The Haught Corner
House of Usher
Please welcome new editor Matt Usher to the AMA staff. He joins us from a large publishing house in Indianapolis.
Matt is a modeler and photographer in addition to his writing and editing pursuits. Look for some of his work in future issues, once he completes “basic training.”
Welcome also to Jennifer Jacks, the new AMA Librarian. She is faced with the formidable task of completing the organization of the library and orchestrating its conversion to CD-ROM format for preservation and archival purposes. She will do double-duty in the museum on weekends.
Gary Hover (District X AVP and noted RC pylon competitor) is also on board, albeit for the summer months. He will supervise the construction work done on-site (to expand the number of venues and prepare the field for major 1995 events and the 1996 Nats) and serve as an event coordinator. Somewhere along the way Gary has to maintain a residence in Visalia, California; look after business and personal interests there; and prepare to fly in the Pylon World Championships later this summer. A tall order!
Nguyen-Quang Ru — Address
We have received a number of requests for the complete address of Nguyen-Quang Ru, the Vietnamese modeler who was looking for help with modeling programs. Following is the address as it appeared on the envelope:
Nguyen-Quang Ru 357 Ap Hung Phu, H. Thu Duc Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Apologies for anything I may have misinterpreted here. It's nice to see that so many of you want to help.
Perception is Everything
During a recent walk through our neighborhood with our one-year-old, I noticed a man cutting some trees with a chain saw. Nothing unusual, except that he was doing this at approximately 6:30 p.m. in a crowded subdivision, and no one complained about the noise.
But suppose I had cranked up an unmuffled .60 in my driveway? How long would that have gone unreported? The saw was certainly louder than most of our engines, but it was (apparently) an accepted sound—as opposed to those noisy airplane engines. Is perception/acceptance more important than reality? Maybe.
It's a bit like Rudy Kluiber's solution to noisy neighbors: next time it's late, that party is too loud, and the subwoofers are rattling everything not tied down, simply fire up a Dynajet in the middle of the street. That should solve the problem!
This is not to say that everyone in the country should adore the sound of a screaming .15 doing 27,000 rpm; that will never happen. And I understand that some people are more noise-sensitive than others. But someone doing the Paul Bunyan routine while I'm in the middle of my Happy Meal™ is first-rate annoying.
Perhaps, as flying sites tend to become more remote, the idea that people are no longer conditioned to our engine sound has some merit. Maybe a sound that's unusual or more apt to be considered “noise” than a “conditioned” sound (lawn mower, chain saw, grass trimmer) of equal dB will cause more complaints.
"Maybe a sound that's unusual is more apt to be considered 'noise' than a conditioned sound."
Or could heredity be involved? I don't know any other way to explain Bill, the aforementioned one-year-old. We took him to his first contest when he was only a couple of months old: “Let's see how he reacts to engines being started.”
To our amazement, it never even fazed him. I thought he would scream louder than the engines, but he never flinched. He's been out to the field several more times, with the same result. And no matter where he is, when he hears anything that sounds like an airplane engine, he scans the sky and will follow the aircraft for as long as it's visible. Conditioning? Genes? Dumb luck?
Contest Awards and Donations
A previous column contained a discussion about asking suppliers to donate merchandise for contest awards. It was suggested that some sort of discount or special award pricing might prove more palatable than a donation. I received an interesting response from one small manufacturer (name withheld at his request):
"In the last 30 days I have been swamped by requests for contest donations. Requests for contest donation freebies is a real problem among the suppliers who want to support the hobby.
"For two years I tried product contributions, and as far as I'm concerned, it was a failure. I never once got a thank-you note from the winner or the CD; I even followed later sales in the contest area and see no correlation.
"Last year I tried the discount-coupon approach, and I feel it works much better. I do not otherwise discount or run 'sales' on my products, so the certificate is a real savings. With certificates having a defined expiration date, I know quickly if I reached a real customer.
"When merchandise is just tossed out, it frequently goes to someone who does not really need it, and no one wins."
These are solid points. I just purchased merchandise for my own contest through a manufacturer who also is an active flier and who offers a sizable discount for contest-award merchandise. This allows me to purchase more merchandise (benefiting more contestants) or higher-quality items (tailored to specific events).
I'm trying to avoid the situation many of us have: a shelf or closet full of stuff we'll never use (but which might have been useful to someone else). So while the dollar value of a given award may be less, I have some assurance that the money has been spent wisely. A $5 bottle of glue might well be more useful than a $50 kite—especially to Juniors, who are the focal point of the merchandise I award.
My contest's budget is based on the previous year's income, so I feel a large obligation to those who support the event. After all, Excellent Adventure was created as a stopgap measure to fill an unexpected "hole" in the 1992 contest schedule; now it's in its fourth year, and people have come to look forward to it. I feel a certain sense of pride in that, and the contest's continued success tends to make me believe that trying to "spend smart" and run a flier-friendly event is a sound approach.
Jim Haught Managing Editor
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
