(intended as plain text...hope it comes through like that...) I only flew in F3J this year and it was a blast. I love the 2 day format. Once again, it was proved to me that you learn more from your bad flights than your good ones. Thanks to all who gave me a hand retrieving my toys. I was sitting pretty until the beans ate my plane...twice. Worst thing I probably did was save my round 6 flight from about 50 feet because it made me think I could do it again. .333 is a good batting average but in soaring it results in forays out into beanfields & corn. The first out landing was pretty tame. Ben Roberto go a line on it and Sheldon retrieves anything that falls from the sky, chutes, planes...you name it, he'll have somebody roll up to it with a golf cart and pick it up. The next out landing was a bit more challenging. Tom Broeski stepped right up and helped me with a ride to where we thought my plane was. What a hopeless feeling to get where you think you should be and be faced with the sound of corn growing ever taller. After standing on Tom's car for a while, it was pretty clear we'd need to do something more. Having heard that Daryl had flown in, I approached him with the idea of doing an overflight. He thought about the details of fueling up the plane and then readily agreed. We'd just have to wait until the comps were over as he was in the flyoffs. In the meantime I learned of several other planes the crops had eaten and as it happened, even Daryl's plane met it's fate. As soon as the flyoffs were over, we hopped in Sheldon's truck and drove up to Daryl's Lancair. After rearranging a few things and inserting ourselves, Daryl asked if anybody gets airsick and then warned us "It's gonna get hot in here, guys". He was right. It's about like getting into your car that's been sitting in the sun on a 90 degree day. Big deal, I've been hot before. We took off and headed over the field, our first pass revealed a yellow escape perched just about dead center in the corn and a red Icon laying upside down in the beans. Then we looked around for Daryl's Sharon and Phil Barnes plane. It seems they have been fully digested by the crops...Daryl asked how we were doing and I admitted to feeling a bit queasy. It seems that the heat, the headphones, the high bank turns, the vibration, the fluids I'd been drinking all day and the ribs I had the night before had all converged in a massive conspiracy to make me ralph. It was everything I could do to keep Daryl's plane clean. It was my proudest accomplishment, keeping the contents of my stomach where they belonged. After we landed, I stabilized over the next few minutes and all was well. I got my plane and informed a search party what we had seen. Having snagged my Icon, which was unscathed, I thought about meeting Rich and Karl for dinner, but the siren call of home beckoned and I thought my best interests would be served by heading in that direction. Well, this has gone on long enough, thanks to all for a great NATS experience...
Bill Wingstedt 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
