The League for Electric Soaring has benefited from some good work by a number of District V and VIII fliers. Before I give you the news, let me give some background.

Several years ago when the L.E.S. concept was being discussed, I enlisted the help of almost everyone I could think of, and the L.E.S. Flight Achievement Program was the result. There was only one question on which there was no obvious consensus. This was a question of whether there should be some consideration for fliers using ferrite motors rather than cobalt.

A small majority thought there should be no distinction given to motor types and they presented a good argument. Consequently "cobalt" (rare-earth) or "ferrite" did not appear in the Flight Achievement Program.

However, over the years, I have heard from many sport fliers who use ferrite motors exclusively and they felt the L.E.S. tasks excluded them.

Another consideration is that the cost of non-ferrite motors has become more than a little expensive, especially for the grass-roots sport flier. I realize now that most of the original L.E.S. inputs came from competition fliers.

To broaden the appeal of the L.E.S. without compromising its integrity, it was decided to make some distinction in these two motor types. Before the L.E.S. was started, I had asked many fliers to give me some idea of how to merge these motor types in a common flight task. The responses were unusable because they were so varied.

Paul Perret, L.E.S. 003, recently had an electric fun-fly where the motor types were mixed in a limited motor run duration format. After each round, the scores and flights were considered and the motor run times adjusted with the intent of having both model types at nearly the same (apparent) altitude at the end of their powered climbs. This produced some very good information.

The next month, I had an electric fun-fly using the best information from Paul's fun-fly. A straight duration task was flown with cobalt motors running 45 seconds and ferrite motors running 2 minutes. The flight times began when the motors were turned off. (As is done in the L.E.S. Flight Achievement Program.) The scores for the two motors were well-mixed -neither appeared to be favored. These run-times will be incorporated into the L.E.S. Flight Achievement Program.

Enclosed is a label which is to be applied at the bottom back side of your Flight Achievement Program Voucher. Put an "X" through the original Section III. Please notify anyone for whom you have copied your voucher.

The L.E.S. vouchers are being completed in 19 states plus Scotland and England.

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