It has been a while since I’ve written an R/C related post, so I thought that I would take the time to remedy that situation.

The birds had begun to migrate north so I knew that flying season was quickly approaching! (Jay claims that they were migrating up from the basement, but I still say that our family room is more of a staging area for his planes than an actual living space…)

There have been a few fun fly’s over the winter (I didn’t attend any of them because it seemed like either I was already busy or sick), so this past weekend was the first real time of flying for me. Jay and I decided to head up to the field and we were happy to see that a few of the guys decided to show up, too.

We had a beautiful day. The field was quite wet still, but that was to be expected since we’d had rain earlier in the week. There wasn’t any standing water so floats were not needed.

Jay had put his FPV gear on the Sky Surfer that he bought for this single purpose and then took to the skies. It was so neat! Everybody took a turn with the goggles and Jay was tickled pink. He even had a camera on his F16 jet and took me for a ride on that. It was so much fun!

The most interesting event of the evening, however, involved our windsock. Our flying field is located next to an operating private runway. The people who own it used to fly gliders a lot, but as they have gotten older this activity has slowed down for them. They still maintain the runway and have the windsock out there just in case.

Well, one of the guys was maidening a brand new Piper Cub that he had purchased and assembled over the winter. I was watching as he took off and started the turn around the field. I was holding my breath because it looked like he was having some issues as he was turning. Just as I thought that all was good….

He ran into the windsock! The prop got tangled in the sock and came to a grinding halt. He even bent the pole! With a Styrofoam airplane! lol

I think that this is a first for our club.

At our annual club dinner we give away an award to the person with the most spectacular crash each year. I think that this guy already has that award all sewn up. This is going to be a tough one to beat!

The good news is that after they retrieved it (and bent the pole back into shape) there wasn’t too much damage. Some glue is definitely needed, along with a new wing strut, but this bird will definitely fly again. What a lucky Cub!

Not all foam airframes have been so lucky this year. This was the F16 that Jay had put the camera on from earlier in this post. We took it out to his aunt’s camp for the Memorial Day picnic where he gave his family members ‘rides’ on the jet. They always look forward to seeing his airplanes fly.

This was the F16 that he put through the power lines at this same camp almost three years ago.

The following year he put this jet through that same exact power line…

It’s not a stretch of the imagination to believe that I now dread those power lines and am anxious the entire time he is flying at this particular place.

To be fair, it was not the power line that took out this year’s jet. Nope. It just suddenly exploded in midair. It was weird because he wasn’t pulling too hard on it or anything. Since he was giving ‘rides’ he was taking it easy (in Jay’s terms, at least). We were shocked when we saw the wing fly off and the fuselage drop to the ground. We were lucky in that it was on our end of the field (instead of way out at the other end where he was flying), so I ran out and made sure that everything was there and quickly unplugged the battery. It was as if the fuselage just gave up and separated. Jay said that when he was putting it together he thought that the Styrofoam looked a bit ‘punky’. The silly thing is that even though it cut short the flying time, everybody was happy. They had all had a chance to look through the goggles and then they even got to see the plane crash. What could be better?! I was happy that it hadn’t gone through the power line! Jay was informed that he has to rig a crash every year. Yikes!

I’m a bit curious to see how the rest of the flying season goes considering the way in which we’ve opened it! I will do my best to keep my camera at hand so that I can update you on all of the excitement as it happens!