September 2002 Issue. Editor/ Webmaster Randy Hawkins - email ffly98@aol.com

Upcoming event days:

ATLANTA RC INDOORS

Where:  The Soccer Center, Fayetteville, GA. >Ga. 54 east about 1 mile from Downtown Fayetteville.

When:  Saturday October 5 from 6-10 pm

             Saturday October 26 from 6-10 pm

             Saturday November 2 from 6-10 pm

Meeting Minutes for August 29, 2002 by Ernie Schlumberger

President, Tommy Vinci, started the meeting at 7:35p.m. with 24 members, 1 guest and 1 membership applicant in attendance.

Secretary, Ernie Schlumberger reported that there are 180 members in our club and 1 applicant is ready to join later in the meeting.

Vice President, Tom Huckaby, gave a report on the status of our attempts at finding a field. Club member, Phil Meyers arranged a meeting with the Fayette County Commissioner and Jeff Meyers and Tom Huckaby attended the meeting. The County was very receptive of the idea of finding us a permanent site on County property and they said they would look into it deeper. Phil said he thought that it was a very good first meeting and looks forward to future meetings.

Jeff Meyers brought up the AMA article about obtaining a flying site and how one club offered a cash reward to the person who located the property that they finally decided to use. He said it worked well for them and maybe it might help us get more people involved in looking for a possible flying site.

President, Tommy Vinci in the absence of Treasurer, Dave Zeigler, went over the club’s finance report for the month of August. The club had $397.43 income from 2002 membership dues and event income and $802.43 in expenses from Porta Potty, Field Maintenance, Fun Fly expenses and miscellaneous which leaves a total of all accounts of $10, 466.07.

Tommy talked about this year’s AMA Nationals contests. This year our club had the following members compete in various events: Mike McGowan, Jim Beck, Frank Hodson, Ric Vaughn and Ernie Schlumberger. Our club members did very well and collectively brought home a lot of trophies and great experiences.

Tommy asked Clare Schlumberger if she had any proposal to put forward in our safety rules regarding the discussion last month about full-scale aircraft. She said none was needed, as there are Federal Aviation Regulations that already address that issue.

Jeff Meyers found an Indoor Flying Site at the Fayette Indoor Soccer Arena. He set up 3 initial flying dates of October 5^th, 26^th and November 2^nd from 6p.m-10p.m. The arena is 200’ by 85’ by 24’ high with plenty of room to fly. Hobby Lobby gave Jeff a "Rare Bear" Park Flyer kit to give away and will put a Banner Ad on Ezone to advertise the event. (For more info check out the link on our club website.)

Tom Huckaby proposed having a contest to design a club logo and have a prize for the winning design. The motion was seconded and passed a vote. Huck will draw up the rules to the contest.

This month we had 1 new member join our ranks. Please welcome Michael Jordan to the Fayette Flyers.

This month’s winners were Larry Still and Marc DiBiase for a spectacular midair collision between a Super Stick and a Soarstar. (Guess which one won?) (Hint: There was a lot of foam floating in the air for a while.)

NEAT FAIR 2002 by Ernie Schlumberger

The Northeast Electric Aircraft Technology Fair was held on September 13, 14 and 15 in Peaceful Valley Campgrounds, Downsville New York. This was the third annual event and there were 290 Pilots from all over the U.S., Canada and Europe, and about 1000 models from ornithopters to true large scale ..

Ernie, Ric, Clare, Randy,>> Steve Dukes and Jeff Myers were off buying stuff at picture time. Steve Smith taking the picture.

Six of the pilots attending were Fayette Flyers. They were Steve Dukes,  Ric Vaughn, Jeff Myers, Randy Hawkins, Clare Schlumberger and myself. We ran into almost everyone that was at the SEFF event at our field back in June. It was nice seeing them and their airplanes again. The NEAT organizers say they had around 1300 spectators over the weekend and nearly 300 people stayed in tents or campers on the grounds over the weekend.

A large number of vendors showed up to sell their stuff. Some items were at great "show" prices and there were a lot of new high tech items available. FMA showed off their new line of Lithium-Polymer battery cells that could easily become a new standard for long duration flights at moderate current levels. Hobby Lobby was there and they are looking forward to coming to Atlanta for The Indoor Event in October.

The weather was beautiful for the first 2 days with light rain/drizzle on Sunday. Also, the winds were a factor on Friday afternoon and again Saturday evening. Several canopies were lifted and blown around on Friday as strong thermals rolled through the valley.

Randy, Clare and I got to put on our Night Fly on Saturday night. The winds were kicking up around 10-15 mph but that didn’t stop us this time. We flew 5 different airplanes to music including a Lighted Parachute drop from Randy’s Playboy. The planes flown included a lit up Zagi, 2 Playboys, 1 Electrostreak and an Elipstik. We set up a stereo system running on an inverter and car battery and cranked out some great music picked out by Randy to accent each planes’ character. The show went off without a hitch and was easily our best effort to date. All 3 of us would like to thank Ric Vaughn (especially for hauling all of our stuff to and from the NEAT FAIR), Steve Dukes, Jeff Meyers and Steve Smith ( Ric’s designated "ground crew"). Their assistance [and Moral support to our shaking knees] helped make the night fly a real success. There were about 100 or so people there to see the show and by the applause at the end, I’d say they enjoyed it.