AMA News - District IX Report
Region
- Colorado
- Kansas
- Nebraska
- North Dakota
- South Dakota
- Wyoming
Vice President
Russ Miller 980 N. 3rd St., Carrington, ND 58421 Phone: (701) 652-2321 Fax: (701) 652-2994 E-mail: rumiller@daktel.com
Associate Vice Presidents
- Max Hansen — 1909 Wisconsin SW, Huron, SD 57350
- Nathan Lancaster — 3597 S. Kendall Street, Denver, CO 80235
- Fred Hildebrand — 4015 Somerset Circle, Casper, WY 82609-3161
- Troy Lapp — 1619 Wichita Dr., Bismarck, ND 58504
- Travis McGinnis — 8027 W. 81st Circle, Arvada, CO 80005
- Don Moden — 410 Hart St., Salina, KS 67401
- Jim Ricketts — 4921 Fernwood Drive, Sioux Falls, SD 57103-5573
- Jack L. Sibert — 3611 Kimberly Circle, Lincoln, NE 68506-4524
- Mark T. Smith — 14632 W. 50th Street, Shawnee, KS 66216
- Mike Weidner — 6535 Foxdale Circle, Colorado Springs, CO 80919-1788
Frequency Coordinator
Steve Mangles c/o Radio Service Center, 918 S. Sheridan, Denver, CO 80226
News from Nebraska
A note from John Pakiz of the Nebraska Free Flighters sent word of the passing of Dick Hawes.
Dick Hawes passed away on December 11. He had a massive heart attack, slipped from this life very quickly, and didn't experience much pain.
Dick's passing has been a great loss to our club. He was the editor of the newsletter, The Winding Stooge, for years. Dick had announced last fall that he would do the newsletter for another nine issues, then retire. At 76 years of age, he deserved the rest.
Dick's energy and enthusiasm were legendary. He was such a light. Sometimes at the club meetings he'd lean back, put his hands on the back of his head, look up toward the ceiling, and just start expounding on old memories or some theory of flight. Whenever he took this posture I'd tell my son to pay attention because he was about to learn something.
Dick joined the Nebraska Free Flighters in 1984. He was a few years away from retirement then, but once retired he had the chance to build a little more and travel much more. He went to Muncie, Indiana several times and Geneseo, New York twice.
We all enjoyed his stories of modeling in the late 1930s and after the war, but beyond all of this, Dick did something for me once that I'll never forget. We were at the Beatrice indoor site and I had a model that I was afraid to fly — actually, I was afraid to launch it. It was brand new and had never been flown before. Dick came up to me and simply said, "You can't win if you don't play."
I never forgot that, and to this day I've never been skittish about flying a new model. If I bust it, so what. That's what tests my repair skills and I didn't spend 40 years acquiring them for nothing.
That's what I remember most about Dick: he wasn't afraid of anything — even death. Twice I heard him say, "I'm going to build this or that model before I die, or shortly thereafter."
News from South Dakota
South Dakota Air and Space Museum Show and Contest
From Jim Tiller of the Rapid City Propbusters R/C Club comes news of the second annual South Dakota Air and Space Museum (SDASM) Show and Contest.
After last year's successful show at the SDASM open house at Ellsworth Air Force Base, they again invited us to take part in their activities. We planned our static show and contest as we did last year, but we were not able to complete arrangements for an air show by our Gold Squadron AST. The museum is just outside the main gate at Ellsworth, and with continuing national security concerns, it was not possible for us to get permission to put on an aerial demonstration.
The open house on Saturday, May 10, was marked by rain, wind, and unseasonably cold weather — even for South Dakota — keeping attendance and entries below last year's numbers. The quality of the models, however, was as good as or better than before.
After some tough scrutiny by judges Jerry Norton and Wayne Grace, six trophies were awarded:
- Best of Show and Best Sport: John Kellog — Utopia
- Best Scale Airplane: Gene Kelley — P-47
- Best Veteran: Alf Riisnaes — Piper Cub (nearly 100 flights)
- People's Choice (more than 80 ballots counted): Gene Kelley — P-47
- SDASM trophy (presented by museum director Ron Alley): Kevin Kari — Proctor Nieuport 28
Float Flying
The Propbusters have long enjoyed float flying at New Underwood Lake, just a stone's throw from our flying field. For the last two years the number of participants and airplanes has been growing steadily.
This year, to kick off the float-flying season, we scheduled our first event for Sunday morning, April 13, the day after our annual auction. Since the auction usually brings buyers from as far away as Nebraska and North Dakota, we put the announcement for the float-fly in the auction advertising and asked those who came to make a weekend of it and stay for the float-fly.
The South Dakota weather gods were gracious this year: Sunday turned out warm with a slight breeze that did little more than help floats break free. We had nearly fifty people present and the airspace was often crowded with four or five airplanes at a time. Although our boat retrieval crew was kept busy clearing the runway of stalled or errant aircraft, only one pilot received any serious damage.
We have four more water events scheduled this summer for our seasoned water fliers.
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
