2008 was the best year but also the worst for advancing the miniature aircraft hobby in northern California. I had better deal with the bad parts first. The loss of George Xenakis on November 1 was a huge blow. George founded, developed and led the program for many years. He originally (early 1970s) started arranging for junior categories with trophies at the NorCal contests at Waegel Field and he and other OCD took our kids and their friends to contests there and at Taft. He realized that we could reach many more people if we held indoor events in more populous areas. He arranged for our use of various gymnasiums and eventually for use of Moffett Hangar 1. He got the AIAA involved as a sponsor, which helped with publicity and prize support. The kids’ contests that he ran with OCD help attracted many people who had never before had an opportunity to see high-performance model planes fly. George recognized the attraction of individual competition for young people and made that one of the foundations of the program. He contacted schools in our area and found several that had shop programs whose teachers were interested in adding a model plane program. The schools also had gymnasiums that were accessible via the shop teachers. While George was running an after-school program at Dartmouth Middle School near his home, he asked if I would take over a program he had started at Miller Middle School located nearer to my home than his. I was glad to take over since he had done the hard work to establish it.

Middle schools are the ideal place to look for kids of the right age and with some time to spend on non-curriculum activity. However there is a problem - access to the school gymnasiums is limited as they are heavily subscribed for school and contracted sports activities during and after school, and of course adults are not permitted to use the gym. When it became clear that we were not going to be able to use Hangar 1, George arranged for our use of the Moreland West San Jose Community Center on a weekly basis and that has been home to an important part of our program. We pay for use of the gym from small entry fees and George reduced the cost by becoming a part-time San Jose employee so we wouldn’t have to cover the cost of a non-model-flyer employee to ensure adherence to city rules. George also did another really important thing for the program by developing Penny Plane designs that kids could build and then arranging for Lee Kiracofe (Lee’s Hobbies) to kit them. Lee combined those offerings with OCD member Erv Rodemsky’s "Dandiflier" ROG, Dick Baxter’s "Pussycat" and other planes that gave us a series to lead kids into AMA and International competition level airplanes.

Not a day goes by when I don’t think of something I would like to discuss with George. He always had creative ideas for solving problems and an amazing ability to get the most challenging original design flying well enough to please the young designer, while explaining what had to be done to make it successful.

Another blow of less impact came with the closure of Kibbie Dome for 2009 and 2010 to perform essential building modifications. That means that our advanced young competitors have lost the best west coast incentive to try to achieve national competitive level or to seek a place on the junior international team for 2010. Hopefully funding for the modifications will allow completion on schedule, and that Andrew Tagliafico will be able to pull off another great contest in 2011. I think many of us will be willing to help if age will permit. With the Navy planning to rip the covering off Hangar 1 and leaving the skeleton only, and with few options for raising enough money to re-skin it, I don’t expect to see the inside of a useable Hangar 1 in my lifetime. However, I continue to hope as we have been instructed to do.

The next-to-last bad item of 2008 was that we (Bill Vanderbeek and I) had to give up the after-school class at Miller Middle School, where many of our best young modelers have come from. The main problem was the aforementioned poor access to the gymnasium although the school Principal and the staff were as accommodating as they could be. Another big problem was that I was the only "teacher" present during the last 2007-8 semester and was being deluged with kids whose parents were looking for a baby sitter. Since the parents were paying for the 2 to 3 hour sessions and sign-ups were on a first come basis, I could not turn poor prospects away. Yeah, I know, you are not supposed to bad-mouth the customers, but the immature kids were taking much of my time because they had to be watched nearly every minute and that took valuable time away from the needed one-on-one instruction for the interested kids. We have only one recruit from that semester.

I’m going to turn to the good things that have happened in 2008, with one embedded bad thing that only indirectly affects our program in terms of publicity.

OCDer Chinmay Jaju led the US Junior F1P team in Ukraine, winning 6^th place overall. Reigning Junior World Champion Cody Secor repeated his triumph for the USA. Bill Vanderbeek accompanied Chinmay as Bill has been his mentor since the second year that Chinmay joined the Miller group. Chinmay is working on making the international scene again in 2011.

Tim Chang, another "graduate" of Miller and Moreland, is the junior silver medalist at the 2008 Indoor World Championships. Jean and I had the privilege of accompanying Tim and his mom to Serbia. That brings us to the last bad thing: The US Junior team only had 2 members. Reigning junior world champ Justin Young (no relation) gave up his free ride as WC to register as the other team member and his first place score plus Tim’s were so good that if there had been a third US team member he or she would only have had to make easily attainable times for the US team to win first instead of ending last of the 6 countries that fielded junior teams. I don’t mean to disrespect the very young Czech Junior Team that performed well, were models of sportsmanship and deserved their team win and individual third place for Gabriella Kaplanova. The bad guys in this case were at AMA; after two team members had to drop out, vigorous efforts by modelers all over the US found several good candidates but the keepers of the purse strings denied the requests to add one more capable flyer to the team. Thus was broken the US record of winning every Junior Indoor WC team prize.  We got to hear the Star Spangled Banner played twice (Senior Team and Justin Young) but would have liked to hear it again for the Junior Team. Since this was my first and probably last attendance at a WC, I was a little emotional.

One of the best things that happened for the OCD program is that San Jose has allowed us to switch from formal 8-session building classes at Moreland to drop-in building. That change has brought in more students, a more relaxed environment, and enough money to cover San Jose Parks, Recreation and Neighborhood Services expenses. In fact, since the change in format in October to the second month of 2009 we have had to use only $24 of the OCD Youth Program reserve, so the indoor part of the program is practically self-supporting. The drop-in kids pay $10 for each (nominally 2-hour) building session instead of $80 for eight formal sessions. The $10 fee also covers flying; flying only is still $3 for the whole session. They can come when schoolwork or family plans allow which takes a lot of pressure off them and us. In view of the experience at Miller that I related earlier, one of the other good things about the new system is that we can tell the parents of troublesome kids that their child is not benefiting from the program and suggest that they find another activity. In reality we’ve not had to do that because most parents stay with their kids and help with discipline if it is necessary, or the problem kids just don’t show up after a session or two without us having to suggest it.

The new program helps because if parents aren’t sure their youngster will benefit or there is a scheduling problem they are not risking a lot of money so more may give it a try. Also we don’t have to try to arrange makeup sessions for kids who miss a formal class or two. Under the old system the parents also paid a flat materials fee up front and there was some concern expressed by parents who saw other kids finish more planes than their child did in the 8 sessions and therefore felt that they had not gotten their money’s worth. Now they buy kits from Lee Kiracofe or from the hobby shops or off the internet one at a time. I have a stock of AMA Cubs that serve as the first project as it provides enough challenge to discourage kids who are not suited to the discipline, and they always fly. As the kids move into high performance planes or their own designs I don’t charge for most materials that are out of my personal stock since I can use some of my pay to purchase more, and we charge nothing for materials that have been donated. Gene Joshu donated several rolls of very light plastic covering at Kibbie Dome so that was a great help. We don’t need much in the way of materials right now, but we have a really good indoor HLG design that the kids can build and fly very successfully, but I am out of light 4-inch or 5-inch wide 1/16" balsa (any good grain is OK) so if you have any to spare I would like to kit some more gliders.

The most encouraging thing about the program is that we have some very interested young regulars who are doing great. In spite of my misgivings about the Miller gym availability (it turned out to be a real problem), I did help a teacher at Miller in 2008 and early 2009 do a four–week model plane program in her "science enrichment" class where the 32 kids teamed up to build 13 original designs that all flew! The teams judged each other's originality and the originality scores (normalized to a max of 50) were added to the flight times (also normalized to a max of 50) to determine the winners. From that Miller group we've gotten 4 new builders at Moreland and have a potential for a few more who showed some real intuitive feeling for aerodynamics and for building light structures, and also displayed some competition chops.

Another great thing that happened: San Jose hired Gary Hinze as a part-time employee so this part time employee can arrange to take some Sundays off. Even when he is not on duty Gary helps a lot and he does a superlative job keeping everyone informed of the activity at Moreland (very importantly including our supporters at the city). Gary is much more patient than I am. I must mention that other OCD regulars, especially Mike Palrang and Chinmay Jaju, have also helped a lot with the kids. Dick Douglas has run the kids’ part of our OCD contests and all of the adult flyers have given up their flying time and pitched in to help the kids.

Gary also started trying to get more kids to build at home. That doesn’t threaten the program income because they have to come back to Moreland to fly. He adapted Dick Baxter’s 16-inch-span "Big Pussycat" for indoor flying with removable takeoff/landing gear. He produced a plan and e-mailed an illustrated building tutorial and also posted it on the OCD web site. It didn’t work out as he planned, as the parents had trouble finding parts and suitable balsa wood so Gary made up kits. But the kids still kept coming to the building sessions for Gary to instruct them, rather than doing it on their own. Three of four were completed and two have flown successfully. As more kids see the "BP" fly we may generate more interest. We have had some kids build other planes at home and bring the completed planes to Moreland. Even one Guillow’s scale model showed up in which the builder had substituted pretty good hobby shop wood for some of the kit wood. Lee Kiracofe has developed a plane similar to the Pussycat that is much easier to build and his outdoor rubber "Meadowlark X" is available if we ever regain a nearby flying site – both are candidates for home building after the basic skills have been learned.

We held the last multi-event contest in George’s format in January. I had promised George that it would be the last, and as he was not able to be there it was obvious, even with help from other OCD, that we were lacking his experience and expertise. We are now holding single event contests on some Sundays either as part of the OCD indoor contests or as strictly kid’s contests. Events are selected in part by what planes the current students are building. I have inherited the remaining donated (used) trophies that George collected and I am sure that we will never run short, though I have to discard some in order to be able to move around in my garage. I really admire the effort George put forth to assemble as many as 24 trophies for each of the big contests. I could use help assembling more sets, and we can use more winged victories or airplane icons that are in good shape. I have almost enough materials to print all trophy plates for 2009.

More good results: At Kibbie Dome in July Tim Chang won second place in R.O.G. while setting a new national senior record, won AMA F1D, won Intermediate Stick, and placed third in Limited PennyPlane. Another Moreland regular who got started at Moreland and in my garage, Spencer Hanson, placed third in PennyPlane behind only Steve Brown and Bill Leppard. Spencer also was selected last year to attend an EAA boot camp and gave an excellent presentation this spring to the local sponsoring chapter.

In fall 2008 Tim entered University of California at Irvine to study Aero and Mechanical Engineering (double major). Anjaney Kottapalli is in his second year at MIT in Aero Engineering and had a summer job at the Lockheed "Skunk Works." Spencer is finishing up at the very technical Lick-Wilmerding High School and I was privileged to write a letter of recommendation for him to my alma mater, where he expects to become an engineer.

Come on down to Moreland – we are there from 4 to 8 or 9 PM every Sunday. Bring an airplane (indoor or outdoor) to show to the kids. Be sure you are on Gary’s e-mail list so if we have to cancel a meeting you will get the notice. One wall of the building is waiting for funding for repairs so we don’t know when that might happen, but the existing patches are not a problem for us.