Got up in the early hours Saturday and made it to the park with 30 minutes easy before things started. Late Friday I put a bladder together and my Combat plane and motor actually worked, so I entered combat, Scale Race II and Big Goodyear/Foxberg and Intermediate for today.
Combat worked pretty well, for me. I haven't done anything with combat for 2 years, and I managed to trim a little tail on the first flight. But the second flight, my Norvel 25 really came into it's own and I had a tiger by the tail AND a more than competent pilot. After a minute of evading and catching up, I saw my shot and I took it, and ran right through the other guys plane. It was pretty cool, but I didn't win anything. Worse off, on startup I got in the air first and then my opponent realized he forgot to tie on a streamer. So after running out my fuel and starting again HE got in the air first. So he won the match on the restart, hmmmmmmmm. Well, won one, lost one and made the cut, but I was fortunately out of planes so I retire with a win and controversy. Ohhhh man can I make THAT work for story telling for at least a year.
"Yea, I coulda been somebody, but I WAS ROBBED!!!!" Ya man, that's cool. Didn't get to fly against Catdaddy, but I hit on his most pleasant wife who comes to the events with him, while he was in the circle. Rick's 3 shades of cool and took 2nd in Beginner stunt today. Ooops, sorry, forgot I wasn't going to talk about someone else unless it made ME look good.
Midway through combat, I was called over to Class II Scale Race, you know, Fox 15 bbrc scale racers, cept my buddy is doing pretty good with a plane bearing Norvel up against 'breathed upon' Foxes. I only tapped a field box with my wingtip this time instead of rammin it home with the spinner. I think the box was on the circle, but anyways didn't have any problems other than a faulty shutoff and siphoning that made me use half a gallon of fuel. I got LOTS of landing practice, and told how to walk around the center of the circle, not that white line on the outside. I'll get better.
In Big Goodyear (Foxberg, whatever) the only thing I handed to BigIron was the trophy. Even that's a lie cuzz they wouldn't let me touch it! My needle wouldn't stay set and spending most of the time very rich, but when it ran, it kept up alright. Then again, it only did that for several laps. It stopped un-expectantly once and I didn't get it back to the pits, but the rest of the time I did.
The food Saturday was great and we retired to the hotel after the picnic ready to fall in bed and sleep away.
Sunday we hit the field and I helped out several Beginners then Linda Gleason told me to get my buns over to the circle, I was up. Got everything out, pull tested, bumped and signaled. Then about a minute later as I rotated the ARF Nobler back on it's feet I got around to the takeoff. This happened when I pitted in Big Goodyear too. 1 minute start was one flip, so was 30 seconds. At go, I sat there and flipped for 30 seconds. My takeoff leaped in the air thanks to the motor going lean and I thought my bad practice. Then up and over in the wingover and I hit the inverted bottom very satisfactorily at 5 feet. But then my plane jumped down about 3 of that 5 feet. THAT started to concern me. Did I do that? I recovered and a finished out the maneuver shaken not stirred and went into some decent enough loops inside, little screwy outside and square insides were also decent. On the first outside squares however, it jumped towards the ground again. The second outside square I made the classic D shape as now I was really wondering about the practice I’d missed. My engine had decided to switch to a nice fat 4 stroke but I still had plenty of power. I really didn't want to work on both ends of the speed envelope. Back around to the horizontals with no problems through 3/4ths of the squares eights. ON the second outside square though it dropped 5 of the 5 feet and slid for quite a bit. There I was in the center of the circle giving full down and my plane wasn't going up towards the intersection like it was supposed to. I catch on rather slow!
Well, I don't know what happened yet, but I suspect a catch in my control system. This may have possibly been introduced in the rather quick stop that took the motor mounts out 2 weeks ago.
I was through, no runs, no hits and well, ok, a couple of errors.
Two beautiful days in Wichita. Low 80's, low winds, just beautiful for normally windy Wichita.
There it is. Hopefully BigIron well show up with the stats for all the events. He got 2nd in Big Goodyear, but then again. There I go talking about someone else's achievements.
Clean
From somewhere near Parkville, Mo.
William Crane
AMA 6733
