My Dad was one of very few human beings that was born in Taft "back when", in 1927 or thereabouts. I have heard a lot of tales about living in a tent, big cats trying to eat his little sister, Grandpa drilling the first hole deeper than a mile, and of course the legendary Kern Mesa Thermals. Dad says that he flew a lot of free flight very early in the morning. After the sun had been up an hour he packed everything up and went home. Why? When he first started he tried trimming out a few free flight planes after 8 AM. He lost 5 models one morning. He said that you could give a free flight a hand toss to check trim and watch the model disappear virtually every time. If your tool box wasn't nailed down it was probably going to be lost as well. Absolutely perfect conditions for XC, but devastating for a kid with a bunch of free flight planes and limited budget. XC is an acquired taste, like a triple fermented bottle conditioned ale. It takes a lot of effort and some heartache and failure to really appreciate it when it works right. Conditions must be right, equipment must be right, and the participants must be ready and have their heads in the right space to take advantage of the event. But when all of this happens it's magic without any equal. As far as "how high can you get?" You can get a LOT higher than anybody would believe. It's a Zen Thing that no instrumentation will ever capture. If you can see the stabs then you're not ready to get on course yet. If you think that you need to see the airplane to fly it then think less. happy trails - Rob G
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 2006 15:36:05 -0700 (PDT) From: Daryl Perkins <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], Randall Brust <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, soaring@airage.com Subject: Re: [RCSE] how high really Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> When I talk about being at 8500 ft... the stabs had long since disappeared, the wings were literally toothpicks, and were disappearing as well - the fuse was non-existent. That's how Joe consistently beat the pants off all the CC guys for all those years. The plane was always in the optimum position - right behind the tailgate of the truck, and he would only stop to thermal in a hat sucker, and he never let the model get much lower. Like I say... to be successful at cross country - "If you are EVER comfortable seeing the plane, you're NOT high enough..." At Taft, many years ago, I had to put in a time for Joe on Friday (I'd never flown cross country - Joe was out of town, and just needed a time and could make up whatever I lost the following 2 days). I was at the far turn in record time, I had the thermals for the ride home marked, and we were haulin' ass. That was right when I lost Wiley... Wiley did come home the following day unscathed(somebody found it about 7 miles off course), but I'll never hear the end of it... I've never really enjoyed cross country becasue of that experience. RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please note that subscribe and unsubscribe messages must be sent in text only format with MIME turned off. Email sent from web based email such as Hotmail and AOL are generally NOT in text format
