It has been awhile, hasn't it -- my excuse is that I was pouting about losing my e-skyray the week before our contest. Broken down line ... went to half throttle and slow rolled across the circle at about 40 feet ... lawn-darted about 50 feet from the center on the opposite side.
After stewing about it for a week, and running our contest, I finally got the carcass out and looked it over. Turns out the wing is save-able (I had to make two new tip ribs and one interior rib - and the trailing edge "sheeting" is broken in 3 or four places. In fact the wing repair is finished, except for covering). The fuselage is a write-off, but I'm just going to pull one out of a kit Skyray and build it the way this one was. The tail parts were un-harmed. The ground was pretty spongy that night, I guess.
I sent off a contest report to HLL on ours Spring Kickoff -- it went like this:
Navy Carrier Results - Mid-Iowa Controlliners Spring Kickoff (May 3-4, 2008 - Polk City, Iowa)
We had originally scheduled the Navy Carrier events for Saturday (May 3rd) but it turned out that the weather forecasts were correct - by 7:00 AM, winds were over 20 mph - they stayed 20-25 mph (gusting higher) until well after 7:00 pm. Originally, it was agreed that the deck and circle would be available on Sunday for practice flying (since the forecasts were much more favorable). Since everyone present was planning to be back on Sunday, we just decided to postpone the official flying until Sunday. Sunday's winds were about 10 mph in the morning - increased to about 15 and stayed steady most of the afternoon. But we got the deck set up (in what turned out to be a less than ideal spot - right into the wind) by 8:30 and got most of the flights in by noon. The "Chicago" guys were done by noon, so the official standings and the trophies were awarded based on the scores at noon. The two "locals" (Mike Anderson and Curt Netcott) came back after lunch and recorded some official scores, which were recorded as scores but which did not affect the outcomes at the noon break. Got that? We got scores but we had agreed that we would not allow them to change the official standings - which were:
Class 1-2 (% of record) High Low
Model Time Time Lndg Bonus Total
1st-- Pete Mazur MO-1 (Cl.1) 18.42 145.03 100 100 376.4
2nd--Art Johnson Guardian (Cl.1) 18.64 30.2 --- 100 212.6
3rd-- Bill Calkins Vampire (Pro.) 20.95 --- --- --- 85.9
Profile (Open)
1st-- Bill Calkins Vampire 21.5 179.0 --- 10 176.9
2nd--Art Johnson Guardian 22.44 77.9 --- 10 124.9
Att-- Pete Mazur MO-1
Att-- Mike Anderson MO-1
.15 Profile High Low
Model Time Time Lndg Bonus Total
1st-- Art Johnson SBD 39.5 65.83 --- --- 62.2
2nd--Mike Anderson MO-3 34.13 124.73 100 --- 189.3
3rd-- Curt Netcott Wildkitty 34.75 76.61 100 --- 173.8
NRB (% of what?)
1st-- Art Johnson Skyray (Glow) 23.82 63.13 100 --- 202.0
2nd--Bill Calkins Skyray (Electric) 30.89 --- --- --- 58.3
3rd-- Curt Netcott Skyray (Electric) 29.81 44.76 --- --- 75.4
Att-- Pete Mazur Skyray (Electric)
NOTES:
NRB (% of ??) - "NRB stands for Non-rulebook" In the past, we have combined Sportsman with Skyray. Since we haven't had a Sportsman entry in a couple of years, we threw ALL the Non-rulebook (or NCS unofficial) events into one event - kind of a run-what-ya-brung. The scoring will be "Percent of 2007 Top 20 best score" for the event you are flying. To keep the deck busy, we will find a way to let you fly anything you wish. (I had kind of determined that I'd also figure out some way to handicap it if any true Sportsman had entered - maybe their score would be "Percent of last year's 2nd best" Sportsman score. At any rate, we had just the three Skyray's that got scores. Art used a K&B 5.8, Bill used a Scorpion Helicopter Brushless motor, Curt used a Rimfire Brushless. Both Bill and Curt have electric motors which are turning 9-5 or 9-6 props over 16000 RPM, but Pete's is still the fastest. My electric was still broken, so no times to report. Scores were indicative of rusty-pilot syndrome, more than weather. Maybe we could change it to the Spring Rust-off ...
Mike A.