Day one of SE Imac Opener

Mother nature once again proved that weather forecasting is not an exact science, as a matter of fact it is not very accurate at all. After all the predictions of today's weather being rainy with T-storms it turned out to be quite nice although a bit windy. The temperatures reached 28 degrees C with a fairly steady 15-20km wind out of the south meaning a 90 degree cross wind in out backs.

The contest go underway around 9am after Peter Jackson (CD) had laid out the ground rules at the pilots meeting. 58 contestants has registered to compete in 5 classes. We are 5 in unlimited, about 10 in Advanced and rest spread over intermediate, Sportsman and Basic. The largest class is Basic with some 20+ competitors.

We all go in 2 rounds with 2 sequences in each round. Tomorrow morning we will (except for basic) fly an unknown followed by another round of known so hopefully the weather will hold long enough for us the get it all in with that many competitors.

No scores are available as I understand that they experienced to difficulties in tabulation. Hopefully that problem will be sorted out by morning.

The unknown for unlimited looks quite challenging so I better get back to studying it as I have so strong opposition with Jason Shulman and David Moser both flying very well.

More later. Ivan K.

SE Region IMAC Opener Jan. 19-20

The South East Reginal IMAC opener will be hosted by the Sundancer's R/C Flying Club of Port St. Lucie Fl. This club is my "home club" while I am staying in Florida for the winter. We have a great flying field located only 21km. south of the RV Park where we are staying in Ft. Pierce.

This was the view down the flight line at 1:30 this afternoon. As you can see there were lineups of 5 to 6 airplanes deep to ea. of two flight lines.
Already this morning when I got to the field at around 8:30 for a few rounds of last minute practice I found a dozen or so fliers setting up with the same thing in mind.

The weather started out with a low overcast and light winds but quite warm. Today's high reached 25degrees C with a high humidity. The forecast for the weekend is not too good with some rain and t-storms.

If time permits I will keep you up-to-date with information and scores from this contest.

Ivan K.

Testing the Futaba 2.4GHz

A few days into the new year I received the Futaba 2.4GHz FASST (Futaba Advanced Spread Spectrum Technology) receiver and transmitter module for my 14MZ. I immediately went to work and downloaded and installed the new software required for the transmitter from the Futaba site. The downloading and installation process is quite simple and went without a hitch.


The 14 channel 2.4GHz receiver is a perfect retrofit for the G-3 receiver so the installation was very easy as well. After carefully checking all the controls I found no change in the way it operated all the servos.

With all the prep work done it was off to the field for the first test flight. The range check exceeded the specified minimum by 75% both with or without the engine running so I was pretty confident that everything would be ok.

The test flight went perfectly and I now have about 10 flights on this new system and so far I am very impressed with the way it works. No trim change or deflection changes were required, the airplane behaves exactly the way it did before. BTW the test airplane was my 40% QQ YAK-54.

The real test will come this weekend when I will be competing in the SE IMAC opener in Port St. Lucie Florida.

Dec. 31st. and New Years Eve.

Preston Blake, Judy and Gerry Dale and Ivan K. Click on pictures for larger images.

On December 31st. Dianne and I found ourselves visiting our friends Preston and Mary Blake in Gainesville Florida. This was the first stop in our planned 3 month stay in this sunny state away from the cold snd the snow of Canada this time of year.

Of course, how could a couple of keen RC'ers get together on a warm day like that without planning a flying session. So we called another mutual friend, Gerry Dale from Ocala to join us.


Late afternoon we were joined by our wives and we all went to Casey's restaurant for dinner in Archer Fl. a little town about 20 miles west of Gainesville and very close to the RC field. Here we had a good time together and a very nice meal and brought in the New Year in an appropriate way.

Long time friend and fellow Canadian Gerry Dale and his wife Judy now living in Ocala Florida.

A few shots taken on a beautiful sunny day right after Christmas, it is on days like this I have second thoughts about going to Florida for the winter.

Click on the picture for a larger image!