Sunday, October 2nd, the Indianapolis RC Modelers had our only float fly of the season on property owned by the family of one of our members… Mr. Roy Wilson. It is a beautiful setting and we had awesome weather for the event. Member, Corey Lucas called and we arranged to cook a few hot dogs as well… Great flying conditions, a beautiful setting, awesome weather and the company of many of my fellow club members and even lunch on the grill. In my experience you don’t get many days much more perfect than this!
First, I’ll show you the “Drone’s Eye” view of part of the event. The video shows Roy with his Son in law and grandson (Roy’s unchallenged assertion is that he is the cutest grandson anywhere… who am I to argue!). Roy is sharing the view from the on board camera as the video begins while George (our VP) looks on from behind. Down by the pond we see Steve Russell piloting his Apprentice while fellow member Gary Bow looks on and waves to the camera. Around 1:45 into the video I give you a 360 degree view of the area… the incoming truck and trailer is Corey arriving. Around 3:45 you get a view of Steve making a nice landing followed by a pass along the flight line at waters edge. Gene Crider and George are watching the flying action with Gene’s Tidewater sitting at his feet. Meanwhile John Pangburn is now chatting with Gary in the pit area. Around 4:45 we get back to Roy and the whole family including Nancy (Roy’s wife) and daughter Megan holding the new granddaughter in the Gator. From there we head back to the grass runway area and shut down. This was shot from my 350 QX with the CG01 camera.
Next is some video of taken from my Go Pro Session attached to the bottom of my Carbon Cub. This video starts with a bit of taxiing around the pond. If you watch around the 54 second mark you can see Steve out in his kayak retrieving an airplane that had flipped over on him. Around 1:30 we get to the first takeoff. I’m amazed how quickly the lens clears after a good dousing! There are a couple of good passes across the pond and around the surrounding areas of field and pasture. For a couple of the early passes you can see Steve still paddling around. I’m also amazed how water that has collected on the bottom of the wire spreader just hangs on throughout the flight! About the 6:30 time stamp I try to make a quick takeoff but when one float pops lose before the other (still water actually makes it tougher to maintain good control during landings and takeoffs as the floats seem to “stick”) the plane hops to one side and a nearby bush grabs the plane!! There was some broken foam on the horizontal stab as a result but nothing that can’t be fixed easily. After viewing this a couple times I realized that I picked up a rider when I hit the (I believe willow?) bush. If you look carefully around the 6:45 mark, you can see a praying mantis has been collected with the small branches. He only gets to stay aboard for about 40 seconds before I power up to taxi back and he gets drug overboard with most of the branches… or perhaps he meets the prop… it’s difficult to say.
In any case, I think he was the only one of the 20 or so folks that either flew or observed that didn’t enjoy themselves!
I didn’t get a chance to do much editing on these clips… moving and then your wife having heart surgery does tend to limit your time severely from doing the important stuff like enjoying your hobbies! (Joking cause she is doing well and resting here on the couch next to me). Hopefully, things get back to normal soon and I can get some more updates posted!!