Palouse Ridge Runners R/C Club
January 8, 2002 Meeting Notes

Attending:

Mel Colvin
Howard Hosick
Larry Bobisud
Ted Frisbee
K Tarbet
Les Grammer
Pat Gates
Bruce Bumgarner
Jeff Nelson
Bertle Spence
Bob Boettcher
Vance Penton
Don Hart


Club Dues:

Club dues are due! Dues continue at the $20 level. Send a check to Les Grammer at SE 1220 Sunnymeade Pullman, WA 99163 or pay at a club meeting or some other time you catch up with Les.

Club Safety Officers:

Bob Boettcher will continue as a Safety Officer. Mel Colvin and Joe Bolden have been appointed as Safety Officers. This will ensure that this important function will be covered for club flying sessions.

Superbowl Snow Fly:

Jeff and Tawny Nelson will be hosting the 2002 Superbowl Snow Fly on Saturday, February 2.  The event will begin at 10am. The event is held at Jeff and Tawny's home near Troy, Idaho.  If you need directions, contact Jeff at jtnelson@idaho.tds.net or call 208-835-6343. Soup, cookies and hot drinks will be provided. Bring a snack to share if you want.

Mall Show

Bertle Spence announced that the Mall Show is scheduled for March 8-9-10. As usual, set-up will be on Thursday evening (March 7).

The raffle prize was discussed.  We usually purchase an ARF trainer. Last year Tower Hobbies donated a complete system, including plane, engine and radio.  Howard Hosick will check on possible availability of an ARF trainer from a local modeler who is getting out of the hobby.  We will determine at the February club meeting how to proceed.

Orrin Crooks Memorial Glider Meet

Bruce Bumgarner is in negotiation with the Lewiston club on using the Manns Lake flying field for the event.  This two day thermal duration event is scheduled for the third weekend in July.

New Club Roster

Mel Colvin suggested that a new club roster and frequency usage chart should be put out.  This will be done as soon as Les has the updated membership list.

* FREE * Flight Simulator

Don Hart has been trying out the FMS Flight Simulator. It is available for download at http://n.ethz.ch/student/mmoeller/fms/index_e.html  The package includes several models and flying sites. The models include fixed wing and helicopter power models, and gliders.  See the details in the article below.

1. What is it?

A model flight simulator allows you to practice many of your R/C flying skills on your computer. If you crash, you just press a button to bring the model back to the runway in one piece, ready for another flight. I say "many" of your flying skills because takeoffs and landings are not as realistic as they might be. You can practice landing approaches, but you have to really screw up before you crash land.

2. Where's it come from?

The FMS flight simulator is a freeware programming project developed in Europe by Michael and Roman Möller. They are on version 2 beta 7. That means they've made lots of enhancements, fixed lots of bugs, and they have plans to improve the simulator in the future. You can download the FMS flight simulator at http://n.ethz.ch/student/mmoeller/fms/index_e.html .  The file is a 6M self extracting archive and takes several minutes to download on a 56k modem.

3. What's included?

You get the flight simulator system, several aircraft to fly and several flying sites. The aircraft include both powered and soaring fixed wing models, and helicopter models. If you want to design your own planes, there is software available on the internet. There are links on the FMS site. I haven't tried it yet, but plan to soon.

4. Hardware requirements

Computer: The program requires an IBM-PC or a 100% compatible computer with at least 300 MHz clock frequency. It will run on Windows 9x/Me/2000 with DirectX 7.0 (or later). Download DirectX from http://www.microsoft.com/directx/ .A Graphics card that supports 3-D-acceleration with DirectX Is required.

Control:You can control FMS with the keyboard, with a joystick or with your own remote control transmitter. For the operation with a R/C transmitter you will need a free parallel or serial interface which can be driven in interrupt mode, or a USB interface and USB support.

Sound:FMS supports all DirectX compatible sound cards.

5. Control input devices

You can fly using keyboard input or a gamepad, but using your transmitter with an interface cable is the best option. You can build or buy an interface cable. I bought an interface cable from SimBlaster in Corvallis, OR for $40. For another $20 I got a USB interface. The USB interface really simplifies the installation of the interface cable and is well worth the cost if your computer supports USB devices.

6. How good is it?

Here are comments about flight simulators in general and about FMS that I got from the rec.models.rc.air newsgroup.

 

From: skesler <skesler@cox-internet.com>

None of the simulators are really just like flying the real thing, Some are closer than others, but that isn't the point anyway. It is to teach Eye hand coordination and basic flight skills. It does wonders for teaching altitude maintenance, landing glide paths, takeoff rudder correction, and control reversal. Once these are mastered and you are comfortable with how and why the plane reacts when you do something, the real thing will be different, but the control movements and why you are moving them are the same. Just take it easy and one step at a time on the real thing until you get the feel of the aircraft, and above all, relax and have fun. A RC teacher if possible is highly advisable also.

 

 

 

From: "C Fossa" <cfossaNOSPAM@cablenet-VA.com>

The most unrealistic part of FMS is landing. If you get near the ground it lands :-) It's not bad in the air though. I totally agree with the other comments about teaching you control reversal, maintaining altitude in a turn, and just getting basic "thumb"-eye coordination.

RealFlight is MUCH better than FMS in terms of realistic take offs, landings, and WIND. Plus, the different models actually fly differently ... not like FMS where they are all about the same. That said, take offs and landings with my trainer were a lot harder in real life than with RealFlight.

I followed about the same course as you, only with [RealFlight] RF G2. I got to the point that I could successfully shoot touch and go's with just about all the planes. Also practiced figure eights, inverted flights, loops, rools etc. Then I got an Avistar trainer and HELP ON THE BUDDY BOX. I soloed after about 6 or 7 flights. The Avistar now has about 70 flights on it ... a few rough landings but no crashes yet :-)

I honestly think RF paid for itself for me. Considering how many times I crashed on the sim ... I'm confident it prevented at least one or two real crashes. In my book ... it's already paid off.

Best of luck with your new trainer! Have fun.

Carl

7. Where can I get an interface for my transmitter?