Re: Lakehurst July meeting info ?

From: John Kagan <john_kagan_at_hotmail.com>
Date: Sun, 03 Aug 2008 18:50:45 -0000

--- In Indoor_Construction_at_yahoogroups.com, "vinskarol" <vins@...>
wrote:
>
> Hallo ,
>
> Any info from Lakehurst ????
>
> THX.

Hi Karol,

Our weekend in Lakehurst was the kind that strikes fear in the hearts
of Team Selection Committee Chairmen.

Saturday started with fairly decent air, but undesirable winds
outside blowing lengthwise down the hanger generated an annoying
drift inside. 4 minutes took you a quarter of the way down the
floor.

Jim Richmond tried a flight with his HLS, but it was near the wall
within 6 minutes, well before the prop folded. During the steer the
prop flipped and grabbed on to the steering line. He tried to free
it, but the wing collapsed.

Tom Iacobellis had a motor break in-flight on his HLS, neatly
separating it into two pieces.

My F1D quickly drifted off the carrier deck on a ¼ motor flight, and
while working on steering it I bumped into Tony D'Alessandro's model
stand and broke his HLS wing spar. Sorry Tony!

Tony fixed the spar, but then planted his model in the rafters at the
roof. It collapsed during retrieval.

Things got a little better Saturday evening and I did some good WC
testing. Then we headed over to the Italian place for dinner and a
little Frank Sinatra music.

Sunday started much better. The air was great. Sanborn put up an
F1L flight that was within a minute of the national record. Richmond
started an HLS stick flight that looked great – but then suffered an
in-flight broken motor, too! One second it was fine, then next it
was an instant ball.

Then it started getting dark. I figured I'd continue with my
testing, but when my ¼ motor flight shot up to the 4th catwalk at 9
minutes, I knew something was very wrong. Lighting, rain, and a
stiff wind…inside the building! Everyone scrambled to get their
models back in the boxes. More than a few were broken in the
process. Keeping them out was even more dangerous. You had to
quickly find a wind shelter or face having your model wrecked in your
hands.

Once the storm front blew through the air calmed down a little, but
it was still dismal. Cold, rainy. Not the best conditions for
Lakehurst.

So, overall, there were only several hours of good air. But fans of
Lakehurst take this kind of thing in stride. We still had fun and
look forward to the next chance to hit the magical good days.
Received on Sun Aug 03 2008 - 11:50:48 CEST