The weather in the Chicago area was beautiful this weekend, 60's with a
clear blue sky and SW 5 to 10mph winds. Many pilots of the Chicago SOAR
club made it out to the Hampshire flying field on Sunday, and shared just a
terrific day. This type of weather is very unusual for this time of the year.
It was my first winch TD of the new year, many pilots were in the same
position. We carefully double checked out our models and took them up for
mellow test drives. My first flight of the year with my old friend the
Stork resulted with a sky out with a very pretty brown and beige hawk. I
then went on to swap thermals back and forth with Jim McCarthy flying his
Hera. He still has the eerrry ability to locate my plane and tell me where
I should be in the sky while flying his own model in another part of the
sky, and keeping track of his teenage sons on the field. (these kids are
going to be tough pilots to beat someday soon) My 10 minute (F3J) timer
went off somewhere early in the flight, I forgot to look at the clock when
I landed, huge SEG.
I was trying to coax Steve Meyer into some winch flying, but he was digging
the HLG and the high energy air. He eventually pulled out his Super V and
specked it out a few times, but I never did fly the two HLG's I brought
out. 8-)
Don Smith was tweaking his setup on the Emerald, Tom Kallevang arrived a
little later and flew Jim's Hera a bit. Weylan Wang had his Thermal Eagle
out, launching it like it was a molded ship... (can you say wing flex) 8-)
Pilots kept arriving... Bill Wingstedt shows up with his brand new Sharon,
and took his first several flights on this model. Very impressive, that
model has a nice zoom for its size. Flew right off the board as they say,
he kind of smiled and mentioned something about Richard (Grandpa) Burnowski
not seeing how good it was. We skied the Sharon and the Stork out together
several times, the Sharon looks good in the air.
Karl Miller showed up with his Psyko 3 molded and a new electric powered
aerial photography model. I can't wait to see those pictures, he even flew
over the Stork when I was at about 200' foot and took a picture, I hope it
turned out.
The thermals were great, even though there was not a cloud in the sky. I
think there were 5 or 6 of us skied out at once, and that is with just one
winch! High energy air, big lift or big sink, and nothing in between.
I mentioned to Weylan that I had my digital camera with me, and he had his
so he took a grabbed both cameras and took a bunch of good pictures. He
has put them on his web site with thumbnails. There is a cool shot of Bill
Wingstedt's new Sharon on it's maiden launch... (hey that's me throwing
it). 8-)
http://24.29.192.224/0003\000305\index.htm
Have a look, we had fun!
Jim
Downers Grove, IL
ICQ 6997780
Visit my R/C Soaring Page at http://www.mcs.net/~bacuslab/soaring.html
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