We had good weather on Wednesday and were flying from the southern edge of the AMA site.\u00a0 It was a light schedule for me and my practice is to fly my endurance ships right away in the morning when the weather is calm.\u00a0 It was OT Stick day and I launched my trusty Wanderer just as I had the week before in NY.\u00a0 Wow, something was wrong.\u00a0 It was stalling on the way up and the glide was not right.\u00a0 My time just exceeded 2 minutes by a couple of seconds.\u00a0 Now the stress sets in.\u00a0 My Wanderer is good for maxing out – but not in this condition.\u00a0 If I wanted to win the event, I need to fix this – but how, it wasn’t flying correctly.<\/p>\n
I made some thrust changes and did another flight.\u00a0 I put up another crappy flight that was longer than 2 minutes.\u00a0 I got lucky but needed reliability to return to me.\u00a0 A few test flights and thrust adjustments and it dawned on me – if the glide is bad, why am I messing with thrust!\u00a0 I examined the tail – all was good.\u00a0 So I looked at the wing.\u00a0 I had used a 1\/16″ square hard balsa shim on the trailing edge to set the glide.\u00a0 It was compressed.\u00a0 I added a strip of 1\/64″ plywood – now I had to reset the thrust – some idiot had messed with it.<\/p>\n
I did a couple more test flights and called for an official flight.\u00a0 It boomed up with Wally Farrell’s Gollywock close behind.\u00a0 I always set my fuse long because I am not sure were 2 minutes is exactly.\u00a0 My plane got higher and higher.\u00a0 and finally – around 3.5 minutes the DT went off and it settled into a quick and flat descent.\u00a0 Wally had DT’d also but was gliding.\u00a0 I was following on my chase bike and decided that if my plane would be landing on the field, I would chase his, since it looked like it was going towards some trees.<\/p>\n
Mine landed in a tree on the edge of the property.\u00a0 I noted which one and took off to find Wally’s plane.\u00a0 I was sure it had gone behind the residential property and went to look.\u00a0 it wasn’t in the open grass behind and I couldn’t find it quickly in the corn.\u00a0 I retrieved my model and we discussed how and where to look for his plane.\u00a0 Wally, his wife Julie, and I went to look on the residential property and in the corn.\u00a0 We couldn’t find it and decided to return later after Wally was done flying.\u00a0 Pat Murray and I did find it in the afternoon – in the corn.<\/p>\n
At the end of the contest, we had a 6-person fly-off in OT Stick – six people maxed out.\u00a0 We agreed on a 15 minute launch window with high time winning the event.\u00a0 Five of us put up long flights and one person had a DT malfunction.\u00a0 The five successful flights were within 20 seconds or so in length – a very close contest and a lot of fun.<\/p>\n THURSDAY<\/strong><\/p>\n Thursday’s forecast promised rain.\u00a0 It wasn’t constant rain, but the morning was wet with sprinkles, drizzle and light showers off an on until noon or so.\u00a0 Since the forecast was predicting worse later, we bumped the Mass Launches up to 9am and 10am for WWII and the Races.\u00a0 That left little time for my habitual Endurance launches.\u00a0 I worked on the Pepper right away for OT Fuselage.\u00a0 I did about 3 launch attempts before WWII – all with the same result:\u00a0 low level with a bank to the right immediately after ROG into the wet grass.\u00a0 It takes time to get ROG models to fly right.\u00a0 First get them to fly (like I had two days before) and then get the table launch trimmed out.\u00a0 This is a new plane and I just didn’t have time for the ROG part this event – the Pepper had to be set aside.<\/p>\n It was time for WWII.\u00a0 The air was heavy with humidity – it wasn’t raining, but it had before and would after.\u00a0 There were at least six of us flying in that combat.\u00a0 Due to the treat of imminent rain, the rounds were cut to two rounds at the CD’s discretion.\u00a0 Two would be eliminated in the first round.\u00a0 The first eliminated was Wally Farrell when his Hellcat took a bad turn on launch and hit Pat Murray in the head. Ouch.\u00a0 This was followed shortly by Marty Richey’s great-looking Zero hitting the drink (wet grass).\u00a0 My Judy had a very stable flight and would join Winn Moore’s Tony, Pat Murray’s Avenger, and Don DeLoach’s Corsair.\u00a0 We were doing self-timing, that is, we start the stopwatches on command before the launch command, launch, then stop when our plane is down and provide the times to the CD.\u00a0 The Tony went down early.\u00a0 The Avenger and the Judy headed north and the Corsair headed to the east.\u00a0 As Pat and I chased, mine was in a very stable flight and glide slope.\u00a0 Pat had got into a porpoising motion, but it was going to be close.\u00a0 He and I saw that my Judy came down about 8 seconds after his Avenger.\u00a0 We returned and turned in the times and waited for Don’s return.\u00a0 Don reported the exact same seconds as Pat – I had won – AND beat Don DeLoach in WWII Combat!<\/p>\n Embryo took place on Thursday and I had to get some times in on my Defending Champion, the Bad Axe.\u00a0 I put up a max and dropped the second one by 10 seconds or so and then maxed the third flight – all in the misty drizzle.\u00a0 Those times were much like my 2016 performance and I had to wait the rest of the day for other flyers.\u00a0 The afternoon got better and we saw some sunshine.\u00a0 We had to move to another part of the field due to shifting winds.\u00a0 I had left the door open and now had to wait as flyer after flyer had a chance at my times.\u00a0 In the end, I don’t think anyone had more than one max, let alone coming as close to maxing out as I did – and they had nicer weather!\u00a0 The Bad Axe repeats as AMA National Embryo Champion!<\/p>\n OT Fuselage was still open.\u00a0 Since there was no 2-Bit at the AMA Nats, I could fly my King Harry – a consistent performer, in OT Fuselage.\u00a0 Again, I did this in the wet morning and I maxed out.\u00a0 And again, at the end of the day we had four people that had maxed in OT Fuselage.\u00a0 We nearly had five, but Wally Farrell waited all day to log his flights.\u00a0 He maxed once with his Jimmie Allen Sky Raider and send up another – it went WAY up and started drifting to the north east.\u00a0 I chased after, catching up to him and Julie in a golf cart.\u00a0 As we watched on the extreme norther boundary of the field, up against, a corn field, I asked why it hadn’t come down yet.\u00a0 He said the DT must have failed.\u00a0 After 13 1\/2 minutes, we saw it come down in front of trees far away.\u00a0 We returned and he was going to get in his car and look for it.\u00a0 He was told he had to return and get a 3rd flight by 5pm to qualify for the fly-off – and it was 4:30.\u00a0 He set off but returned within 15 minutes without his model.<\/p>\n So at the end of the contest, we had a fly-off:\u00a0 Pat Murray (Jabberwock), Don DeLoach (Flying Aces Moth), Winn Moore (King Harry), and me (King Harry). \u00a0 Notice that all of the contenders except the Jabberwock are smaller planes, eligible for 2-Bit.\u00a0 Even Wally’s Skyraider was a 2-Bit.\u00a0 As we started to prepare, the day’s last rain showed up.\u00a0 We were on the west edge of the field and with the rain, the wind shifted to the west.\u00a0 The four of us wound up and rode out to the mid-point of the field and agreed this would result in four models in the corn, so we rode even farther east.\u00a0 We launched in the rain with soaked planes and Don’s Moth went straight up – he has a tremendous motor in that model.\u00a0 Pat went west and Winn and I went south west at moderate height.\u00a0 Mine was so wet it couldn’t climb like normal.\u00a0 Pat went down, Winn beat me by a couple of seconds, and Don flew to the very south edge of the field, winning another event.\u00a0 All of us were over 2 minutes again.<\/p>\n FRIDAY<\/strong><\/p>\n Friday was scheduled to be windy and it was.\u00a0 I tried to fly my Turbo Goose, but it was just too windy for an untrimmed plane.\u00a0 I didn’t risk damage to my B-52, so I didn’t fly Scale.\u00a0 I did fly Jet Cat with my little Ohka, broke 30 seconds once, but couldn’t string together enough to get into the top three.<\/p>\n All that was left was to defend my 2012-2016 string of Peanut Championships.\u00a0 I had my venerable Pegna P.C.1 that isn’t afraid of a little wind.\u00a0 Or so I thought.\u00a0 I tried for two officials and got 36 seconds each time.\u00a0 A test flight with a new motor hit 1:06 so I was ready.\u00a0 I logged a 58 second official third flight.<\/p>\n If you remember, I challenged everyone to bring a Peanut out to the AMA Nats and challenge my string.\u00a0 We had several – one of which was Wally Farrell.\u00a0 At Geneseo, he said he needed to get with me to talk about Peanuts so he can get better at flying them.\u00a0 If you’ve seen Wally fly, you might be scratching your head now – I was.\u00a0 He brought an immaculate Peanut Wittman Buster Goodyear racer.\u00a0 he put in a 117 second flight, but couldn’t leave that alone, and put up another flight – and lost his plane in a fly-away.\u00a0 But he is the NEW AMA Nats Peanut Champion and I settled for second place.<\/p>\n WRAP-UP<\/strong><\/p>\n For the most part, we had a good contest.\u00a0 We found a couple of our models in the corn and only broke a minimal number of models.\u00a0 Our little group for friends did have out down moments:\u00a0 Pat Murray suffered a flat tire on the FAC trailer and we had to change that after sunset when we discovered it.\u00a0 Don slipped on his motor bike on the wet grass Thursday, caught the bike, but laid the hot exhaust on his calf.\u00a0 It sure looked like a second or third degree burn as it blistered immediately.\u00a0 And right after my WWII victory, I realized that I lost my wallet.\u00a0 That was in the back of my mind the rest of the weekend and I’ve started the drudgery of cancelling and replacing the variety of cards that were lost.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A LONG story, but filled with fun and excitement! This year, the AMA Nats were the week after the FAC non-Nats, so some of us had to travel to New York and back and then to Muncie, practically with out … Continue reading ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/volareproducts.com\/new2024\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/WallyWock.jpg\")
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