2B | SATURDAY, AUGUST 4, 2018 | SIUSLAW NEWS
Salmon
from 1B
similar to last year, with 213,600 adults
expected to enter the river mouth, versus
last year’s actual return of 235,700.
Due to the below average steelhead
forecast of 182,400, no more than one
hatchery steelhead may be retained per
day from Aug. 1 through Dec. 31 for all
mainstem Columbia River recreational
Aircraft
from 1B
student, that’s probably better. If
you get yourself up there and
things go crazy, I’ll take over and
pull out of the dive, or the tree, or
whatever you did. We find that we
can teach people without the cost
of constantly crashing a plane.”
Even with the assurances, I was
nervous.
I wasn’t expecting to be flying a
plane that morning. There were
only a few facts I knew about
FARCAA: Members of the club
meet and fly at the airport early
on Sunday and Monday morn-
ings all year, and Wednesdays and
Fridays during the summer. They
also periodically meet at Woahink
Lake to fly their model seaplanes.
I had seen their exhibitions at
the annual Wings and Wheels
showcase, and always thought the
hobby looked fascinating, but I
had never actually tried it myself.
I didn’t think this day would
change that. My assignment was
to show up, take some pictures,
and talk about why people liked
the hobby.
“Well, you’re actually going to
fly a plane,” Morales told me as I
arrived at the airport.
Wait, what?
He smiled and assured me it
would be okay. Half-hour later, I
was standing in the airfield hold-
ing my remote control.
Just before that moment, I
asked Morales how long RCs stay
in the air. Generally, a standard
battery will hold anywhere from 7
to 10 minutes of battery time,
though that depends greatly on
the build of the plane. One mem-
ber of the team had a plane that
stayed up for an hour. In 2013, a
legally blind and mostly deaf man
from Maryland flew a model
plane across the Atlantic, but for
the most part, flyers stick to
around 10 minutes.
“That’s it, just 10?” I asked.
Sounded like a rip-off.
“Wait ‘till you try it,” Morales
said. “Your brain is tired in about
three minutes. You’re up there,
concentrating, and you think,
‘When is it time for me to land
because I’m getting tired.’ You
don’t need these long amounts of
fisheries.
The Buoy 10 fishery is scheduled to be
open for retention of any adult Chinook
salmon through Aug. 24 with a one-fish
daily bag limit. Chinook retention is
scheduled to close Aug. 25, but hatchery
coho/steelhead retention will remain open
with a two-fish/one- steelhead adult bag
limit.
From Tongue Point upstream to
Warrior Rock, retention of any adult
time.”
Yeah, whatever pal. I’ve been
playing eight-hour, high octane
marathons of Pac-Man since I was
knee high. I think I got this.
But then I looked at the RC
controls. Everything was control-
lable: Flaps, rudders, elevator, rim.
It even had an autopilot.
“It has everything that you
would find in a full-scale airplane,
except there’s nobody in it,”
Morales said.
Well, there were the three yel-
low Minions Morales had in his
own model plane. He said that
counted.
The trainer plane was placed
on the tiny runway, the small elec-
tric motor “roared” to life.
Morales slowly turned the plane
to the north, picked up speed, and
soon the plane was in the air.
“Okay, so I’m going to bring it
around,” he said. The plan was for
me to make simple circles in the
air. I watched nervously has the
plane worked its way just in front
of us, which is when I was to take
over.
“Just a second here, are you
ready?” he asked, just before
switching the plane to my control-
ler. “You got it!”
I took over piloting.
“Okay, start taking a left turn,”
he instructed.
I started to take my left turn.
“No, your other left,” he calmly
said.
I grimaced in embarrassment,
trying to turn to my other left.
The plane took a nosedive instead.
“Okay, I’m going to bail you out,”
Morales cheerfully said as he took
over with his controller, piloting
the plane around so I could get
another crack at it.
Thirty seconds in and my brain
hurt. This was not Pac-Man, and I
had no confidence this was going
to end well.
••••
M
orales started flying RC’s
back when they weren’t RC’s.
They were gas powered model
planes, attached by wires to the
controllers. Pilots had a handle
which controlled the up and down,
and just turned around in circles as
they watched the plane go.
Fellow RC pilot Gene Wobbe’s
Chinook will be allowed through Sept. 2,
with a one-fish daily adult bag. Starting
Sept. 3, the daily adult bag limit increases
to two fish/one steelhead (hatchery coho/
steelhead only).
From Warrior Rock upstream to
Bonneville Dam, Chinook retention is
scheduled to be open through Sept. 14
with an adult bag limit of one fish.
Beginning Sept. 15, the daily adult bag
limit will be two fish/one steelhead (hatch-
passion for the hobby also started
when he was young.
“I grew up around airports,” he
said. “No matter where we lived, it
was near an airport. For the big-
gest part of my life, it was around
the Eugene Airport. You saw the
airplanes flying, and it was just a
natural attraction. It was my fasci-
nation with airplanes as a young-
ster.”
But then life got in the way for
Wobbe and Morales, work, family.
No time for the hobby.
“I got back into it when radio
control became readily available
and the price came down when
the early research and technology
development was out of it,”
Wobbe said. “Now it’s affordable. I
can order a p-51 or a p-47 and
don’t have to worry about the
costs.”
A lot of the attraction of the
hobby comes from the intricacies
of building the planes. There are
many different styles around,
ready to go trainer planes that go
for as little as $300. Then there are
the ARFs.
“That stands for Almost Ready
to Fly,” Morales said. “They’re
halfway built, which will cost a lit-
tle bit more because it cost some-
one to halfway build it. I don’t
have the patience to build it from
scratch, Gene does. I have to start
when it’s halfway built because I
know, in five hours, I’m in the
air.”
“The planes I have a connec-
tion to are the ones I built from a
kit,” Wobbe said. “The little piec-
es built from the ground up.
Those I cherish.”
This isn’t to say that ARFs are
ready to go out of the box. There’s
still a lot of work that goes into
building them, which Morales, a
retired dentist, loves.
“I guess a lot of us like tinker-
ing with our fingers,” he said.
“We like building and playing. It’s
kind of carried on with me being
a dentist. This is good for the
mind. You have to figure out how
you’re going to hook it up, bal-
ance the weight properly so it
flies right.
“You don’t have to be an ath-
lete and lift 300 pounds. This is a
fun hobby to get into.”
And tinkering is also helpful
in crashes.
ery coho /steelhead only).
For the area from Bonneville Dam
upstream to the Highway 395 Bridge in
Pasco, Wash., Chinook retention opened
Aug. 1 but will be managed in-season
based on actual catch and the upriver
bright Chinook run size.
The daily adult bag limit is two salmo-
nids, and may include up to one Chinook
and up to one steelhead.
During all fall fisheries (Aug. 1 through
“How many bad spills do you
take in a month?” I asked.
“Ugh,” Wobbe asked. “You had
to ask.
Morales said that he and
Wobbe hadn’t had a bad spill for a
long time, though Wobbe said he
over-shot the runway once.
“That doesn’t count,” Morales
said.
Morales turned to fellow flyer
Ron Hokanson, saying, “Okay
Ron, time for some honesty.”
“I crashed three planes in one
day one time,” he said, laughing at
himself. “It was terrible.”
He pointed to a grove of trees
across the field, saying that
around eight planes have been
trapped in the branches over the
years.
“The wind blows them out,
usually,” he said. “One guy hired a
tree trimmer to climb up and get
one from him.”
And then there’s the dreaded
windsock at the end of the run-
way. Hokanson said everybody’s
hit that at least once.
“I have,” Morales said.
“I haven’t,” Wobbe said.
“Well I have,” Hokanson
laughed. “You said honesty.”
“Well, that’s enough honesty for
today,” Morales said.
There were a bunch of phrases
thrown out. “Sooner or later grav-
Dec. 31) from Buoy 10 upstream to the
OR/WA border (upstream of McNary
Dam), each legal angler aboard a vessel
can continue to deploy angling gear until
the daily adult salmonid limit for all
anglers aboard has been achieved.
A complete summary of 2018 Columbia
River fall regulations are available on the
ODFW website at myodfw.com/recre-
ation-report/fishing-report/columbia
-zone.
ity wins.” “Takeoffs are optional,
but landings are mandatory.” My
favorite excuse was, “There’s no
such thing as gravity, it’s the air
that sucks.”
Whatever the excuse, planes
will crash, which is where the tin-
kering comes in.
“Gorilla glue is your best
friend,” Hokanson said.
I didn’t see any planes crash
and burn that day, and the group
is very proud of their safety rec-
ord, both with RC planes and the
real deal.
Safety is broken up into three
areas. First, they always have
someone sitting in a chair, looking
for problems with RC fliers, or
full-size planes come in. Second,
they have someone listening on a
radio for pilots coming in. If an
airplane signals they’re coming in
for a landing, down go the RCs.
“And the third thing, which has
never been used, is called the fly-
away procedure,” Morales said. “If
a plane shows up and nobody
knew it was coming, everybody
flies toward those trees and circles
around, off property. It’s never
been done, but everybody knows
about it.”
Safety is of utmost importance
for the group, but in the days of
drones, the friendly skies are
becoming the wild west.
“The FAA is starting to play
around with requirements because
of drones and quads,” Morales
said. “They put in cameras, go
into people’s back yards, and all
sorts of terrible things.”
Just last year, a Utah mother of
six and her boyfriend were
charged with using a drone to
peep into the bathrooms and bed-
rooms of neighbors.
“Then there’s flying under the
Golden Gate Bridge and around
the Statue of Liberty,” Morales
said.
This is not to say that all drone
flyers are a bunch of jerks, but
there certainly are a fair share of
bad apples.
“People ignore the rules, and
we end up worrying about our
hobby because if the FAA really
starts clamping down on every-
thing, we’re in trouble,” Wobbe
said.
Morales said that the best way
to combat this is by having clubs
like FARCAA, which can regulate
how flyers navigate the air.
Morales said it would be a good
idea to have people sign up for
clubs when they buy their RCs,
but that leads into an entirely dif-
ferent problem: Hobby stores are
becoming extinct.
CUTE AND CLEAN
17 Redwood St, In Beautiful
FLORENCE, Oregon
$150,000.00
Cute & Clean, beautifully remodeled
and upgraded 1995 trailer with a
36’x10’ stick build sun room addition.
Has two out buildings, a 10’x12’ Utility
Room & a 8’x10’ Art Studio with large
windows. Has 40’ driveway with RV
hook-ups. Give us a call and come take
a look. RMLS# 18574933
541-997- 4842
N ATALIE N AGRONE , Broker
Cell # 541-991-0531
natalienagrone@gmail.com
At Florence Golf Links
Florence, Oregon
Sponsored by
A Charity Golf Tournament To Benefit
SIUSLAW OUTREACH SERVICES
FUNDS RAISED WILL GO TO HELP NEEDY INDIVIDUALS AND FAMILIES EXPERIENCING
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE, HOMELESSNESS AND OTHER FORMS OF CRISIS.
Entry Fee: $99/ Player OR $396 Team of 4
Early Bird Discount if paid by 8/10/18: $89 per player OR $350 per team
Register at Florence Golf Links or SOS. For more info call 541-997-2816
RC 3B
A weekly roundup of shopping, savings and doings around town.
Realty
Saturday, September 8, 2018
See
Alta Taylor,
Principal Broker/ Owner
Offi ce# 541-997-4842
Cell # 541-999-0727
fl orencekeyrealty@msn.com