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Flying High With Electric Power!
The Ampeer ON-LINE!
Fly the Future - Fly Electric! |
Site Table of Contents
| President: | Vice-President: | Secretary/Treasurer: |
| Ken Myers | Richard Utkan | Rick Sawicki |
| 1911 Bradshaw Ct. | 240 Cabinet | 5089 Ledgewood Ct. W. |
| Commerce Twp., MI 48390 | Milford, MI 48381 | Commerce Twp., MI 48382 |
| (248) 669-8124 | (248) 685-1705 | 248.685.7056 |
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| Board of Directors: | Board of Directors: | Ampeer Editor |
| David Stacer | Arthur Deane | Ken Myers |
| 16575 Brookland Blvd. | 21690 Bedford Dr. | 1911 Bradshaw Ct. |
| Northville, MI 48167 | Northville, MI 48167 | Commerce Twp., MI 48390 |
| 248.924.2324 | 248.348.2058 | 248.669.8124 |
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| The Next EFO Flying Meeting: Date: Sept. 10 Time: 10 a.m. Place: Midwest RC Society 7 Mi. Rd. field | ||
| What's In This Issue? | ||
| The 2011 Mid-America Electric Flies | ||
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The 27th Edition By Friday, July 8, Jim Lapham and Rich Sievert had the Midwest RC Society field grass close-cropped and swept. They were determined to have the field in the best possible conditions for all of our guests. They succeeded! The field was in great shape! Thanks Jim and Rich and Midwest mowing crew. We really appreciated your work and allowing us to use this very nice field for our meet.
Friday's weather was a preview of the good flying weather for the whole weekend. The event was blessed with sunshine, but with temperatures in the low-90's for the whole weekend. When I arrived at the field on Saturday at about 7:15 a.m., Phil Alvirez of Windsor, Ontario, was already flying his slow fliers in the perfect conditions. By 8:00 many pilots were taking to the air using the field's frequency control pins. By the pilots' meeting at 10:00 the majority of the folks attending had at least one flight. 2.4 GHz transmitters were not impounded this year. There appeared to be no problem doing this and it did reduce the workload of our volunteers in the impound tent. Registration was also handled at the impound tent with Dave Stacer handling the lion's share of the responsibility for this operation on Saturday with Denny Sumner help out then and on Sunday. This year, our fifty-one registered pilots came from all over Michigan, Ohio, Iowa, and several places in Ontario, Canada. As always, it was great fun catching up with our "old friends" and making new friends. The Radio Control Club of Detroit (RCCD) had a large contingent of flyers present with some very nice planes. That is what this meet is really about. Okay, the really "cool" planes are a very nice bonus. :-) A lot of folks captured the images used to illustrate this article. Greg Cardillo captured many great images, and Plenny Bates, Willie McMath, Rick Sawicki, and Wade Wiley also captured images used here. Greg Cardillo has even more great photos of the 2011 event on his Web photo page found at http://greggallery.gmcdesign.com/index.php?cat=8. Greg's great photos also cover the Mid-Am from 2004 through 2011. Rick Sawicki's photos can be found on the Web at July92011MIDAMERICAELECTRICFLY We give out some simple plaque awards on each flying day to recognize some of the great planes and pilots flying at the Mid-Am. To receive an award the model must fly at the event.
Don Belfort of Westchester, OH had a very nice Nesmith Cougar. It received the Best Scale Award on Saturday. It looks great and flies wonderfully! Jim Young of Brighton, MI brought the beautiful second prototype of his 1/8-scale WACO YMF-5. Although it could have 'won' many of our awards, the WACO and Jim took home the Most Beautiful award on Saturday. To learn even more about this great flying biplane and order a kit for yourself, visit www.tnjmodels.rchomepage.com 
Photo by G. Cardillo
Jim Young of Brighton, MI had his very impressive ducted fan at the meet again this year. His self-designed Gloster Meteor won the Best Ducted Fan award. It is very impressive in both looks and flight. You can find out even more about it in his thread on RC Groups as well as leaning when the plans and short kits will be released. 
Mark Rittinger Photo Mark Rittinger of Roseville, MI flew his self-designed version of Ken Willard's classic and received the Best Sport Plane award. Mark has plans available and there is a build thread on RC Groups. 
W. McMath photo Willie McMath of Mt. Clemens, MI took this photo of his Loving's Love with CD Keith Shaw standing by it. This 1/3-scale beauty by Willie received the CD's Choice (Ken Myers) for his fine work on this scratch-built plane. That HUGE spinner is something to see! Once the awards were presented and the pilots' raffle held, it was time for Dave Hares and his volunteers to get the steaks and onions going for the potluck. Thanks go again to Pam for pitching in on the potluck too. (She'd been helping in the concession stand all day as well!) The pilots, friends and families provided a wide selection of foods to go with the steak sandwiches. As usual, Don Belfort, Flying Models columnist from Westchester, OH, brought his "traditional" Mid-Am cake. The cake tradition has been going on for almost as long as the Mid-America Electric Flies. After the potluck is a wonderful time to be at this meet. It is when folks continued to get in more flights as well as set around and "catch up", talk planes, family, and politics and just relax. The flying and gab sessions lasted well into the evening hours. It is simply a marvelous time to be at the Mid-Am. Several Midwest RC Society pilots joined us to enjoy the festive atmosphere. The weather somewhat cooperated on Sunday with clear skies. The winds were pretty much out of the south making landing a challenge. A high temperature in the mid-90's and high humidity presented some challenges as well. Again, a lot of flying took place with many, many beautiful planes in the air for most of the day, until the heat caused an early wrap up of the event about 1:30. Again, Keith Shaw handled the flight line beautifully on Saturday and Sunday as the flight line coordinator. 
G. Cardillo photo Mark Rittinger took Best Scale top honors with his P-63 Tucker clipped wing racing plane. It was not a pleasure to fly on Saturday, but with added nose weight on Sunday, it flew quite nicely.
 Roger Wilfong took home the Most Beautiful award for his very uniquely covered Tiger Kitten.  Mark Rittinger's scratch-built 1/2A Curare took home the Best Mini-Electric award.
Plenny Bates photo Jim Young was awarded the CD's Choice (Keith Shaw) for his WACO. Part of the active flight line can also be seen in this photo. Denny Sumner had his beautiful Mark Rittinger designed Super Sportwin flying very well. His scratch-built project, from Mark's plans, received the Best Multi-motor award. 
G. Cardillo photo Our Sponsors We would like to thank all of our sponsors for providing some very nice "goodies" for our participating pilots.
Keith and I cannot even begin to thank all of the folks enough from the EFO, Ann Arbor Falcons and Midwest RC Society who helped to make this meet the success it is. It is pretty easy to go to a "meet" and enjoy the facilities and forget that it takes a lot of dedicated and hard working folks to pull it all together. From the physical field being in the best possible condition, the special parking set up, dining facilities, porta johns, registration, impound, concessions, potluck picnic grilling and myriad of other details, these behind the scenes folks are the best. Guys and gals, Keith and I cannot be more sincere when we say thank you, and we really couldn't have done it all these years without you! Also, a special thanks goes out to the Midwest RC Society for allowing us to use their field and flying time for the majority of our Mid-Am meets. You guys and gals are the very best!
It is very hard to describe what the Mid-Am is. It is friends, family, planes, camaraderie and just "plane" fun! 
Wade Wiley photo Wade Wiley sent along a photo he captured on Sunday from his impressive aerial photo plane. 
Wade's plane on a pass G. Cardillo photo
Keith Shaw shown in top photo and Ken Myers in lower photo.
In the Air There were a lot of different types of flying machines that took to the air at the Mid-Am this year. 
Wade Wiley's Eagle scaring the heck out of the local birds Plenny Bates photo
The Mid-Am, Final Thoughts, Until Next Year Thanks to everyone that came, everyone that helped and everyone that has ever helped to make the Mid-Am what it is today, 27 years after its very humble beginning.
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To Reach Ken Myers, you can land mail to the address at the top of the page. My E-mail
address is:
KMyersEFO@mac.com
EFO WEBsite: http://homepage.mac.com/KMyersEFO/