North Penn Model Aviation Club
"the MAC" since Fall 2003

ARCHIVED PHOTOS 2009-2010

Today I let the kids take the camera and pretty much do whatever they wanted to do with photos. So, there's quite a few pictures of random things. We had a lot of fun, as usual.

After the fun-fly we decided to try some new ideas with building and flying. Some worked, and some failed. However, we learn from our mistakes.

April 7, 2010

In preparation for the fun-fly we built and flew as much as we could. Students brought in their own planes to try out in the gym. Some remained behind safety nets, while other's risked life and limb to rescue a downed plane. We're still not sure how Pat landed the plane on the bottom of the net.

We had a 'no hastle' fun-fly where we opened the gym to club members and friends. The gym was filled at one point, with six planes in the air. This was also practice for our students to gain confidence flying in the gym with others.

We prepared for our sales at Hamburg by sorting through equipment to find what we could sell. The students spent time with the Triplane design, and successfully flew it. It was quite a site to see the plane slowly and silently fly through the air.

We were fortunate this winter to access the gyms on a regular basis. The gym was a great place to learn flying in the "perfect weather" environment. Flying always draws a small crowd and is best with friends. Mr.V's friend stopped by to show off his very precise pattern airplane.

A few members traveled with Mr.V to the annual Lebanon R/C Flea Market. It was a fantastic time, despite the rainy trip out there. We left NP at 8am, and returned at 1:45pm. Trevor bought a glider for $6, and Pat bought a slope P-51 for $10. Mr.V came home with a nearly complete R/C sailboat, with the radio, for $15, and an assortment of carbon fiber to build foam planes. We stopped at Wawa for lunch on the way out. No one in our group won the door prizes.

Another club meeting went by faster than you could imagine. Our spring fun-fly is coming up and we're hoping for a good turn out. Members were building planes, practicing on the simulator, and repairing damaged aircraft.

February 24, 2010

Club members built and crashed planes all day. Pat brought in a micro sized homebuilt P-51. It was too quick to fly in the gym. Alex and Nick repaired their biplanes. Mark brought in his Typhoon and gave us a flight demo with his plane and new radio outside. It was windy, but the plane held up really well!

Meetings are always busy but today's was especially busy! We added a new DX5e and a new Vapor to our fleet today. It was exciting! The Vapor required some re-gluing, as the covering material came loose. Luckily, Trevor recovered his at home and knew exactly what to do.

Trevor and Mark had a fun time tossing around a micro glider Mr.Voicheck built using Vapor guts. The plane is made from 3mm Depron. It needs a motor, and a shaped wing to sustain flight.

Nick finished his biplane and finally saw it fly for the first time. He was very happy.

Lou demonstrated how to properly use an airbrush for painting model airplanes. He's using a $15 Harbor Freight airbrush! The regulator seen in the first picture (bottom middle) is used to finely tune the air pressure. He also brought in a couple planes that he painted. Thank you so much for your time Lou! Lou's demonstration lasted an hour and a half, from 2:45 until 4:15. I had to shoe the kids out of the meeting to make it to class on time.

-Lou has been flying for a little over two years and has some awesome artistic skills when it comes to painting planes. He makes airbrushing look natural.

Pat spent the entire club meeting working on landing light installation on the carrier bed. He cut a  groove in the foam and sunk the lights into it.

Greg brought his new read-to-fly plane to the meeting. Inexpensive models like this are a great way to get someone hooked on this hobby.

Our Fun-Fly was awesome! I hope you made it. We packed the gyms with over 70 pilots from around Lancaster to northern Jersey. It was amazing. Click on the image (you will need Flash) to check out our slideshow. Don't forget to check out the Youtube videos!

Video 1     Video 2

We decorated the display case with hundreds of airplane photos while Brian worked his fastest to complete the katana. We're only 10 days from the event!

We're three weeks away from the fun-fly and preparations are moving along nicely.

Pat built his own bomber plane which dropped mini foam, cartoon-shaped bombs. It was awesome! Pat's sister Eric helped out. Unfortunately, the bomber cracked in half, but was seen flying later in the day. He said he'll be redesigning a plane which will be meant for dropping 'stuff.' It drew quite an audience at our last meeting.

Mark flew the Katana and continued to repair his plane as needed.

After announcing our Fun-Fly a month ago, we needed to start preparing for some indoor flying. Students were frantically building planes to prepare for our event. The event will be similar to our March 2009 event. Hopefully it will grow to a larger fun-fly. We've been promoting it as hard as we can.

Trevor is working on a video to promote the fun-fly. You may see him at the next meeting, or asking people questions while he films them.

Brian was able to get stick time on the Vapor. He was very happy to have the whole gym to himself for flying. Matt also took a few minutes on the Vapor. It is such a neat plane to fly. I wish I had one of my own!

Four weeks until our fun-fly!

Students spent another warm afternoon outside flying planes. Pat rigged a drop mechanism on another biplane, which carried a small toy parachute. He held many of the students attention as he launched the parachute from the plane over and over again.

Tyler tried to repair the Parkzone Citabria. This was after Ryan spent an hour replacing the defective brick. Our elevator servo never worked on the original plane. Since it costs $10 to ship it to Horizon, we decided not to send it back. This is the second time we've had a defective ParkZone plane. Unfortunately the replacement parts were also defective. we will no longer purchase the Micro RTF planes for the club. They break too easily.

Our Vapor is still in great shape despite the flimsy landing gear. Students who are just learning to fly are provided with time to fly the Vapor, as it's the easiest plane to fly  that the club owns.

With the new year started and so many new members I sometimes forget to take pictures. There are so many things to do at club meetings as the adviser.

Students learned how to cut out the bluecor planes using our wire-saw. The students were amazed at how safe the device is.

One of our first club meetings required an in-depth look at our current inventory of model aircraft. Alex ripped his old biplane apart to make a single wing plane.

Pat revamped an old Frog that was laying around. The plane flew great until he smashed it to pieces. It's now in a landfill somewhere.

I rigged up a release mechanism for dropping these inexpensive "nerf-like" darts from the plane. It works very well. The plane flew much better with the 8x6 and the dart. It could barely climb with the 8x4.3 prop.