Winter has arrived and those cold and frosty mornings have given us some perfect days for flying. This month a great club day and some administrative matters to talk about.
Club day – Saturday, June 1
You would be forgiven for thinking that club day for June was no chance of going ahead if the weather on the previous Thursday and Friday were indicative of what to expect. Thursday – winds averaging 35km/h, gusting to 55km/h and 22mm of rain, then worsening on Friday, with winds gusting to 79km/h and another 9.4mm of rain! However, the weather gods favoured us and Saturday we had winds of 9km/h and no rain. Perfect flying weather!
Quite a good turnout on the day. Those present were, Alan J, Fred W, George & Kerry C, Ray G, Liam & Phil E, Mark H, Max W, Meilin H, Mick G, Nara T and his friend Rod, Peter D, Pete K, Peter S, Rodney K, Vince B. We also had a welcome visitor, a “blast from the past” in John de Groot. It was great to see John and he also enjoyed catching up with some familiar faces. We shared many stories of past days, especially John’s favoured genre “Free Flight”. John is battling some health issues at the moment and we wish him well and hope that he is able to return to good health soon.
Peter K brought along his recently acquired model. The model originally belonged to Fred W, but it had a major crash on its last outing at PFL. Fred decided it should move on and promptly handed the remains to Pete. Pete then sought out Kevin H and the two of them decided to repair the damage and get it into the air again. Pete was a little vague on the detail of the model and with his usual dry wit when asked what the model was he said, “It’s a high wing plane”. With the jokes aside he told me it was a Taylorcraft (BC12-D?). The model initially had a glow motor in it but Pete swapped that out and put in a RCGF-32cc petrol engine. Pete had been flying his drones with Graupner radio and he asked me what I was using. I said FrSky and I was very happy with the brand. Pete then decided to buy a FrSky X20 Tandem Tx. He is also very happy with the radio operating system ETHOS, and has set up his “under construction” scale helicopter on the Tx, commenting that the ETHOS programming was relatively easy, once he got his head around the logic.
A short video of the Taylorcraft in flight.
Nara T brought along his recent acquisition, a foam glider from Banggood. A Volantex 742-7 Phoenix S (PNF) 4CH Sport Electric Glider 1600mm (63″). It flies with a 2S battery (3S would burn the motor) and Nara advises that the cost landed for the PNP version was around $170. It flew very well, but if you’re looking for one, that version seems to be discontinued now. However, there is a kit version selling for a bit over $100 see here, which may be a better option anyway as you can order an upgraded motor that will take a 3S battery.
Rodney K brought along his Hangar 9 “Beast”. He has flown it many times at LMAC however, this time he had a heck of a lot of trouble getting it started. Rodney had fitted a new smoke tank and thought, could that be the problem? Cowl off and check everything – the fuel was going into the smoke tank and not the fuel tank! Swap the lines around and voila!, the Beast fired up easily. You can see an earlier video of The Beast here
Mark Holman (thanks Mark) and myself took some shots on the day.
AGM
The AGM was held on Monday, June 3 but it was disappointing that of the 11 members in attendance, 5 were committee. Fortunately we just made a quorum. A motion was tabled by a member who could not attend, that we hold the AGM at the field on a club day. The motion failed as 100% of those in attendance were not in favour of changing from the status quo.
The election of committee members took place with the following appointments made and all were elected unopposed –
- President – Mick Green (2 years)
- Vice President – Danny Nelson (1 year)
- Committee – Mark Holman
- Committee – to be confirmed on July 1
On the matter of membership fees, the MAAA has raised their fee by $5 and it was decided that the new club fee would rise by $5 to $200pa, in line with the MAAA fee. It is important to note that 2 other clubs have substantially higher fees than LMAC.
Membership Renewals are due
It’s that time of the year and membership renewals are now due. It is important to fill in the renewal form on the web page. Why? Because I need to be sure that your privacy is maintained with respect to what personal information is detailed on the club membership list that is posted on the noticeboard in the clubhouse and if any of your details have changed. It is also a reminder to me that you have paid and I can register you on the MAAA membership site. Please pay by June 30. Renewals can be completed by following the link here. You will need to login.
MAAA Club Assistance Scheme
As mentioned in the April Hangar Talk, we applied to the MAAA for funding under the CAS. This year the limit was $7,700. I am pleased to say that our submission was successful and we have been granted the full $7,700 that will fund the construction of a weatherproof barbecue area and coverage over the large model starting pad. Details of the approval can be found here
Annual Dinner
Don’t forget that the Annual Dinner will be held on Saturday, September 21 this year. Details can be found here
Weed Spraying
Those that have visited the field recently would have noticed that the strip has a significant weed infestation. This is not unexpected. Seona has provided a requisition for treating the weeds and the strip was sprayed at the end of the day on June Club day. We were missing one ingredient and this has limited the effect of that treatment. Nonetheless, it was decided to spray with what we had available. We left my tank there and spraying will be completed ASAP. Ron has provided the necessary chemicals. A short video of Mark in action!
The Website has been Hacked!
On June 17, I sent an email to members advising the website had been hacked. This time they really created havoc, deleting many files and images, that required a major restore. Fortunately we have regular backups, but in restoring files, one has to be careful to avoid restoring a malicious bot “trojan/bug” that the hackers had loaded into our file system. It is important that members get into the habit of creating strong passwords and especially making sure every login they have, uses a unique password. I use a “password manager”, as it is impossible to remember all my different passwords as I have strong passwords and I have also added 2FA (2 Factor Authentication) to my logins. 2FA requires users to implement a secondary login confirmation that requires a code from an authenticator app on your phone, to be entered after your normal login. Everyone should review their passwords, especially banking and personal accounts (Medicare etc.) to ensure they have strong passwords.
You might ask “why would they target our little site?”. A bot is a software application that is programmed to do certain tasks. Bots are automated, which means they run according to their instructions without a human user needing to manually start them up every time. Bots often imitate or replace a human user’s behavior. Typically they do repetitive tasks, and they can do them much faster than human users could.
Bots usually operate over a network; more than half of Internet traffic is bots scanning content, interacting with webpages, chatting with users, or looking for attack targets. Some bots are useful, such as search engine bots that index content for search or customer service bots that help users. Other bots are “bad” and are programmed to break into user accounts, scan the web for contact information for sending spam, or perform other malicious activities. If it’s connected to the Internet, a bot will have an associated IP address.
Bots can be:
- Chatbots: Bots that simulate human conversation by responding to certain phrases with programmed responses
- Web crawlers (Googlebots): Bots that scan content on webpages all over the Internet
- Social bots: Bots that operate on social media platforms
- Malicious bots: Bots that scrape content, spread spam content, or carry out credential stuffing attacks
The charts below show recent attacks on our website. The numbers are staggering.
Weather Station Software Update
Malicious bots can also gain access through out of date plugins on a site. LMACRC.com is a WordPress site and uses many plugins. One of these was our Weather Station plugin, where the author has abandoned development of it. This meant that it had security vulnerabilities and as such was removed from WordPress. I had to delete the software and then find another option for reporting the weather. Luckily I use one at home for my home weather station. It is called Cumulus MX and with the help of my son Stuart, we remotely logged in to the weather station at the club site and installed Cumulus MX. Unfortunately this meant we lost the weather history. We have a number of backup files that we will attempt to convert into the required format and upload to Cumulus. The new weather pages can be found here. Whilst it is still under development (there are some random numbers in the “Records” reports), your feedback on the new format is welcome.
From the WWW
Last month I reported on how impressed I was with Mark’s engine test bed. Well I found one significantly better (or should I say, “bigger”) than Mark’s – take a look.
Well that’s it for another month, and with all the cold weather keeping people away from the field, there must be some workshop projects underway. If so, send me some pictures and details for next month.
Don’t Forget – Put a Spark in your life and fly electric!
George
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