With the help of Dean Gradwell from XCSoaring, we are able to offer free delivery of scale gliders to the 2006 AMA Convention in Ontario, California, held from January to 13-15, 2006. Please contact us at biz@shredair.com to make arrangements.

We have uploaded the photo album of this year's Equinox Electrics Event (EEE). This was our third time, and it was a charm. Check it out. Next year's 4th annual EEE will be on September 30th and October 1st 2006.

Those waiting for news on Schübeler’s BAE Hawk have to ask Santa for another stocking-load of patience. Schübeler has moved the DS-94 120-mm fan to the front burner, and production of this product is delayed due to some difficulty with the aluminum spinner. Once that's resolved, the Hawk will be next. At least we can be assured that every product leaving Schübeler's shop is as good as meticulous and precise manufacturing and unyielding quality control can make it.

Here is a reminder that ShredAir is uniquely qualified to obtain specialized RC products for which no US importer exists and/or whose low production and long waiting times make them unattractive to dealers.

Shown here are photos of the SRTL glider from Thomas Nothdurft Modelltechnik

The SRTL is a pure-bred high-performance glider for the slope.
After making sure no US dealer existed for the SRTL, ShredAir coordinated the import of 8 of these gliders, which otherwise would have been unavailable to US pilots. We may be willing and able to help with other performance products; let us know what you have in mind.

We are introducing Schübeler's DS94-DIA-3ph 120 mm carbon impeller for electric ducted fan models. The photo shows it in comparison to the DS51 and DS30 versions, which have 90 mm and 69 mm diameters respectively.

With a powerful motor such as the Lehner 2280/9D and a 12s Lipo pack, the DS94 produces over 17 lbs of thrust... that's turbine territory. The DS94 rotor accepts 8 mm shafts, but a special 5 mm version will be available upon request.

We will receive our first shipment of these 120 mm fans in November. Currently, there is a short waiting list, so please contact us if you're interested in this fan.

The photo shows the three fans in front of Brandon Vazquez' F35. Brendan scratch-built this plane from 3-views and photos. Brendan is 16 years old. His building skills are surpassed only by his flying skills, which he demonstrated at the recent Equinox Electric Event. He flew his own design "Halo" - also scratch-built - a small and fast EDF jet looking like the cute baby of a F-16/FA-18 marriage.

The third time truly was a charm: we had incredibly good weather for our 3rd annual Equinox Electric Event, and we figured out how to run this airshow/fun-fly mix efficiently. The airshow portions came off like greased lightning. Many thanks go to:

	the Fern Prairie Modelers allowing us to use their field for a weekend
	Jerry Holcomb for being the official CD
	all pilots whose participation made the event a success
	Yvonne and Daniel Schübeler for traveling from Germany and answering many EDF-related questions
	Barbara and Lenny Keer for making the trek from Colorado with 5 airplanes
	and certainly Brandon Vazquez for scratch-building high-performance EDF jets and giving us a taste of his talents.

Motors And Controllers
ShredAir is carrying NeuMotors competition motors, made in California. These are the 1506 for 7-cell F5B, the 1509 for 10-cell F5F, and 1512 for 16-cell FAI. These motors come with 10 gauge wires, because in a competition set-up, current draw exceeds 200 Amperes.

We're also happy to announce that we are adding the Castle Creations (CC) Phoenix 125 controller, made in Kansas, to our line. This controller happens to be the perfect match for all Neu competition motors.
And we already have the Lehner 6mm stecker connectors, made in Germany. When you combine these connectors with the CC controller and a Neu motor, you have a competition system of very high performance and very low resistance.
We have the expertise to support these high-end systems, and we will advise you regarding propellers and batteries matching the performance you seek.

Regarding Castle Creations controllers, we are also carrying the Phoenix 85HV. This controller is excellent for our electric ducted fan (EDF) applications. It works flawlessly and efficiently with all Lehner motors we recommend for the Schübeler ducted fan products.

And speaking of Schübeler, he is testing various Neu motors in his fans. We're confident that soon, we can recommend – and stock – a variety of Neu motors for our line of Schübeler fans.

By the way, Schübeler's fans are being copied mercilessly. By this we mean the ones which are an obvious forgery, because they look like Schübeler's products. Reading online about these blatant rip-offs, and the problems associated with them, leaves us dismayed at how people are lured with cheap plastic junk. If at least it were recyclable…
Schübeler maintains a small network of authorized dealers. In North America, ShredAir and Morris Brady are the only dealers.

Oregon F5B Contest
Our first 2-day national F5B contest is on the books. We snagged on some thorns, but thanks to the efforts of CD Don Pesznecker and a handful of dedicated volunteers, we still came out smelling like a rose.

Initially, we had decided to fly a staggered contest, where a pair of pilots are in the air at one time, the second one launching within a minute of the first one completing the distance task. With a 5-minute duration task, this works well in theory. But we had too few volunteers and the wrong wind direction to make this work, and the first round took 2 hours and was unnecessarily stressful.

FAI contests require a 10-minute duration task. That works if you have an army of volunteers and enough room for 3 landing circles. We had neither and chose to fly one-by-one with a 2-minute duration task. This is reasonable, because F5B contests are won and lost in the distance and landing tasks; a long duration task does little more than advance the sale of caffeinated drinks.

2005 Equinox Electrics
The Equinox Electric Event (EEE) is an innovative venue for electric power at the cutting edge. Pictured is a working counter-rotating prop setup, by a modeler who said he'll attend the upcoming EEE.

While the EEE is a fun-fly, we have "airshow" time slots where spectacular aircraft are flown one-by-one with commentary.

Among others, this year's line-up will include large scale-aircraft, high-powered electric gliders accelerating 0-130 mph in 4 seconds, and scale electric ducted fan jets with retractable landing gear and vertical performance.

Starting immediately, ShredAir is importing Schübeler ducted fan products; CNC Modellbautechnik kits; and accessories from Freudenthaler (RFM), Lehner (LMT), Reisenauer, and Meyer (HM). We also offer "domestic" products by Airtronics, Castle Creations, NeuMotors, and our ChPS and hats, of course.

Most of our F3B/F/J and F5B/F/J planes are now available in the US by Bob Breaux of SoaringUSA. Bob is handling Freudenthaler (Surprise), Heinrich (Stork-2 Pro, VIP), and Jesina (Stratos and Tsunami) models.We are working with SoaringUSA and the manufacturers on the smoothest possible transfer of these product lines. We are confident that SoaringUSA is a capable representative of these excellent models, which neatly complement their existing and expanding lines of model airplanes.

Why did this happen? Here are some of the big reasons: high cost of imported quality products, high freight costs, an increasing flood of lower-cost products, and a consumer affinity for low-cost items. Almost all top planes are made in Europe, and we need to pay for them in Euros. The weak US Dollar value against the Euro has priced the top-end products out of range for casual RC pilots. Thus, demand has declined to the point where exclusively stocking a large variety of high-end products has become infeasible economically.

We were faced with either expanding our business to include lower-cost products, or to shut down completely, or to "hand over" our high-end models to an established, respected, and capable business; we chose the third option. This way, the really good planes remain available for those who want them, and in SoaringUSA we believe to have found a business that can step up to the plate in representing and supporting these products.

When we started ShredAir six years ago, European-made high-performance models were hardly available and often represented incompetently. We certainly played a lead role in changing that, and we are really happy about this. One of our objectives has always been to provide access for RC pilots to quality performance products, and we have accomplished this for the past 6 years.

At the same time, we were somewhat naive to believe that once people saw the quality of our products and experienced their performance, they'd line up in droves, leaving behind forever the low-quality products cluttering Mainstream RC. Well, it was time for us to wake up to the Wal-Mart reality...But just because we can't beat the rising "the-cheaper-the-better" tide doesn't mean we have to join it. So, it is time for us to step aside, focus on fewer products, and look for other ways to be useful in the RC community.

Already, our ability to work with makers of exclusive models is bringing unique airframes into the hands of enthusiasts. Also, we'll continue to be a voice promoting performance products, as demonstrated by our two events, the Tri-Slope Six-Pack and the Equinox Electrics. Additionally, we're looking forward to youth activities, such as working with the Yankee Air Pirates Aeronautical Institute, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to introducing young people to all forms of aviation.

Kids Trading Keyboards for Transmitters

The Yankee Air Pirates Aeronautical Institute is a non-profit organization devoted to teaching all forms of RC flying to youngsters. Their inaugural event is May 7th at the Malin Airport, which is located about 20 miles southeast of Klamath Falls in Oregon on the border with California.

This event features RC instruction for beginners with occasional demos by experienced pilots.The mission and format inspired us to assemble a "performance trainer" (for lack of a better term), a full-house electric powered glider with which anyone can learn how to fly, given competent instruction.We're looking forward to being part not only of the event but of the effort this Institute is putting forth.

For more information contact:

Dan Geller at and Stewart Tittle at

April 30/May 1 is the annual Celebration of Silent Flight in Washougal, Washington State. Hosted by the Fern Prairie Modelers, this is a fun-fly for gliders and electric-powered models, which have the field to themselves from 8AM to 3PM on both days. Fee is a bargain at $5 for both days.

On May 7, 2005, the Yankee Air Pirate Aeronautical Institute has its inaugural 1-day event at the Malin Airport. The Institute is a non-profit, educational organization with the goal of introducing youngsters to all forms of aeronautics. The event program emphasizes buddy-box air time for newcomers, interspersed with hourly demos by advanced aeronauts. We'll publish details here as they become available.
The Malin Airport is located about 25 miles south-east of Klamath Falls, OR, along State Line Road with California.

August 20/21 is the traditional date for the slope fun fly at Cape Blanco, and we are holding it again at that time. The "parents" of this event, Monica and Mike Shaw, have handed over the reigns, and the new leadership is getting organized. We'll keep you posted as details about this AMA-sanctioned event emerge. A heart-felt Thank You! goes to Monica and Mike for their tireless initiative, which helped form a constructive and friendly relationship with the Oregon State Parks department.

During our recent visit, we were lucky to fly at several slopes in the Andes north of Bogotá and around Medellín, with my favorite site being right down-town Medellín at Cerro El Volador, "the Hill of the Flyer." We will have an album up about this trip in a few weeks. Meanwhile, here are a few photos.

Kits will be available either with flaps and retracts or without. They will be very complete and ready for RC gear and drive train installation. Kit price is projected to start at 700 Euros for the version without flaps and retracts. Our waiting list for this hand-built plane is currently 14 models long and stretches into 2006. If you're in North America, and you want one of these models, please e-mail us.

This EDF jet owes its existence to Swiss pilot Benedikt von Arx. He scratch-built the initial model, and he also has a pre-production molded version. In Schübeler, he found the ideal manufacturer "his" plane. By April, we will add a detailed page to our web site.

We also will eliminate the expense of credit card payments; so we're reverting to payment by money order or cashiers check.

Despite these facts, most products on our web site will remain available as a special order. This was largely the case in 2004 also, and it has worked quite well. The market for our high-end models has always been small, but there remains demand for our high-quality products. To the committed and patient modeler, the above changes are but a minor nuisance.

Of course, we will continue have on hand spare hardware for our models, so that the loss of a joiner, bolt, or horn does not ground the model for weeks.

We've had to change our e-mail address to as shown in the footer of every page. We were overwhelmed by spam e-mails, and the techies tell us this is due to so called "spider" programs which search web sites for e-mail addresses and add them to spam mailing lists. We will add a contact form to our web site shortly.

ShredAir is importing the new LMT 6-mm Stecker, shown here in comparison with the popular 4-mm Stecker. The LMT 6 are for high-current applications such as F5B gliders and hotliners. These 6-mm Stecker have by far the lowest resistance of any connectors currently available: 0.03 milli-Ohm. The connectors are available for $25.00 for 10 pieces (mix and match males and females). Discounts are available for quantities over 200 pieces.

The first batch of new 69-mm DS30-DIA-3ph ducted fan by Schübeler Jetmodell Systeme is sold out, but more are on their way. This amazing little unit weighs a mere ounce, 28.5g to be exact.

With the DS30, we now offer 4 Schübeler fans:

69 mm
DS30-DIA fiberglass fan
DS30-DIA-3ph carbon fiber fan
90 mm
DS51-DIA fiberglass fan
DS51-DIA-3ph carbon fiber fan

Exact pricing to be determined; see next story below.

One way to avoid escalating import costs is to look for domestically manufactured products. Steve Neu of NeuMotors in San Diego is now producing competition grade brushless motors for model aircraft. General distribution of the motors is through Steve Belknap of Diversity Model Aircraft.

ShredAir will stock the geared motors for F5B, LMR and hotliner applications. Geared motors are available for 7-, 10-, 16, and 24-cell application. The photos show the 24- and 10-cell motors.