Take Off & Grow Grant (TAG) Assists Hunch Bunch RC Club in Hosting Model Aviation Day

The Hunch Bunch RC club was awarded a TAG grant this year to purchase an electric club trainer plane and extra transmitter.  Our intention was to use the trainer with buddy box system during a Model Aviation Day event this year to allow the public to fly the plane with aide of one of our instructors.

We purchased an Apprentice RC plane from Motion RC in March.  The plane came with a battery and a Spektrum Dxe radio.  With the funds and a little club money thrown in, we also purchased an extra lipo battery for the plane, and a Spektrum Dxe radio (see attached order).

We held a Model Aviation Day (MAD) event on Saturday, August 12th at our club field for the afternoon with donations taken of $51 to give to a local kid’s charity as administered by the Rednecks for Christ organization in town.  We were invited by this group to display our model airplanes at the Hutchinson Mall earlier in August in conjunction with their fund raising event, the first annual Rod and Toy Show where cars, motorcycles, trucks etc were on display inside and outside of the mall along with other various activities.  This was very timely to help promote our August 12th event and over 30 flyers were passed out and it created great foot traffic for our club that day.  We decided their charity would be best for our club to help with.  The $51 check was mailed to them August 19th.

The weather turned out wonderful for the MAD event.  We had a nice size crowd turn out of approximately 25 people, not including our regular members.  We helped a total of 8 people fly the Apprentice trainer during the event using the wireless buddy box system.  This included kids from around age 8 up to junior high age, and then one adult.

We gave ground instruction to each person to give them the basics of control of the airplane in the air, then an instructor got the plane at a good height then gave control to the trainee.  We let each trainee fly around in an oval pattern at least three times around.  We also had a club member assist the trainee with stick control which aided greatly in a smooth and enjoyable experience for both the trainee and the trainer person.  We had no mishaps and the plane performed perfectly.  After the training session, the instructor took control back and landed the plane to get ready for the next round.  The extra battery came in handy to be on the charger while the other battery was busy powering the plane for each training session.

With the Apprentice plane and radios surviving just fine, we plan to keep the equipment with possession of the club for it to be used for future training events and to assist current members that might need a little encouragement to get flying more or return to flying if they’ve been away from it for a while and a little wary.

Our club greatly appreciates the grant money that the AMA awarded us and we hope that our use of the money is deemed as good use of those funds.

-John Allen, President, Hunch Bunch RC Club

hb1 hb2 hb3 hb4 hb5 hb6 hb7 hb8 hb9 hb10 hb11 hb12 hb13 hb14 hb15 hb16 hb18 hb19 hb20 hb21 hb22

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *