Thousand Oaks Soaring Society

The 2012 Enrollment form is here

TOSS Members….

About two months ago I received an email from Jon Charnas, our previous web master,
about an inquiry that he received from Molly Tucker. She was interested in learning
more about TOSS. I sent Molly an invitation to meet us at Redwood field at the usual time
and place not knowing the details of her inquiry.

The very next Sunday, and for a few more after that, TOSS had the pleasure of being host
to a very mature, 14 year old young woman who was interested in the activities of TOSS
and soaring. I am proud to say as Club president, and this is proven in the text of her
project, that our members made her feel very welcome.

Molly is in 9th grade at La Reina School. When she was just 9 years old, Molly expressed
an interest in writing and every year since, sans one, has participated in a summer
writing course through Johns Hopkins University. The topic of her current summer
project was, write about a group or society, Molly chose us! The essay that she wrote is
titled “TOSSed into the Air”. With her permission, I’ve included it for you all to read.

Molly has also informed me that her teacher’s name is Cara Diaconoff and she’s written
two novels: I’ll Be a Stranger to You and Marian Hall and a collection of stories called Unmarriageable Daughters.

Respectfully,

Steve

(The essay has been added to the September newsletter…)

(SC)2 Result Thumbnail

The PDF is available here

I just ran into this paragraph below when reading through the Spectrum AR6255 receiver manual. This might explain why someone gave me a brand new Hitec 750 mAHr NiMH Rx pack and said that he could only get 250 mAHr out of it. With my fast charger, I achieved approximately the same results. After slow charging the battery, I could extract an average of 600 mAHr at 200 mA discharge rate for the next 4 cycles. What they claim may be true. So if you are fast charging your NiMH battery packs you want to cycle them to determine if you need to go back to slow charging.

————————————–

Note: The latest generations of Nickel-Metal Hydride batteries incorporate a new chemistry mandated to be more environmentally friendly. These batteries, when charged with peak detection fast chargers, have tendencies to false peak (not fully charge) repeatedly. These include all brands of NiMH
batteries. If using NiMH packs, be especially cautious when charging, making absolutely sure that the battery is fully charged. It is recommended to use a charger that can display total charge capacity. Note the number of mAh put into a discharged pack to verify it has been charged to full
capacity.

In accordance with the vote taken at the last monthly club meeting, on the second Sunday of each month there will be a club contest. It was also decided that there will be no fun flying or hand-launch flying during the contest, but you can pay for contest admission and just not fill out a scorecard. Please consider that if you’re flying anyway why not keep score (honor system) and besides, some of the contests will be geared to a random scoring system, which means anyone can win.

The following was sent to all members by Steve, as a follow up to the Wood Ranch Ranger encounter was reported to him:

All,

I requested information via the “contact us” link on the subject website regarding how current the “Park Rules” as posted on the internet were. The response from the webmaster “on behalf of staff” was that the rules as posted are current.

Regards and happy flying,

Steve

As for the benefit of our members who would like to access the current ordinances governing these parks, here is the publicly available document detailing them in their entirety.

The relevant section for model aircraft is in section 4 item 5. Note that only powered models are affected. Sailplanes are thus perfectly permitted to fly at Wood Ranch hill, or any other park under Simi Valley Park & Recreations. This also includes many areas that may be suitable for hand-launch gliders (DLG). However do remember that when using a park you are sharing with others, it is highly recommended to not fly if the parks are crowded by other activities.

The following is a brief email exchange between myself and Bill Bertram related to events that occured at Wood Ranch yesterday afternoon.

From me to Bill B and Steve sent yesterday:

Unfortunately some events occured at Wood Ranch today that seems to jeopardize yet another of our flying sites. Charlie and myself had agreed to meet at Wood Ranch to fly today, as the wind forecast seemed appropriate.

However, a short while after we’d reached the launch pad, a park ranger showed up (with a gun holster), informing us that the ordinances for the Rancho Simi Valley parks prohibited the operation of remotely or wire-controlled toys/models. That said he recognized that we were peaceful, and that the neighborhood had never issued complaints. The fact he was there at all was to find the disruptive mountain biking kids who were building ramps and such at the foot of the hill. We had a friendly chat, where he just exposed what the rules were, and made sure we knew what they were. It appears as though the signage at the entrance of their parks only have a partial list of the rules in effect.

When I asked him he quite happily told us all we needed to know to petition for permission to use the areas for our gliders, and suggested we do it as a club. It seems that the club could simply address a request  to the Rancho Simi Recreation and Park District  committee detailing that as a peaceful, insured and responsible group of hobbyists the hill had been put to that use for a number of years prior to the ordinance rendering illegitimate the activity. I do believe that a simple, polite and well formulated letter explaining the passive, quiet and nationally insured nature of the hobby would be sufficient to get TOSS a permit to use Wood Ranch hill in particular, and possibly others under their supervision in general. I would be quite happy to help Bill with writing the request to the committee. After all we are merely reacting to finding out after the fact about their new ordinances, and requesting permission to continue the use of their park in a responsible manner. [...]

Bill’s response this morning:

Jon
I have dealt with the Simi Dept. of Parks and Rec people on flying site and they have always been help full and have always seemed open to flying model air craft. There are many parks where flying is ok to fly. If in fact the hill in wood ranch is only part of Simi Parks and Rec. there should be know problem getting a ok to fly there but if  the hill has anything to do with  a State park or part of the Santa Monica Mountain Conservancy. Then we would have a problem getting an OK. [...]
Bill

As it is, the park is not part of the Santa Monica Mountains conservancy, it is Simi Valley open space to the best of my knowledge.

So I would like to caution our members that until Bill gets TOSS, or AMA members a written form of authorization to fly on Wood Ranch hill, or any other park in Simi’s park & rec management, it would be best to keep a low profile.

I would like to remind members that since TOSS is under the AMA charter, we cannot encourage members to fly in an explicitely non-authorized area, as AMA coverage will not be valid and all liability will fall solely upon the pilot. If you would like more details about the incident, please contact me via email or my cell phone, available on the roster.

Click on the picture to access the gallery.

Click on the picture to load the gallery.