Pomona Valley Model Airplane Club

On January 26, 2010, Guinness World Records awarded Axel Hache of the Dominican Republic and David Shulman of the USA the new world record for fastest remote controlled jet powered model aircraft when they piloted their turbine powered rc plane to an average of 337.18 MPH.  The jet was flown at the Hobbyland airfield in the Dominican Republic on January 17, 2010, and achieved a maximum speed of 345.23 MPH down wind.  The record breaking plane is a JMP Firebird equipped with an AMT Olympus HP turbine engine generating over 50Lbs of thrust. 

Now for the bad news.  AMA rules (link to rules) stipulate that turbine powered aircraft shall not exceed 200 MPH and turbine engines shall not exceed 45lbs of static thrust. Also the PVMAC strictly prohibits the use of turbine powered aircraft at our fields.  So unfortunately, I don't think we will be seeing any record breaking attempts at our local fields.  Congratulations though to Axel and David though for their accomplishment.  Check out the video below, it's unreal and the plane is way too fast for my thumbs.

 It is with great sadness that I report that Jim Giffin, our newley elected Distrixt X VP who won the position in a close race last year, has passed away. This was posted on the AMA website earlier this week.

The 2010 AMA Expo has passed and for the second year in a row, the PVMAC had a booth there. Like last year, this year was a big success for the PVMAC.  The volunteers at the PVMAC booths were able to sign up 17 new members and 33 membership renewals.  The volunteers were also hard at work selling raffle tickets, and the work payed off as the sales of tickets were up dramatically from last year.  This year, 3 PVMAC members were lucky enough to win a raffle prize.  Member Victor Noiron won an O.S.61, Jim Sout won a Hangar 9 Extra 260, and Joe Augion won a Saito FA-125A.  Non members also took home some great prizes; Kali Fogel won a JR9303 Radio, Steven Penn won a Hangar 9 P-51, Bob Thorugood won the FS-One Flight Sim, and Lucky Tom Kelly, purchasing just one ticket, won the Desert Aircraft DA-50-R. 

The PVMAC would Like to send a huge thanks to Dave Johnson from Desert Aircraft for donating DA-50-R, and to Horizon Hobby for their contribuitions to our raffle. We would like to also thank Chuck Pozone, Manual Rodrigues, Charlie Mitchell, Frak Harris, jim Stout, Thomas Marcure, Roy Barringer, Jose Brea, Antone Van and Beth, Kyle and Phil Goodwine for dedicating all or part of your weekend to this event.

It was stated at the January club meeting that because of the success of the 2010 Expo, we will definately be attending the 2011 AMA Expo. In fact there is already plans to increase our presence at the next show by adding a table to our booth.

The new year has landed, and we have a great year of flying ahead of us, but I wanted to remind everyone of a new PVMAC rule for 2010. All members are required to clip their membership card on their shirt, hat or jacket, to be visible by all while flying at the Norton and Prado fields.  If you are flying with a 2.4Ghz radio, you will no longer need to place your badge on the frequency board.  If you are flying 72Mhz, you are still required to place your badge on the frequency board under the frequency you are flying with and when your done flying, you should remove your badge from the board and clip it back on your shirt.  The main reason for this is that it will make it much easier to to identify members vs. non members. Also, the badge will make it easier to remember everyones name, making it a much friendlier place at the fields. 

Airplane size limit is reinstated at Norton

The flying rules for the Norton field that have been a part of our contract with the airport include a wingspan limit of 81 inches and an engine size of 2.80 cu in.  We had a verbal agreement that let us temporarily deviate from these limits and we permitted the larger IMAC birds to fly.  However, the control tower is now activated and the airport authority has asked us to honor the limits as stated in the contract.  If you have any questions about this, contact Paul Smith.

The equipment box, frequency board, and rule board have been moved.

These items no longer block the view of the runway at Norton and they have been relocated to the east end of the pit area.  An informal survey showed me that 80% of the flyers favored opening up the view of the runway and the east end of the pits was preferred as the new location.

The box with the frequency board was first item moved and this was done with major effort by Martin Nelson, who volunteered his truck as the tow vehicle.  The move team included Mike and Adrian Peratoner and Paul Smith.

Moving the rule board was a big job and required pulling the steel posts out of the ground and drilling new post holes. This was accomplished primarily by Warren Schlaberg and his son, Jacob.  They came to the field on Dec 30th with some of his construction equipment including a generator, drills, jacks etc.  They were assisted by Gordon Daniels and Richard German.   The Norton flyers and the entire club owes a big “Thank you” to these volunteers. 

At the December club meeting, we had the opportunity to preview the Wings Over Chino 2009 video trailer.   If you attended the event, you would have seen two camera men weilding 2 Pro HD cameras, along with a large boom camera crane to capture all the flying action.  Below is a teaser video of that forthcoming video.  The video was created by Paul Reese of Reese Creative and the DVD video will be available for purchase sometime in January.  We should have more information about the video soon, but in the meantime enjoy this trailer.

You probably don't need to read this posting to know that the PVMAC has a new website.  As a new member in 2009, I have recently taken over the website duties for the PVMAC.  While I was updating the old website, I began thinking about replacing the old site with something new and a bit more updated. My Goal was to make a site that was much more modern, exciting, informative, organized, and easy to update.  Hopefully, I have accomplished most of these goals with this new site.  I'd like to take this opportunity to point out some of the new features you will find within the new site.

• (New! as of 12/26/09)  Registered users can make comments on postings. 
• New Video Gallery
• Photo gallery that is easy to navigate and allows members to contribute photos.
• RSS (Really Simple Syndication) News Feed (Look for  icon located at the top of this page)
• Secure contacts page, that has a form to send email, instead of listing out email address for spammeers.
• new rotating ads feature with complete ad management.
• calendaring page to track all our events.
• Interactive google maps to our flying fields.
• A Search feature located in the Top banner of every page
• Usefull Links section for resources on the net.
• Easily access the latest newsletters from the main page.
• Show upcoming events right on the main page.
• Breadcrumbs to show path to your current location within the site (located just below the menu and above the text. 

Hopefully the site will serve us well by conveying club news, promoting events, and continuing to build our reputation as a 1^st class rc flying club. 

Tom Callahan