For the past few events I have heard comments from skippers on how nice it has been sailing. There have been several theories on why this is occurring. Far be it for me to judge the real reason/s, but all I know is I too am enjoying the nice atmosphere. This brings me to the reason why people get into a hobby - it is to have fun. If it is not fun, then why bother? Hobbies are a way for people to escape the hum drum life and do something that entertaining. Sometimes with model yachting, the wind is not always blowing or is fickle, it is not fun. But that puts challenge into the sport and makes it even more enjoyable!

I have also heard some interesting side notes from a few skippers that there has been some highbrowing going on. It seems that that there is an idea that some events are not worth the time to participate in because of the lack of caliber. Hmm, that is interesting. All I know is, a hobby is supposed to be fun and is not something to hinge a person's life on. Once again, it is doing something fun to pass the time.

In the next couple of months, there are some great events coming up. Find some time and get your boats wet before it gets too hot. Speaking of heat, please remember when you are out at the pond side - drink water. When drinking water, this means start drinking water one half hour before you arrive at the pond. This way you won't get dehydrated.

Speaking of your health, in this issue of Model Yachting Resource News you will find an interesting article on providing help at the pond in the event someone has medical emergency. The First Aid article may be an eye opener and is well worth reading. Many times what we think is right may not be. In any case the article will be interesting reading. _/)

Pimienta Candenta

A one meter multihull, based on a plan set of a British Mini40 Championship boat design.

The Mini40 design by well known U.K. multihull designer, builder and sailor, Mike Friend was reduced from original 1.2 Meter (48 inches) size to a 1 Meter (39+ inches) for Jach Ronda. The photos are from the first outing of the boat, and both commentary on the build, as well as the first sail are documented as follows.

After a long time in the shop and building stage, I finally got the new tri in the water last Saturday. It was good to see that it floated and the sails look pretty good, if I do have to say so myself.

The boat is called the Pulse and was originally designed by Mike Friend of England in 1998 with an overall length of 48 inches. I bought a reduced size set of plans from Dick Lemke who is the guru of F48 class tris in America and the AMYA.

My Pulse has an overall length of 1 meter so fits in the Mini 40 class, the F-48 Class as well as the MultiONE class.

The technique of construction was what I call the lost foam method. Plywood formers were made for the various cross sections, at fixed equal intervals from bow to transom. Two holes were drilled in each bulkhead for arrow shafts, to go from station 1 through station 9. These alligned the bulkheads in the roll attitude. I then added Styrofoam blocks between the bulkheads, locking the bulkheads in the correct position fore and aft.

Each half of the foam blocks had two grooves to accept the arrow shafts and this locked in the allignment of the bulkheads in roll. Now comes the lost foam part of the technique... you loose a lot of foam carving and sanding the shape of the foam to match the bulkheads.

When everything looks good, you then fiberglass over the foam forms with 3 ounce glass cloth and West Epoxy. Two layers of glass were added. The overlaps were then faired using West Epoxy and micro balloons.

A lot of sanding and fairing later and we are still not done with the glass work.

The beams attaching the Amas (Amas are the outer hulls) to the main hull were fabricated out of the butt ends of fiberglass fishing rod blanks. These were cut to length and then two layers of waxed paper were wrapped around each beam end. A five later wrap of 4 ounce fiberglass cloth was added around that using West Epoxy to hold things together. This formed the tubes that the beams socket into at the Amas and main hull.

A jig was built (now used for a boat support at the pond) to get all three hulls in the correct position with respect to pitch, yaw, roll, attitude and separation.

The new fiberglass tubes were cut to length and the hulls were relieved to accept the bottom half of the tubes' cross section. The hulls were inserted into the jig with the beams inserted in the tubes which were located in the proper position, in the hull slots just cut. When satisfied with the fit, the tubes were attached to the hulls using West Epoxy and microballoons. This locked things in accurate locations. The tubes were then capped off to the hulls with an additional later or two of fiberglass cloth, again using West Epoxy. This now locked everything up solid.

The cross tubes were now glued inside the tubes with West Epoxy while everything was set and located properly in the jig. When done, the three hulls were tied together correctly... forever.

More sanding... and more... and fairing... and sanding… and on and on into the night.

When finally happy with the shape, holes were cut into the hulls for the radio gear and shroud attach points. Covers were made for the openings by laminating fiberglass and epoxy over the top of the hull openings, using balsa wood plugs inserted into the holes and formed to match the hull shape. A piece of Saran Wrap was used as a parting agent before laying on the glass. Five layers of glass were used here. Later, the new hatches were cut to fit and screwed to the hull with sheet metal screws.

Now came the paint. Several layers of white Krylon primer were applied and sanded..... and sanded... and sanded, until it looked just right. (Or until I got tired of sanding.)

Last step was the application of several layers of Red Pepper (Rojo Pimienta) Krylon Fusion paint, straight from the spray can.

The paint scheme was topped off with the boat name "Pimienta Candenta" (red hot pepper) and the boat registration number.

Now this paint business is a pain in the tocas. Before I could paint, I had to construct a paint booth using a multitude of drop cloths from the hardware store, draped over the garage door, door track and a rope suspended between the side tracks. Even with a fully closed box (except for a small gap on one bottom side) paint migrated into the shop, requiring some cleanup of the deposited paint dust. Fortunately, this paint is fast drying, so it dries into a powder before hitting any surfaces, but the intended parts. I think in the future, I will either have to build a paint booth out of a shed, or wait until the weather warms and I can paint outside.

Lastly came the mast, made from a fishing rod blank, the booms, made from arrow shafts, the rigging and such.

Whew, it was finally done. Oh yes, there were those final details that never end, but the boat was DONE!

Now that the boat was completed, next came the sails. I used 1.4 mil Mylar and 2.0 mil Mylar for the sails. The lighter material was used for the forward area of the sails and the heavier for the aft edge of the sails. This composite sail gives a soft section forward, where you want good draft, and a harder surface aft, like a full length (top to bottom) batten.

I added battens to the aft section of the sail at all the panel joints and was not satisfied with the way the sails hung when they went on the boat. There was a vertical fold that just seemed to appear on it's own, when the sail was hung. Joe came over and pointed out that the sail had a lot of roach and on the big tri's they use full length battens to solve this roach oriented problem.

We added full length battens, keeping the shorter battens previously attached and this solved the fold problem.

Now that we have all the construction features spelled out, I have some photos of the boat and of it sailing in very light air.

It was hard to tell with the light air, but we found the boat is a dog to turn on a tack in this light air conditions. She goes into irons, before she can get around, and it takes forever to get her out again. On full scale tri's, they back the jib to get them to turn. Can't do that without another servo on the mini boats. She accelerates well in the puffs and tracks with just a touch of lee helm. We moved the mast aft one notch and that helped. I got around the tacking problem by just jibing the boat when I wanted to turn around onto the other tack. You really have to plan ahead to make sure you have enough water to make the jibe, without grounding. I did get in two good tacks, when I tacked in a puff, where the boat had good speed. Then there was enough forward velocity to get through the eye of the wind without going into irons.

All in all an interesting experiment. This was the first Pulse Tri built to the one meter length.

My most sincere thanks to Jack for sharing this information with us. I look forward to warmer weather, and some "stick time" to see how the end result compares with the expectations. _/)

Timber Plank on Shadows
Part 3

The timber plank should be 1/8 x 3/8 inch spruce or clear pine. Rip a 1 x 6, or a 1 x 12, or a 2 x 4, or a 2 x 6 inch cut to length of boat plus 4 inches. Rip 1/8 inch slices off of board on a table saw. Then make a jig for your band saw, so you can rip 3/8 inch planks.

Picture 1: are the supplies you will need. I use Gorilla glue. It foams up to ill in gaps and is water proof. If you are going to use Balsa wood you will have to use a glue made for Balsa.

If you are going to build with Balsa or Basswood you will have to splice the wood to make it long enough. Look at Picture 2 above. Top is a butt joint splice this is not good, middle is ok, bottom is best for splicing, and it has a large glue surface. When building with splices, stagger the splices so no two are near each other.

Picture 3: To start planking, glue the first plank in the notch, taper the bow end. Make sure you only glue the bow and stern. Let set up for 24 hours.

Picture 4: Glue plank to the first plank, put glue on the entire surface of plank, using push pins to keep plank in place. Now you can start planking up. If you are using Gorilla glue, spray planks with water. Put a bead of glue on the top edge of plank and the bow and stern. Continue until you have planked all the way to the top (bottom) of the bow, see Picture 5 and 6.

Picture 6: Glue center plank in place.

Picture 7: Start planking bottom of boat, when filling planks you must cut and fit in place. Dry fit in place before you glue.

Picture 8: Hull all glued up and drying.

I glue up one plank on each side as I go. _/)

On March 20^th the Mesa Model Yacht Club (MMYC) held its 5^th fast electric race in the Cracker Box series. We could not have asked for a better day to spend time with friends racing toy boats. As the season has progressed so has the action, racing has gotten very competitive and seeing a heat with boats swapping paint and battling for the lead it not uncommon. If you have not seen a fast electric race, come on out next month (April 17^th) and see what you’ve been missing. Racing starts promptly at 9am.

Here are the results of the racing action on March 20^th.

Next month is our last points series race, a full score sheet will be posted with the results of the season.

One of the more popular classes in NAMBA (North American Model Boat Association) is LSH (limited sport hydro), in the past two seasons we have seen many different styles of hydroplanes race in the class. At the MMYC the shovel nose or round nose hydroplane has become very popular. In real world racing the shovel nose became obsolete as the power of the motors increased. The reason was the round nose trapped so much air it caused the boat to generate too much lift and the bow lifted and boat blew over, for this reason the pickle fork hydro plane was far superior. Fast forward a few decades and scale down to 1/12^th scale that takes us to the present RC racing world. In LSH we run a lower powered 700 motor. By using the older style round nose boat we take advantage of the extra lift generated by these hulls to help the boat stay on plane and get the most power out of the 700 motor. If the center of gravity is good you have the start of a very fast boat. The same theory of more power applies most shovel nose boats do not do as well with higher powered brush-less motors. They blow over! _/)

First Aid
by Dave Acree

It has been a great day at the pond. The weather has been great, no protests, and no break downs - what more can a person want. Without a warning, fellow skipper "Joe" keels over with a health problem! What do you do?

At first the reader may think the above question is easy to answer, you want to help "Joe", but it may not be that easy. First, you must find and understand your state's Good Samaritan law. Good Samaritan laws will generally protect you from liability as long as you:

• act in good faith
• are neither reckless or negligent
• obtain consent from conscious victims if feasible
• act as a prudent person would and
• only provide care that is within the scope of your training

You must not abandon a victim once you have initiated care, and you cannot accept anything in return for your services.

In Arizona, you are not required by law to help someone who is a victim, but once you start giving aid you must stay with and help that person as best you can. It is obvious, if a person needs help, the absolute first thing that must be done is call 911 for help. If you are the only person at the scene and you don't have a cell phone go as fast as you can to the nearest phone and call 911 and return to the victim! If there are other people with the victim and there is no cell phone, send someone to call 911 and have them return and report that the call was made. This way you will know the 911 call was made and information was given.

You may be saying you don't know how to give emergency aid. Remember you only can do what you know, do what you can. If you feel you need to know how to provide basic help or to refresh your understanding, sign up for a basic First Aid course.

Did you know, if a person is choking, you cannot automatically help remove the foreign body in the airway? If an adult is choking you must first ask, "Are you choking?". If the person is and can cough or speak, encourage the victim to keep coughing and watch closely to ensure the object was expelled. If the victim cannot cough or speak, ask "Can I help?". Remember that a conscious adult must give consent. If it is a child that is choking, the child's parent or guardian, if present, they must give consent. If the parent or guardian is not present, consent is implied. A side note, if a conscious adult does not give consent, you cannot help them until they become unconscious, then you can.

The main point to this article is everyone should know how to give first aid and the only way to do this is by taking a First Aid course. The cost is small but the chance to help someone is great. So learn your state's Good Samaritan law and learn basic first aid. More on this subject next month. _/)

Arizona Model Yachting ...  A History

As I started to write this I asked myself, "is anyone really interested?" My next thought was "oh well, maybe some one will enjoy it".

I moved to Arizona in 1974. At the time my son Tim was 14 and we both had dirt bikes which we rode every weekend. In 1976 he got his drivers license and suddenly Dad was too slow and he was out on his own. I had seen an article in the paper about model yachts sailing in Scottsdale. Being an old racing sailor back in Michigan I had to see these models.

The Scottsdale MYC had been farmed in 1974 and was just getting into racing. Glenn Rabb, Charlie Vosberg, George Baldachino and his son Paul, Ed Scarla and Bruce Fields to name a few were the founders. There was a lot of interest at that time in scale electric boats so that drew a few members including Chuck Beery and Bill Clark. I was welcomed into the club by most of the members due to the fact of my yacht racing experience. I made a few suggestions namely that racing starts needed a windward leg. This upset Rabb so bad he left the pond and went home. (it turns out he did this about once a year far one reason or another) Ed Scalra helped me get a Newport 12 Meter which was a beautiful model to look at and lots of fun to sail and quite popular in San Diego and Los Angeles.

About 1977 or so Bob Girdley showed up and also Burney Schooley. They bath had N-12-Meters. About then Bill Cropper came around and got his self a N-12-M also. So the Copperstate Club boasted 13 of the big boats. Ed Scarla was the first to "trick" paint his 12. Soon Brace Fields and Paul Baldachino and Vosburg got their boats trick painted. This was about a $400 paint job and added several pounds to the boat's weight. To some they looked good, frankly I didn't see it, to me they looked more like show cars than boats.

Around 1979 Girdley, myself, Cropper, Schooley and George and Florance Irving broke away from the Copperstate club and started the Tillerman MYC in Leisure World. We very quickly got three new members who in turn got N-12-M boats. So the Tillerman Club had six N-12-Ms and Copperstate still had 9 or 10.

I can't remember just when it happened but around this time the N-12-M class was insisting every boat have a wood mast. I called Sparks McClellen who built the boats. We wanted to get some wood to make our own masts. We couldn't work out any details all he offered was finished masts at $100 each. We held a meeting here and decided to continue using the Alum. Masts we had. We had 18 active boats at that time. There were only 22 active boats in California. We told them to stuff it and we'd change the name of the boat to the AZ-12-M. Subject was dropped. Now they all use CF masts anyway. Big argument over nothing.

With the formation of the Tillerman club there were bad feelings namely from Glen Robb and one or two others. Robb never liked me when I was there and now he was mad I was leaving, you figure it. My feeling at the time was, if we wanted the hobby to grow we needed exposure. The more clubs we formed the more exposure. I suggested to them that we build bridges not walls, so much for diplomacy.

Things went along and bad feelings smoothed over. We attended their regattas and they came to ours. In the meantime of course there was a lot of trips made to San Diego and Los Angeles to race. Baldachino's went about twice a summer. Myself and several others made a trip a year or so. The Marblehead class was the most active in most areas of the US at that time. A lot of people were designing and building M Class boats. A lot of guys were buying or building new boats every few months. It got even worse and we "dubed" it the "boat of the month" mania. No ore could hope to keep up. A guy named Joe Simmons from Scottsdale had big bucks and spent thousands trying to buy a winning boat. Of course others were doing about the same thing. A few times I took cast off designs from Bob DeBow or Chuck Black and made pretty good boats out of them. I never tried to keep up because frankly I couldn't afford it and didn't care to try. The best thing about the N-12-M was, it was a One Design Class. I always liked OD because it is a more stable class and usually not as expensive. An "M" design called the Epic came along and Mark Baldachino who was only about 12 or 13 began to win all the races and even managed to win in San Diego.

Around 1985 I moved to west Mesa and discovered a beautiful little pond in a city park in the neighborhood. "Carriage Lane" was tucked back off the main streets but it had everything you needed for a model yacht pond. Good parking, toilets, and most of all - always good wind. A bonus was if we had a really heavy rain the pond grew to five times its normal size. This usually happened once or twice each winter. The City gave us permission to use the park and the third MYC was formed.

Bill Cropper and I were the founders but we had picked up other interested sailors. Bob and Dave Kroff came along and joined us. Bill Shumate and another guy named Bill whose last name evades me. We named the club the "Rio Salado Race Club." Ray Agee and Abe Lincoln were members. No officers, no dues, no rules, and no arguments. It was the best damn club I ever belong to. Sadly to say a few members of the Tillerman were upset when we left. But they were growing in members also and really didn't need us. One day just as a race started someone called out, "Bill your over early" Well with four Bill's in the race we had a problem. So we made a rule, the only rule the club ever had, "don't ever call out Bill". From then on we went by last names only.

We tried to make the club fun first and serious second. We had regattas of match racing where if you lose twice you were out. Like in basketball. They were fun and everyone enjoyed them. We held a regatta called the "Ridiculous" regatta. I was the RD, it was my idea. The rules were after the races started I rang a bell and the course was reversed. Who ever was ahead was now in the rear. I'd ring the bell again same thing. I had predetermined the times at which I'd ring the bell and rang it usually 4 times in each race. It got so no one wanted to be ahead it went over OK, but they ask me never to have another. At the end of the regatta each skipper drew a number from a hat which was then his finishing position. Strangely the winning skipper drew first place anyway. _/)

It is always good to know what clubs are thinking and doing to enjoy the hobby of model boating. At the March Mesa MYC club's meeting several ideas were talked about to improve the club's business. One idea that was brought up by the Commodore is to have the club's commodore pick the time and place for the club's meeting. An interesting idea but unfortunately according to MMYC's Bylaw 7.1, (hmm, 7.1 shows up again) the general meeting time and place is to be determined by the membership.

Another idea about a meeting place was made to have the club meeting at a local bar and grill. Doing so will allow members to partake alcohol, which I don't have a problem with so long as it is during a person's own time. The only problem with having a meeting a place that serves alcohol is future or current members may bring children. It also sets a bad image and members that consume alcohol have to drive home. Anyway the idea was voted down and MMYC's meeting place will stay as it is.

There are two new members to Mesa MYC, a Charles A. Ellis, a scale boats and Bill Webb, an avid sailor of model yachts. It is good to get new blood into the club.

Another interesting topic that was presented was the matter of club news being published in the Arizona Model Yachting Association newsletter. It seems there is a need for club information to be sent to the Association's newsletter. To top it off there seemed to be some lamenting that the Arizona Model Yachting Association newsletter is not steady in publication and MMYC is not publishing its own newsletter. To be honest, it is very difficult to get articles and get them posted in a newsletter. It looks like Bill Webb will take on the task to produce MMYC's newsletter.

A question was raised, does the club have its own Web site. The answer is no, not really. Since MMYC's Web page sits on Arizona Model Yachting Association's Web site, MMYC can not have a nice, short Web address (url). The current url is very long and hard to remember. One member stated if the club wanted its own Web site, it would cost $10 or so a month. No one opted to put that idea up for vote - yet, (myrc.org could help in this matter).

The last item of interest is the upcoming schedule of events for the club. With three different types of model boats (scale, fast electric, and sail), it is going to take at least three weekends a month to satisfy all three types. Not only that, with the sailing crowd, there are three sailboat classes to get on the schedule. Well, that is all the noteworthy news from MMYC. _/)

Craig Mackey has again won a major regatta, the Victoria Whiterock Regatta in Dallas, TX on March 13 &14^th, 2004. Good job Craig.

Looking replacement parts for a Victoria? Well, your search may be over. CE Hobbies, http://www.cehobbies.com/ offers low prices on the Thunder Tiger Victoria and parts. _/)