Dare County Radio Control Flyers

With our final build class completed, participants were given an assignment to complete their planes at home and have them ready to fly in late March or early April. Any participant having questions or needing assistance were told to contact Peter Fynn.

The included photographs show the final results of each participant's efforts.

We completed our fourth and final build session this evening which began with a quick class by Peter Fynn on applying dope to the covered surfaces we completed this past week. Most had finished covering all their aircraft's surfaces with silkspan, and those that had not continued to work on building and covering to get caught up. We also installed our plane's rubber band motor after applying lubrication to it provided by Jim Shiels.

By the end of the evening, much progress had been made by all, and we departed with instructions to complete the application of dope to all surfaces, and to await further instruction which will be communicated via e-mail.

Our club's informational rack card was added today to the business information display in the lobby of the Outer Banks Chamber of Commerce, located at 101 Town Hall Drive in Kill Devil Hills. Julie Walter, the chamber's membership services director, accepted our newly printed rack cards, and placed them on display.

Jim Davis, Stephen Yanacek, Peter Fynn, and Robert Yanacek met this morning at the Jolly Roger for breakfast and discussion about our build session last evening. Also discussed was Jim's idea to construct Tiny-Tony foam board electric-powered planes for our next group build, culminating in a pylon race at our flying field.

Following another week of continuing to build at home, participants met once again. With all the framing now completed, we received a quick class from Peter Fynn about the process of covering our models with silkspan. Using a diluted glue mixture, Jim Davis, Jim Shiels, Stephen Yanacek, Philip Garey, Robert Yanacek, Matt Cooke, and Kolton Cooke turned-to and began the covering process. Over the next hour and a half, we all completed covering the surfaces of the wings and empennage.

Our "homework" for this week will be to cover the entire fuselage before we meet next week to apply dope to all the covered surfaces.

No flying today, but nonetheless Robert Yanacek, Stephen Yanacek, Peter Fynn, and Philip Garey got together for breakfast at the Jolly Roger Restaurant in Kill Devil Hills to talk about model planes and exchange ideas.

Club president, Jim Davis, recently received an e-mail from a local resident who had a Parrot AR Drone 2.0 that they wanted to donate to the club. Jim gladly accepted the drone, and passed it along to Stephen Yanacek to set up and test.

Stephen got it set up rather easily and flew a test flight locally, due to its rather small size and power. The drone performed very well and will undoubtedly be going to our flying field this spring to perform more flights and to assist in locating planes that go down in areas with heavy brush.

Following our first week's building session, our participants spent the week continuing to build at home before returning for our second session.

We continued to build at our second session and our airplanes are taking shape. Those who were further along in the build process assisted those who were not, and by the end of the evening, everyone had made considerable progress.

Our "homework" for this week is to complete the framing for the fuselage, wings, and empennage before we meet again next Thursday to begin the covering process.

Jim Davis, Steve Smith, Philip Garey, Richard Boyd, Stephen Yanacek, Matt Cooke, Kolton Cooke, Robert Yanacek, and Jim Shiels met tonight to learn some basic model airplane building skills.

The event was organized by one of our esteemed members, Peter Fynn. Each participant purchased a small Guillow's balsa wood model kit and received instruction on the build process by Peter. Everyone then commenced to building their model under Peter's watchful eyes.

At the conclusion of our first session each participant had made progress on constructing their plane's fuselage and were assigned "homework" which involved completing the fuselage at home before next Thursday's session.

In addition to those listed, an additional member, Rusty Kennedy, is working on his kit independently from our group as he lives in Virginia.

Of special note is that we were very pleased to have two guests participating in this series of classes—the father and son team of Matt and Kolton Cooke.

Club president, Jim Davis delivered six pilings to our flying field today as we prepare to get started on the construction of our new storage shed. According to Jim our next step will be to have these pilings installed as soon as possible by Northeastern Marine. Once these pilings are installed, our members, under Jim's expert supervision, will commence to building the structure.

Jim added that although the construction area was very wet, the stakes that were laid out in early December by our club members were intact and did not require any additional effort.

Seven club members and four spouses had a enjoyable time at our club's annual Christmas party—celebrting the season while enjoying our friendship and passion for flying with the great food and service provided by our hosts at the Thai Room in Kill Devil Hills.

Those in attendance were Steve Smith, Becky Smith, Jim Davis, Sharon Davis, Stephen Yanacek, Philip Garey, Robert Yanacek, Diane Yanacek, Peter Fynn, Jim Shiels and, Joyce Shiels.

Four club members and three guests met today at the field to take advantage of some extraordinary flying weather. With temperatures in the high 60s and wind velocities from 4 to 6 miles per hour, it proved to be a pleasant and enjoyable day for all.

Our day began with club president, Jim Davis, leading the effort to stake out the location for the placement of the pilings for the construction of our new storage shed that will begin later this month. Following this task, members turned to flying.

Under the supervision of Stephen Yanacek, our newest member, Richard Boyd successfully flew for the first time. Richard did quite well and is looking forward to some more flying in the future. One of our guests, Philip Garey brought a number of First-Person-View (FPV) drones and amazed our members by following and filming the flight of both Jim Davis and Peter Fynn. Philip was also afforded an opportunity to try his hand at flying an airplane—and did remarkably well by also successfully taking off and landing without assistance.

Our day of flying ended at about 2:30PM as our members departed the field looking forward to meeting once again at our club's annual Christmas party this upcoming Thursday.