March 2021
Welcome to the inaugural edition of Lift over Drag (L/D): it’s the NEW R/C Soaring Digest’s mid-monthly mailing exclusively for our followers on Medium. In L/D, we highlight articles which are upcoming in the next issue and talk about new features of RCSD of which you may want to avail yourself. Also, you will hopefully forgive us for trying to move a little merchandise in order to help keep new and still entirely free issues of RCSD coming to you far into the future.
Coming Up This Month
James Hammond’s New Design Series
Many readers will already be aware of this well-known designer of many classic aircraft. We are really thrilled to announce that James Hammond of Aeroic Composites fame has agreed to no less than a four part series where he reveals many of his sailplane design secrets. In the first part, Designing for Slope Aerobatics, James goes through the essentials steps required to design for Big Air or VTPR aerobatic requirements. In subsequent months, James will dedicate articles to designing slope all-rounders, high-performance mid-size ships and large alpine soarer configurations. It’s been a delight working with James on these articles and we can’t wait for you to see the first one.
Coverage of the Southwest Classic F5J 2021
It’s hard to believe but the competition season is already upon us here in the Northern Hemisphere. The first evidence is Ryan Woebkenberg making his way from his home in wintery Indiana all the way to sunny Phoenix, Arizona for the Southwest Classic F5J which ran on February 20th and 21st, 2021. His luxuriously illustrated coverage comes complete with some excellent video as well. Ryan is a talented writer who tells the story in a really engaging, travelogue style. You’ll be along for the ride, just as we were, when you read Ryan’s article. The first of many, we hope.
Pre-Flight Checks
Our friend and repeat contributor Rene Wallage returns with a piece on the value of a really solid pre-flight check. Sadly, we think Rene may have been prompted to write the article after a pretty serious crash of his James Hammond-designed Schwing. We will all benefit from Rene’s hard-won experience and wisdom so that we may try and avoid something similar ourselves. Thanks Rene. And the aircraft we bring home intact thank you, too.
Tech Tips
Our plan is to eventually call this section For What It’s Worth, but then it occurred to us that still might actually be a copyrighted term and we want to respect that, of course. It was the section in the long-defunct and much-missed RC Modeler magazine which had what they called (somewhat oddly) “hints and kinks” for builders. Even if we don’t eventually use the name we’re still going to model the content of the perennially popular series. We kick off with Tom Broeski’s picture essay on building a handy clevis tool. We’ve always wanted one of these! Have a great tip of your own? Consider contributing it to this or a future issue of RCSD.
But Wait There’s More
Call for Articles
The beauty of the ‘digital first’ platform on which the NEW RCSD is published is there is still plenty of time for you to submit your article so that it appears alongside the great material described above. The deadline for submissions is March 21st, 2021. Think you may want to contribute, but you’re just not quite sure what’s involved? We have just the thing you need: Writing for RCSD: Steps, guidelines and a few Pro Tips for authors. If you’re stuck for subject material (how could that be?!) we even have Unleash Your Inner Hemingway which should provide lots of inspiration. Also, keep in mind that as a follower on Medium, the hard part is already done: your Medium account is already set up. Give it some thought — your writing greatness awaits.
Events
We kicked off our Events calendar a few days ago and we’re ready, willing, able and anxious to add your event regardless of where on the globe that might be. Just send us your details and there’s no cost to you, of course. It may well help you reach a new audience that hasn’t been aware of your event up until now. But also we should say this isn’t your grandparents’ or even your parents’ events calendar — it’s a whole lot better even if we do say so ourselves. Please check it out and see if you agree.
Social Media
We’ve been active on at least a couple of our social media platforms: Twitter and Instagram. We’re doing our best not to have too much overlapping content between these two platforms as well as the main publication. In other words, we’re trying to give you a reason to follow us on one of those two platforms — there might just be something there you can’t find anywhere else.
Past Issues
We’re proud to say that we have two issues under our belt, with March being our third: you can always find the current issue — February, in this case — at the NEW RCSD home page. And here’s where you can find the January issue.
The New RCSD Store
We pried open the door of the RCSD Store in the past month — but that’s about all we did. It’s nothing fancy at the moment and we only have one product: the beautiful and unique RCSD Cover Photo T-Shirt for January. We’ll have one of these for each new issue. On the right sleeve there’s the NEW RCSD logo and on the left — get this — a QR Code that will take you right to the January issue. How cool is that? Get yours today and be the first kid on the slope to have one. All proceeds support RCSD so we can continue to bring you all this amazing content for the grand total of zero dollars for the indefinite future.
That’s it for this first edition of Lift over Drag. Please let us know what you think — we would love to hear from you. Also, if you want to be absolutely sure you don’t miss the March issue of the NEW R/C Soaring Digest, make sure you subscribe to our Groups.io mailing list as well. Finally, please tell your friends — we would love to have them as readers too. It will be in your inbox on or about March 24, 2021.
Until next month’s Lift over Drag, fair winds and blue skies!
©2021 The NEW R/C Soaring Digest
