Recap 2015 Blog Post

This is my last blog post for 2015 and I wanted to thank all the people that have been reading my blog and my website. I was rather amazed at how many people that I have met in person have told me they enjoyed reading my blog. Passing the 100,000 views mark seemed rather significant to me and apparently to the search engines, as views increased immediately after crossing the mark. This year advertising was added in hope of recovering some of my costs.

I added new material to my website this year, some has been popular and some not so much.  My relative Wayne Diercks wrote some articles on the SYMA X5c quadcopter some of which have been popular; I wrote a general article on quadcopters that hasn’t caught much attention yet.  

I had great hopes for the construction article on the Fantastic Foam Flyer which is a rubber powered free flight airplane built from foam plates and a small amount of balsa wood.  I know of several people that built this plane but maybe more important it might have sparked the idea with Ronnie Espolt as well as Gary Hinze to hold a postal contest next May for model airplanes constructed from foam plates.

In my local area there just hasn’t been much interest in the many science activities I have done in the past. It gave me more time to enjoy my model aviation hobby more.  Besides flying at all the local radio control soaring contests, I also went to some of the MRCSS contests and rejoined the club. 

When it was windy on the weekend I did even more slope soaring than previous years and improved my skills greatly in dynamic soaring, which has become almost an addiction with me. Through the Internet and the many soaring groups created by Jeffrey Sanford I have learned much and connected with many people with the RC soaring interest all around the world.

I also pushed myself to try to improve my skills with free flight model airplanes.  Over the past winter I had built a couple of scale rubber powered free flights; a Champ and the PC-6 Porter.  The Champ flew but just appeared too heavy to me and the last crash did much damage. Better performance was obtained with the Guillow’s PC-6 Porter which is still flyable. I didn’t finish the E36 electric powered free flight that I am building but put the electric components in an old glow powered free flight and had so much fun; the E36 should be ready for 2016.

For 2016 I plan to stay optimistic about my flying and science projects no matter what the negative forces are.  

Bill Kuhl
http://www.ideas-inspire.com