Ticking Along

THE B.E.R.G. BLOG HITS 40,000 THATS FORTY THOUSAND HITS!!!!!!!!
the record month so far was October with 3400 hits and we see this normally after a big event
such as the Sungazer (previous record) and P.S.S. Fest in September.
At this stage our viewers are slightly more international than local and many return again and again.
Very popular postings include The PSS/SUNGAZER slope events , build thread on the Jarts, and big DG 500 Wing joiner construction, Charls Speed Astir rebuild, Piets Rockwell Aerocommander, and the CMPRO
Discus and DG1000 model gliders.
We get very little feed back about our content , but assume with our growing viewer base that ,
our content is of interest to modellers in general and glider pilots in particular.
A special thanks to all our contributors and the variety of topics they cover.
On behalf of the B.E.R.G. Blog team we wish you and your family a safe and Merry Christmas,
for the Festive season and a happy new year.
Best wishes
Mike May

Summer Sloping

A group of us went down to Volksies over the weekend to, amongst other things, fly some PSS planes.

Below left, Norbert flying his PSS Tigershark close in for some photos. Izak capturing the action.















Saturday we had excellent conditions and everyone had a ball flying. I decided to maiden my A10 Warthog which flew extremely well and is real easy to fly, probably due to the thick wing and huge control surfaces.















On the slope were the usual BERG/ETB slope die-hards as well as some other guys from the Northcliff area. They fly predominantly electrics but had some gliders as well.

As usual the social side makes these outings special and the evening braai is always a buzz of discussion about the days flying action.

Peter Karner needed to complete a new tailplane for his Astir CS. No problem, bring the building board with and he completed it in the camp.















The Astir CS ready to fly, Peter had an excellent flight on the sunday when the conditions were perfect for the bigger birds. 25/35kph on the northwest slope with good thermals in between.

Peter Moore joined us on Sunday flying his ASW28. Norbert Flew his DG600, Peter Karner his Astir CS and myself with the Diana 2 and Ventus 2ax, all having good flights.















Ventus on a flyby having sorted out the tailplane incidence a far better plane as far as launching and flying. I sat in my chair and flew from thermal to thermal for an hour with plenty of birds joining us in the lift, storks, eagles, hawks and swallows often marking the thermals. Can't really wait until we go again. ok

For a good cause

Just a short note of thanks to all the HTL contestants that contributed directly and indirectly last Sunday from all the kids at The Cedar Children's Village.

If you are interested in more information on activities at the Village and more details on each of the kids, then you can link to last Che's last newsletter to friends here.

HTL Final Heidelberg

The final contest of the Highveld Thermal League was flown at Che’s Farm in Heidelberg on Sunday – and what a grand event it was. Martie and I travelled down on the Saturday afternoon and met up with the Durban guys Dave, Dennis and Allan at the farm.

We had a great relaxing sundowner and braai on the farm before seeing the guys over to my dad’s house for the night and then hitting the hay early. Night sounds on the farm are so different to our suburban environment and between the wind noises in the high trees, peacock and guineafowl calls and other creepy animal activity noises, sleep did not come easy. Anyway, we were up at five on Sunday morning and began preparing for the big day.

First, a walk down to the field to check wind direction and find a good spot for the flight line. Perfect wind strength and direction so headed back to get the braai equipment and help Martie pack the catering stuff. I managed to get the new gazebo up just before Lionel and Evan arrived. Lionel marked out the flight line and shortly afterwards the contestants started streaming in. Between greetings everyone started setting up their own camps. F3J winch spacing was used so the teams were well spread out. Notable were the “Every Thermal Busted” team sporting their smurf blue outfits and a lot of new and very welcome faces in the Jailbirds and Flying Fish teams way down at the end of the flight line. The BERG camp was set up right next to the catering tent and our Bold Evans Regular Group team consisted of Evan, Piet, Peter and me. We were short of two men to make up a second team so Tony and Jochen were slotted in with Gert and Rudolph of the Far ‘n Wide team.














Pilot’s briefing was called, the traditional saw-tooth scoring system explained, frequencies checked and flying started at around ten - a little later than scheduled but we were there to enjoy ourselves and we had all day. Contest Director for the day was Ricky Mitchell.

By mid morning it looked like we would probably get rain some time through the day but the rain gods were indeed kind to us. Thermal activity was perfect for gliding with well defined cumulus clouds building quickly and cycling through regularly. Temperature and humidity was high and the lift was strong. Very often after locating your thermal you could easily encounter two or three more during the ten minute flight.

There’s something very special about our summer cloud formations here on the Highveld – even more special with a graceful glider silhouette against them. And we even had a flock of storks pass through, stopping to thermal with us for a short while before moving on their way again.













During the round before lunch the wind swung 180 degrees but lift was still good and the lower launches didn’t seem to affect the scores. Winches were moved just before the lunch break.

Martie provided braai packs and salads for lunch and the “braai yourself” concept made for a great social lunch. When flying did get going again, some of the smaller cumulus clouds had dispersed into a thin cloud layer and the larger ones were quickly developing into storms. The storm clouds eventually surrounded us but fortunately none passed directly overhead. This did make for some challenging flying, with some contestants not making the full ten minutes in the last rounds (hopefully at least landing on their even minutes) and some getting so high against the black undersides of the clouds that they were difficult to see.




It was great to have team positions announced after almost every round through the contest and also great to have a bit of social time after the contest before the final results were announced. The only model seriously damaged was Rudolph’s 2-meter model that folded it’s wings on launch. Alan Sneedon’s model had to be retired early due to a jammed servo and he and Dave shared a model for the rest of the contest. Both Jochen and Peter also had servo problems but I think both
managed to sort them out.
Craig managed to keep his eyes on his own model for the entire event and even though there were more than enough trees about, Rodney managed to avoid them all - although he really got people moving around quickly in the landing circle.

Our Bold Evan’s team managed a 6th place with the Far ‘n Wide team 7th. Check out the MGA Blog for Lionel's report and full team and individual result listings.

Well, it looks like that’s all for the 2008 HTL series, hoping everyone enjoyed the events and here’s looking forward to an even better 2009 HTL series. Next BERG event is the year end fly in - keep an eye on the the blog for details.

Business as usual (BERG field at home)

Len Thomas Launches his electric glider.

With the December holidays now beginning the numbers of BERG members turning out on Sunday has dropped somewhat. It could also be due to the overcast skys that we had, but in the end we had 5 members, and one visitor on Sunday.


However we had a great days flying with high humidity and a light to moderate wind that made the air good for thermal activity and reasonable lift to be found during the course of the day.
Tony and his 2 meter Tsotsi on the left.

Later in the day Johan and Lorain joined us and both had a good few flights.
I managed to repair my Makulu and trim it out for next Sunday’s HTL at Heidelberg and last thermal competition for the year on The RSA calendar.

I hope to post a report and some pictures on this event next Sunday.

Your Pel
Piet Prepetation

My New Electro-Zagi

I just wanted to share with you my now completed new "Electro-Zagi"
As a design criteria I have obviously diverted from the "Simple-Zagi" construction intention.
The Flaperons are in RFG and with a slight negative profile (upwards).
the motor is a Kotronic-Fun-400-23 brushless, with a 5.5x4.5 prop (pusher)
3s lipo 2200mA and a Smile 46-6-12 regulator.
The winglets are of carbon cloth and balsa.
The entire plane weight is 1460gr....hmmmm ..... quite heavy! Next weekend I will try to find a "Brave" man to chuck this in the air!

F3B team trails at Groen Goud

The flight line At Groengoud on Saturday

The Team selection for next years F3B word Championships took place on Saturday. After a lot of rain recently the weather turn out just about perfect on the day. The BERG team managed 5th (Derek) and myself in 8th place .

A full report will be posted this week on the RSA F3B blog. During the day I managed take a some pictures for the BERG blog.

I had to stop flying in Round 6 after I lost elevator authority due to a dislocate pin on the V tail and only just managed to land safely after a 3 min struggle to get the glider down.

The CD for the event (Evan Shaw).

The ETB team and Paul Carnal doing a Small repair during the day.

Center line judge for the speed run (Rudy King)

The light signaling box used for speed and distance.

Unfortunately started to signal randomly in round 6 but we managed to see the last round
out.

Craig Goodrum launching Deon's F3B Glider for a speed run

Many thanks to all my helpers from BERG Johan, Lauraine, Rudolf ,Klaus and all the Other helpers at base B for signaling. Without their help we could not have run the Trails.

Also to Martie for providing lunch, cold drinks and snacks during the day.

Thanks once again Ladies and Guy's .

1937 POWERHOUSE

Long before the hype of the first PSS slope event at Volksrust , I started scratch building an Old Timer design from 1937. and recently got back with this build.

This is all wood and traditional style building being a nice change from epoxy/glass construction used on modern models.

The intention is to fly this grand old plane with a brushless electric motor for clean , quite relaxed flying. Piet has now also come across to the dark side.

The project is almost complete and she should be ready to fly on the next outing.

Many oldtimer plans are available free on the internet , and these aircraft are good flyers and with built in stability and light wing loadings they really float and in competitions overseas with limited engine runs many fly impressive durations in thermals .

UPDATE

It has now flown and was easy to trim and fly , even as a rudder/elevator only , the electric motor climbs it at about 45 degrees and it maintains altitude on 1/3 rd throttle.

The “Spark side of Life”

I guess you can call me “Spark Piet” now as well because sooner or later the jump was going to happen. After flying Tony's E-Tsotsi in the Nats this year and the seeing Mike and Gordon’s efforts, it was enough to push me over the hill to the “Spark side of Life”.

But the Electric aircraft that impressed me the most was E-flight’s “ Mini Pulse” by Horizon Hobby’s and that Paul Carnal few regularly before and after intervals at thermal completion’s and also at the slope when the wind did not blow.

After phoning around to most hobby shops and to my disappoint found that this AFR model was not freely available. So the itch to buy subsided a bit until 2 weeks ago when I walk in to Ariel

Concepts Shop. I did no need anything in particular (had a hour spare before a appointment with a client) and was just browsing around. Then suddenly in front of me there it was the E-flight Mini Pulse and before you could say “Bob’s your uncle” the Box was under my arm, the last 2 zeros of the prize tag ignored, and on my way to the till.


The box that start it all.

You can assemble the Mini Pulse in 3 hours and it is really a good quality kit.
However no sooner you have finished putting it all together, you realize that it is not going to fly until you buy all the electrics to get it air born.

At this stage you start asking questions about electric motors, props ,lipo batteries,
Electronic speed controllers and so more. The Pulse kit do not in clued the electric motor but they recommend a e-flight 450, but after talking to Paul found out that he use a e-flight 480 mainly because of the high felt height above see level.

I then phone MAD models and they recommended that I had a look at the scorpion range of brush less motors. So now I landed myself in the deep end of “Spark” side.

Fortunately I found a very good software application (Motocalc 8) on the web and this help me with the selection of the motor, speed control and batteries. If you are interested you can go to this link. http://www.motocalc.com/motodown.htm.

The end result of all this was that on Sunday the Mini Pulse took to the air and to say the least it did just what I expected. I got in 5 Flights and the vertical performance of this model was just phenomenal. I still have a lot to learn but don’t mind if when you see me again call me “Spark Piet”

New Members Johan and Loraine maiden their gliders on Sunday. That’s the way, well done.