Safety Comes First

Safety Comes First

John Preston 2812 Northampton St., N.W., Washington, DC 20015

This column addresses items of concern regarding safety aspects of model aviation activities. The content is the opinion of the author and does not necessarily represent the official position of the Academy of Model Aeronautics.

Travelog: Airline Worries

White-knuckle airline passengers are those who fly under a great deal of stressful worry about their safety—they grip the armrests so hard their knuckles turn white. I relate to that feeling. When Pan Am Flight 103 disintegrated over Lockerbie, Scotland, in December 1988, I was visiting relatives in England. So it was with some trepidation that I boarded my return flight to the U.S. on another Pan Am 747.

In February I read about a United flight in which an older 747 lost its cargo door and a large chunk of the right side of the fuselage shortly after takeoff from Honolulu. At that time I had just made a reservation on another United trans-Pacific flight that was to be a 747 — fortunately a 747SP — so I comforted myself that it probably had fewer miles on it and that my seat was on the left side, away from the cargo door.

I just returned from a two-week trip to four countries in Asia that involved nine different flights on United, Cathay Pacific, China Airlines, and Northwest Orient. All flights were uneventful, which is more than I can say about the airports. I hate airports.

I shouldn't complain — I had nine chances to lose checked luggage, and the travel gods were kind: none of the 12 of us lost so much as a luggage cart. If you are wondering what this story has to do with model airplane safety, the answer is: nothing at all. This column was due to the MAE editorial offices on April 1, when I was still in Taiwan. When I returned on April 4 I hoped for reader mail to give me material; most of it was junk or bills, so you get the mini travelog. Before I turn to model matters, let me just say it may be a while before I get around to eating Chinese food again.

Model Fires

I've had a lot of correspondence lately about model-related fires. If the summer of 1989 is as dry as 1988, we should all be extra careful that our activities do not start a brushfire. The following letter from Russ Kime (Whittier, CA) is both interesting and amusing and illustrates how quickly a small spark can become a big fire.

Whittier Narrows Brushfire (Russ Kime)

• Last September at our club field my buddy Gene bought a Prather Little Toni to compete in a Formula 1 race. He had painted it white with blue trim—not an ideal color for visibility against our usual cloudless blue September skies.
• Gene finished 10 laps in his heat and pulled up to shut off the engine. The fuel shutoff hadn't been pinched down tight enough, so the engine burped for a few more seconds. Gene continued the vertical climb to encourage the engine to stop; it finally quit about 400 yards from the flight line at roughly 500 feet altitude.
• His wife, Phyllis, had gone down the runway to await his landing roll-out. Gene glanced away briefly to check other fliers (mid-air collisions are very uncouth in F-1 racing) and, when he looked back, the airplane had vanished against the cobalt blue background.
• A search found the plane had crashed about 300 yards away on the far side of the Rio Hondo River near the freeway. The wreckage was outlined by tongues of flame: the battery pack apparently shorted out as it exited the nose and ignited the dry grass. Although there was little breeze, the fire spread quickly. About 20 people stomped for ten minutes to put it out; the fire department checked the area to be sure it was really out.
• Gene's salvage was one badly melted plastic pilot and one possibly repairable servo. He resumed racing an hour and a half later.
• About 1:30 p.m. a sea breeze sprang up, rekindled a slumbering ember, and a wall of fire 30 yards wide roared down the west bank of the Rio Hondo. In 20 minutes it traveled 300 yards, jumped the river, and burned back up next to the runway. Heat and smoke were so intense we had to abandon racing for the day; as planes went through the smoke they would balloon 10 to 20 feet, making racing impossible.
• We made special T-shirts that read "I survived the great Whittier Narrows fire of September 25, 1986," although Gene refused to wear his.

Russ added some humorous afterthoughts: Gene and Phyllis visited the Soviet Union the following March and three days after they left Kiev, Chernobyl melted down; and an amusing wartime anecdote surfaced about Gene, a WWII P-38 pilot who once strafed an ammo-filled train, which likely explains his "predilection" for starting fires and other disasters. Cal Tech assured Russ that a model airplane crash was unlikely to have triggered a local earthquake, but the story remains a sobering reminder.

Another recent letter from Connecticut modeler Mark Welch reported charred wood caused by model parts rubbing together during flight. In a previous column I said it was hard to believe that this could really happen; OK—I’m a believer now. Even small electrical or mechanical failures can ignite dry grass, so treat fire risk seriously at the flying field.

Lyme Disease

While tick bites are not confined to the modeling community, those of us who fly in the Northeast are likely to encounter ticks sooner or later. In the early 1970s I built a Graupner Cirrus sailplane and on a club spring outing I got a tick bite that resulted in a rash and later health problems. I used to pick up a tick or two almost every trip to a Northern Virginia club field where launch was by hi-start and required tromping through long grass. At that time Rocky Mountain spotted fever was the fear; a friend was hospitalized from it after a tick bite.

Yesterday's mail brought a letter from Jesse Aronstein of Poughkeepsie, NY, who enclosed an article on Lyme disease that he had written for his club newsletter and suggested I alert readers to this hazard. From what I've heard, Lyme disease is not only more dangerous than Rocky Mountain spotted fever but, by 1984, it became the country's most common tick-borne disease.

History and organism

• The disease is named after Lyme, Connecticut, where it was first recognized in 1975.
• Recent work isolated the organism — a spirochete similar to the one that causes syphilis. It has been named Borrelia burgdorferi after Dr. Burgdorfer, who discovered it.
• Although most prevalent in the northeastern United States, Lyme disease has been reported in 47 states and in other countries including Canada, China, Japan, South America, Australia, and some European countries.

Symptoms and diagnosis

• Symptoms usually begin 3 to 30 days after the bite. A circular skin lesion, erythema migrans, often appears at the bite site and expands slowly for weeks.
• Other early symptoms include fever, headache, muscle and joint pains, and fatigue.
• The disease may go latent and months later produce more serious symptoms such as arthritis of large joints and neurologic manifestations.
• Diagnosis can be made by clinical signs and by tests for antibodies to the organism.

Treatment and possible complications

• The disease responds well to antibiotics, especially doxycycline and amoxicillin, when given early.
• When not treated promptly or properly, Lyme disease can cause chronic arthritic and neurologic problems.

Prevention and tick removal

• Avoid exposure to tick-infested areas when possible.
• Use insect repellents such as DEET.
• Wear protective clothing and tuck pants into socks when walking in brushy or grassy areas.
• Examine your body carefully for ticks after being outdoors.
• Prompt removal of an attached tick reduces the chance of infection. Remove the tick without jerking; alternate methods of tick removal (alcohol, heat, vaseline, etc.), popular in the past, have been shown to be less effective. A good removal is a fast removal. Immediately after removing a tick, disinfect the bite with rubbing alcohol or povidone-iodine (Betadine).
• See your doctor promptly if you develop a rash or flu-like symptoms after a tick bite and mention the possibility of Lyme disease. Early treatment is most effective.

Additional references

• Jesse also sent an article that appeared in Consumer Reports (June 1988, pp. 382–385) and noted a feature article on Lyme disease in the March 1989 issue of American Nurseryman. The latter mentioned New York Medical College investigating a possible connection between Lyme disease and multiple sclerosis (MS), since both can have similar symptoms.

Be alert for ticks, and have a safe month.

Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.