This weekend we spent a LOT of time out at the flying field. There was a Fun Fly on Saturday, and then Sunday and Monday evenings were spent up there. I don’t mind it because this was Jay’s last weekend on shut down so he won’t have the opportunity to do this for the rest of the flying season. He works hard enough during the week that I want to make his vacation time as fun as possible.

Most people probably think that I’m just going with Jay to appease him, or suck up to him. You would be wrong. I really enjoy the company of the other guys and watching the different skill levels as they fly. Last night I was laying on the trailer, looking up at the sky, I thought that I was getting such a lovely view of the sky and the artistic and beautiful planes soaring through the sky. It was so relaxing and peaceful. It doesn’t get much better than that.

I did a lot of watching last night because I had my first crash. 😦  My poor LT did its very best, but my horrid landings were a bit too rough on the gear and the axle ended up ripping off of the bottom. It’s only balsa wood so it’s not like it was a HUGE force, but it was still upsetting to me. Jay spent his shut down last year building this plane for the air show that his club puts on, so I felt really bad that I had broken his plane. I have such a great boyfriend, though. Instead of being upset that he has to fix the plane he came over, gave me a kiss, and congratulated me on my first crash. Can you believe that?! I was told that I have the first one out of the way so I won’t be so nervous about it happening now. I don’t know about that…

There was a much more spectacular crash later that evening, though. I think that this is the right Alpha in this picture. Doug was flying out over the trees. Jay and I were sitting on the trailer chatting about something as we watched Doug fly. As we were watching we saw the wings rock, the plane was having some problems, and then it dipped below the tree line that surrounds the field. I could still hear the engine so I expected to see it come flying out into the clearing. The next thing we know we hear this huge CRACK!! It sounded like a shot gun going off! Doug looks at us with this horrified (or as horrified as his face can look… he’s not big on reactions) look on his face and asked, “Did I just hit a house??” Jay told him no, that he’d just hit a tree. I couldn’t hold back the laugh when relief washed over his face and he said, “Oh good!” That sentiment didn’t stick around for very long, however. It quickly turned to despair and pessimism as we trooped through the woods trying to find his plane. They eventually spotted it… at the top of a 40 foot tree! Normally Jay can climb the tree and get the plane out, but this tree didn’t have any way for him to get started up it. We marked the path and the tree, then headed back to the flying field. Poor Doug!

The guys like to fly until they can’t hardly see their planes in the sky. This was towards dusk when I took the picture of Jay’s Viperjet in the air. I didn’t ask him to do a slow pass, so you’ll just have to deal with the fuzzy jet. lol

Dusk flying really gives you a great opportunity for some neat pictures. The moon has been out fairly early this past week, so I was able to get a shot of an Alpha as it flew over near the moon. Isn’t that cool?

This is the latest F-16 that Jay has put together. He is powering it with an experimental set-up to see if he can get as much speed out of it using some different things as compared to what he usually uses. I don’t know all of the technical jargon for what he was trying to figure out with this set up. All I can tell you is that is screams past the jet with the stock power set-up.

When we had a beautiful moon out I asked Jay to attempt to fly slowly by so that I could take a picture. This was the best shot that I could get. It still looks pretty neat, so that’s okay. I think that if I could change one thing about the camera that I am using, I would want a longer zoom. There are some times that I would like a closer shot. Oh well. It’s still pretty neat.

The good news is that we managed to sell all of the combat foamies that Jay had purchased and assembled. We’re hoping that the guys get a chance to try flying them BEFORE the air show. We want to have combat with streamers in the morning, and then full-contact combat in the afternoon. I plan on taking a lot of pictures. Hopefully some of them will turn out nicely. 🙂