Indoor Flying at Lake Echo Community Ctr

A place to post info regarding indoor r/c flying.
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JohnOSullivan
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Re: Indoor Flying at Lake Echo Community Ctr

Unread post by JohnOSullivan » Fri Mar 20, 2015 9:54 pm

What a wonderful experience.
Many thanks to Vic and Mary for organizing the event.
The two hours passed too quickly and the kids were still flying as energetically at the end as at the start.
About 14 kids took part and were seriously interested in learning about aeronautics.
They were polite, very interested and asked very relevant questions and maintained their interest throughout the whole session. If these kids are representative of our upcoming generation, Canada has no worries about its future.
Their interest never waned and they were very impressed with the demonstration of fixed wing and multicopter models.
They took to the Sparrow Chuck glider like they had flown before. Having set up the model to take a catapult launch made the flights interesting.
Two models ended up in the roofing beams, one of which was retrieved by Vic with an accurate basketball throw.
Vic , Mary, Richard and Al Eastman provided the attendants with a variety of models and information and I hope a desire to continue in the hobby. It was interesting to see a ratio of at least two girls for each boy, and their interest was equally as good. This ratio follows my previous building courses with the Richards brothers and John Davies (over 15 years of 10 week courses), where we found that the girls building and flying skills were superior.

Vic gave them a presentation on the basics of control systems in an R/C model and Al introduced them to drone flying and how benign these models could be. Al performed launch exercises from their hands with his quad.
What a constructive way of spending an afternoon, educating children in the beauty of flight and what it means to our future.

We started with 21 Sparrows and after the first hour they were beginning to show some wear and tear, with a couple of repair stations going full time to keep all models airborne. All attendants ended the session with flyable models, some even had two, so everything worked out fine.

Vic, Richard , Al and I gave demonstrations of typical indoor R/C models which was very well received.
Who knows, maybe we can get some serious follow-up from these kids in continuing in a model airplane hobby.

I had posted a few pictures of a perfectly innocent fun day with the kids, but it appears that we did not have permission to show photos of the kids, so removed them.
Parental permission has now been given. Common sense prevails.
Attachments
Madd launch of Sparrows
Madd launch of Sparrows
Al demonstrates who multicopters can take off from your hand
Al demonstrates who multicopters can take off from your hand
Vic explains the wonders of aerodynamics to an intent audience
Vic explains the wonders of aerodynamics to an intent audience
Last edited by JohnOSullivan on Sun Mar 22, 2015 11:43 am, edited 3 times in total.
John
MAAC #5401 L
MACI (Ireland) IRL#26

astroflyer
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Re: Indoor Flying at Lake Echo Community Ctr

Unread post by astroflyer » Fri Mar 20, 2015 10:29 pm

A really fun day.

John smartly built more sparrows than needed, at least it seemed like that at first. But by the end of the day the extras were pressed into service to replace the ones up in the rafters and the ones broken beyond repair. The ca was under attack all day as planes returned from sorties. Lol

As john said several of the young ladies were launching like they been at it for years. Several had their gliders trimmed amazingly well and were making almost a complete circuit of the gym.

Vic should have bought a lottery ticket after his very first toss of a nerf ball bought one if the stuck gliders safety down from the rafters.. After that toss, no-one could hit anything.

There certainly is a lot of interest in our hobby among the young people. We just have to learn how to keep it going.

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Re: Indoor Flying at Lake Echo Community Ctr

Unread post by astroflyer » Mon Mar 23, 2015 1:33 pm

fun day with the kids. Vic explains the intricacies of an airplane. And handles the ca on the numerous repair jobs over the afternoon.
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astroflyer
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Re: Indoor Flying at Lake Echo Community Ctr

Unread post by astroflyer » Mon Mar 23, 2015 1:37 pm

The slow shutter speed necessary to get images in the gym's lighting blurred anything moving very fast. Also the incredible speed of the launches was amazing. Even at my camera's ten frames per second I missed most launches.
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astroflyer
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Re: Indoor Flying at Lake Echo Community Ctr

Unread post by astroflyer » Mon Mar 23, 2015 1:42 pm

John's 21 gliders made the day. although we did a bit of demo flying, there's nothing like having hands on and john's gliders did just that!
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astroflyer
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Re: Indoor Flying at Lake Echo Community Ctr

Unread post by astroflyer » Mon Mar 23, 2015 1:45 pm

the kids had fun!
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and so did we! Mary, Richard and Vic attempting to rescue a rafter stuck glider. Only Vic scored! :D
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astroflyer
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Re: Indoor Flying at Lake Echo Community Ctr

Unread post by astroflyer » Sat Mar 28, 2015 7:55 am

john, I have taken the liberty of using your comments above as a quote by you in the item I have put together for the MAAC newsletter. I hope that's ok with you?

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JohnOSullivan
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Re: Indoor Flying at Lake Echo Community Ctr

Unread post by JohnOSullivan » Sat Mar 28, 2015 4:59 pm

No problem Al. It was a great experience.
John
John
MAAC #5401 L
MACI (Ireland) IRL#26

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