days with no wind. So far, I've tried it with a robbe 'Magic', an 'Enforcer ZR', a 'Concept SR-X', a 'Whisper' and an 'X-Cell 60'. The 'X-Cell' is the only one of those that doesn't drop its nose. In fact, I reckon that if you had the guts you could do an auto with it without using the elevator servo at all. This is actually embarrassing in windy conditions because it disappears backwards downwind (still without any change of trim) and you HAVE to shove the stick forward to stop it.
The 'Magic' needs just the slightest trace of back stick, while the others all need a positive back pressure on the stick all the way down. The 'Whisper' actually needs a lot of back stick.
If I need to lower the nose, I just reduce the back pressure or lower the collective.
It's quite interesting to take your hand off the stick and hit the hold. In some cases the result is a frantic grab for the elevator stick and a hard pull back to recover from a vertical dive.
I do have a theory about all of this but, in a last desperate effort to generate some feedback, I'm going to leave it to you, the reader, to tell me.
Write me, or this is my last column.
TANSTAAFL
OK, maybe not. But, by the time that you read this, there may be important news about the future of W3MH. Whatever, you only have yourselves to blame. It seems that the whole world has got so used to sneaking into their local bookstore/newsagents and reading magazines that they haven't paid for that they think that is the way that the world works. Unfortunately, it ain't so, but 'there ain't no such thing as a free lunch' seems to have been forgotten, no matter how true it may be.
The brutal facts of the matter are that, in todays world, you get what you deserve, AND what you pay for. Sit back and wait for someone else to do all the work by all means, but if both of your legs atrophy and fall off, don't come running to me.