August Fun Fly

He has some health issues that have caused him to cut back his modeling activities and so I volunteered my services. After the great time everyone had last year at Terry’s fun fly, it was a daunting task.

The August weather did not cooperate with us very well. On Friday, when the e-mail reminder went out, the forecast winds were 15-25. However, the forecast was wrong -- I don’t believe the winds ever exceeded 20 mph. We had pretty good attendance, even in the wind, but not too many competitors. Bob Olson, Ken Gatzke, Gene Jobgen and Clancy Kingsbury defied the quartering wind and took to the air. I planned to use my LA Racer in the competition, but a failing receiver kept me from joining the fun.

The four competed in 3 events. The first was a fast pass, slow pass. We timed the their flight across the length of the field on two passes -- one the fasted they could do and the next the slowest. With all the wind, that turned out to be interesting. The slow passes were all above 25 seconds to traverse distance between Ken Corrin and Doc McGuigan who were our runway markers. The fast passes, downwind were the similarly skewed -- only a couple of seconds. The only casualty of the event occurred on a slow pass when the switch failed on Bob Olson’s profile and he lost it just outside the perimeter fence. After all four competitors flew, we took the difference between the two passes and added in a roll of the dice to get the scores for each flight. Ken Gatzke won this event and was presented with a brand new model airplane kit as a prize.

The second event was the two minute flight. Each contestant had to take off and fly for two minutes without the aid of a timer. The score was the number of seconds away from 2 minutes. Once again each competitor had a roll of the dice added to his score. Gene Jobgen won this event handily when his timed flight was only .6 of a second less than 2 minutes.

The third event was a timed event for the completion of 4 maneuvers - a loop, roll, Immelman and two turn spin. The lowest time plus the dice roll was the winner and once again Gene Jobgen was the winner. He was awarded two brand new model airplane kits as his prizes.

For the grand prize, a discount certificate from Smart-Fly, all the competitors rolled the dice for high score. Gene and Ken had extra rolls for each of the events they won. Ken Gatzke was the lucky winner by rolling an 8 with this second attempt.

With the wind, the sport flying was at a minimum and when the donuts ran out about 10 AM, people started packing up and going home. We all hope Terry will be back next year as CD. His fun fly is still the benchmark to beat, but we had fun while laughing in the face of natures uncertainties. Hope to see you all there next year. (We have more fabulous prizes).

Thanks to all those who helped out and thanks to Ken Corrin for all the great pictures.