Hi All,
We often hear about the dwindling C/L numbers, and also how the R/C guys in general are not interested in having us around. We also hear that some even look down on our side of the hobby/sport. Well, I have to tell you that yesterday (Sunday September the 4th) I was totally blown away by what happened at our club called Barnstormers here in Johannesburg South Africa. I had arranged for a Spring C/L day to get our local C/L guys out of the winter blues. Our spring starts officially in September. I informed the club chairman Danie Potgieter about the day and he went on a serious promotion to the entire club for the R/C guys to build something C/L to fly. He even sent out a plan of an old basic trainer. I thought (rather negatively) that we would maybe get one or two guys from the R/C section to join us. How wrong I was! There were about 17 extra planes that were brought out and the handful of regular C/L guys spent the day helping these folks to get flying. Have a look at the group photo below. Many did not have the right lines and a lot of the planes were not quite right but we sorted them all out and brought out plenty of sets of lines. After some dual instruction we had most of them flying competently. Many had tried C/L before so this was not too difficult.
Danie had organised a clever fun competition as well where he told the competitors to see if the pilot could fill the tanks up just enough for 10 laps. While they were flying the laps, they also had to bust some balloons and that was a real hoot! Someone held the balloons by some string tied to a long plastic tube and it was quite windy so the balloons stayed nicely into the flying circle area. The winner actually got 10 laps and two balloon busts. The bottom line is that the day was a huge success and quite a number of these guys are really keen to fly more C/L. Two of the ladies are also hooked. What a pleasure.
We have one tar circle and a grass circle as well and we are not in the way of the R/C flying but just on the opposite side of the clubhouse. Our numbers have dropped drastically in the last few years and I saw this as a way to boost our numbers from within. It seems to have worked and even if we get just a few extra C/L members that stick around it is something positive. All it takes is to spark someone's interest in trying it out first hand. This was really a good day!
You can check out the photo's and a short video on the balloon busting on our Control Line SA facebook page here at
https://www.facebook.com/groups/858742724218011/Keith R
Topic: It can be done! (Read 1072 times)
