August 2015 Pilot of the Month: Herb Kurlan, San Francisco, CA

Hello everyone! I haven’t written for the K-Factor since I termed out as District 7 VP in the late 90’s. Shortly after that, I took a prolonged break from flying to raise kids and work. Although I started flying when I was 11 years old and really enjoyed flying control line planes and early RC, I didn’t start flying pattern until I got interested after a 25-year break.

As a competitive person I worked hard at learning to fly and entered my first contest in Napa in the Novice class. I quickly made friends with some of the other fliers and was lucky to meet Roy and Dorothy Speights. Roy was an avid competitor but more importantly, he was a great teacher and was generous with his time helping me to learn pattern. Over the next few years, I moved from Novice to FAI. Benefitting from Roy’s motor home carrying my planes around the country, I went to the Nats in Muncie and flew in the team trials in Florida and Indiana.

All of this was great fun, but I could never get my two sons or daughter interested and decided I would stop flying to spend more time in their activities. I stayed in touch with Derek Koopowitz and Adrian Wong, but didn’t get back into flying actively until a year and a half ago. I liked the progress made in pattern, particularly the move to electric and the quality of the ARFs. I didn’t want to jump back in to full two-meter planes and with help from my new credit card pal Mike Mueller at F3A Unlimited, a BJ Craft Monologue 110 size arrived at my front door in just a few days. I spoke to Derek and Mike for a quick tutorial and had the plane ready to fly pretty quickly. Most things came back on a very rough basis, so I headed out to a one-day contest to meet up with old friends and get back into competition. I decided to fly Masters, as the patterns were much harder than they were years ago, and it was plenty challenging.

Needless to say, I was back in with both feet and quickly moved back into a two-meter plane. I started with a Nuance and it was a great plane for the Masters class. That was fine, until one day I was out practicing when Derek asked Adrian and I if we wanted to go with him and fly in an FAI event in Thailand. Well that sure made sense to me so I said I’ll go. Now I just had to learn the P15 sequence. The Thailand trip was great fun and seeing the Japan fliers particularly Onda-san made for a great experience. I was also happy that, although I had some mechanical issues, I did beat the North Korean team. It was very strange seeing them there, as I never expected them to be competing in this event.

When I returned from Thailand, I continued in FAI as we have a unique structure here in District 7 with a Masters Silver Class where we fly P15. I also started to experiment with a Contra Drive as I liked the characteristics of this motor. This includes elimination of right thrust and the braking ability of the two props. As a fan of BJ and his planes, I heard about the Inspire which was a new design by BJ for the Contra Drive. I convinced BJ to send me the prototype, so I could take it to the Nats and get it exposed to the U. S. market. I received the plane a week before the Nats after BJ had flown it a few times and shipped it to me. I got it trimmed out pretty well; lucky for me, the plane flies very well, but being a team trial year, the field was very tough. I did judge the FAI finals and having watched the top Japanese Fliers and then seeing Andrew, Jason and Brett in action, the U.S. has a great and very competitive team!

This year, I moved back into Masters as the patterns now being developed for this class are very well thought out and offer good challenges with just the right amount of difficulty. The inclusion of more knife edge with a small dose of integrated rolls are great additions. Although I do not think that Masters should be as difficult as FAI, it should keep pace and take advantage of the capabilities of the latest pattern planes and offer challenges to the participants. I’m looking forward to flying Masters this year at the Nats, as it is always a great event. Also, with the new format of the Nats, this year I can judge the FAI finals as well which I really enjoy.