SCRC Meeting Notices
Monthly meeting are generally held the first Tuesday of each month with exceptions caused by holidays, etc. During the summer months, the meetings are held at the club's flying site. All other meetings are held at the Central Pa. Institute of Science & Technology, (formerly known as the Centre County VoTech School) in Pleasant Gap. The meetings start promptly at 7:00 p.m.

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Newsletter for the November Meeting

Tuesday, November 1st, 2005 at 7:00 PM

At the Central Pa. Institute of Science & Technology

(formerly known as the Centre County Vo-Tech School)

Room 129 is the most probable meeting location.

Check the sign in the Lobby for possible meeting room changes!

Minutes from the October  Meeting

-The October Meeting-

     October 4, 2005

The meeting was called to order by SCRC President Jim Rhodes at 7pm. There were 17 members and 1 guest present. Our guest was Greg Granville, who is planning to join the club. Welcome Greg!

1. Minutes - Minutes from the September meeting were accepted as written.

2. Treasurer’s Report – George Gurney reported that the August air show took in $128.81 and cleared $44.33 after expenses. Some members paid dues and we had the usual newsletter expense. The report was approved.

3. Old Business - PSU club member Justin Heinly sent email to Ron Angle about 2-3 weeks ago regarding joint club activities and possible access to PSU facilities including Holuba Hall, but nothing has happened since. Also the PSU club is planning on an R/C float for the homecoming parade at the end of October.

4. New Business - Jim Rhodes appointed a nominating committee of Jon Polay (chair), Al Jones, and Paul Bittengle for next year’s slate of officers.

Al Niessner reported that Spectra Wood was contacted by Ellis Dunklebarger to make new card holders to fix the current problem with the frequency board.

Hugh Zinsmeister brought up several violations of the safety rules that have occurred. These include high speed passes over the runway, flying across roads at less than 25 feet altitude, and improper frequency board usage. A motion was made to draft a warning letter to the individuals involved. The motion passed.

A motion was made to have a winter banquet at the Elks Club. The motion passed.

5. Program – there was no program.

6. Announcements - Al Jones has nametags and booklets for new members. Contact him at 237-2284 if needed.

 Nathaniel Rice announced that Peter Spink is moving back to Australia in December. The club decided to get a farewell card to be signed at the next meeting. Jim Rhodes volunteered to get the card.

George Gurney, Sam Stitzer, and Al Niessner are giving a flight demo at Penn’s Valley on 10/11/05.

Jeff Favuzza said Dave and Mike Grove (our landlords) asked if they are covered in case anyone gets hurt at the flying field. He did not know, but Al Niessner volunteered to contact AMA to get a letter regarding insurance coverage.

7. Show and Tell - Eric Marsh showed a nicely built SR Batteries Cutie with a 44 inch wingspan. He replaced the Speed 400 motor with a brushless motor and 2100mah LiPo batteries and reported that it has lots of power and can fly for about 25 minutes on a charge! Eric also has another wing for the Cutie. This wing has much less dihedral, and has ailerons.

Here is a photo of Eric and the Cutie.

Nathaniel Rice showed plans he sent for in the Flying Aces newsletter. He is going to scan the plans into a CAD program and scale them up to the appropriate size.

7. 50/50 Drawing – Nathaniel Rice split $19 with the club.

 The meeting was adjourned about 7:50 pm.

Using CAD for plane design

 At the October meeting, Nathaniel Rice mentioned using AutoCAD software to help design and draw R/C planes. I use Auto CAD daily in my work as an engineer & drafter. I have used it often for model designing. It is a wonderful tool for the R/C modeler!

  Recently, I have been drawing up a Britten-Norman Islander twin for R/C. It will use two Speed 400 motors and a 7 cell battery which I used for a twin motored model a few years ago. To start this project, I found a line drawing of an Islander on the internet, and downloaded it to my computer as a bitmap file. Then I imported the file into AutoCAD. Next I traced over the outline of the plane using lines, arcs, etc. in AutoCAD. I used red lines so I could see them over the black lines of the bitmap image. Once I was finished, I simply erased the bitmap image, leaving the lines intact.

   I had decided that I wanted the model to have about 350 square inches of wing area. Doing a little math showed that I needed a wingspan of about 48 inches. The drawing I made had a span of about four inches, so I needed a scale factor (multiplier) of 6.  Now here’s where CAD is so useful. I used the “Scale” command, selected all the lines, then typed in a scale factor of 6, and instantly the drawing jumped to six times its original size! Sweet! Doing that on a drawing board without CAD would have taken hours of tedious work.

With the drawing now being the actual size I wanted, I then copied outlines of the motors, props, spinners, servos, battery pack, airfoil, etc. from other drawings, and inserted them into the new drawing. Then I began drawing the structure around them.  Once the basic outline is done, it’s fairly simple to make outlines of individual pieces (fuse sides, bulkheads, wing ribs, tail surfaces, etc.) of the plane. When it’s done I can plot it out full size on the big plotter at my office, and build the plane from that drawing.

    The ability to scale a drawing up or down is a great feature for the model designer. You can design your model to exactly match your power system, rather than build a kit or build from purchased plans for a plane that might be just a little too big or too small.

    Not everyone has access to AutoCAD software, but there are numerous inexpensive CAD packages available in stores or on the internet. If you want to design your own planes, CAD is a worthwhile investment.

That’s all for this month.

Sam Stitzer 814‑364‑9530

     samstitz@yahoo.com

For Access to past SCRC Newsletters --  click on the month for the desired year.