Your CD for LOFT 1, Ray Hayes

Well, folks, despite the weather an intrepid 9 people showed up and flew today.  Maybe not the smartest nine of the bunch, but we did fly. 😉

Our CD de jour was Ray Hayes, who kept things simple by flying open winch and three tasks of 5 minutes each with in/out landings worth 100 points for all classes.  Ray, Corky, Dave, John, Jack, and Darwin all started out flying 2M, but only Ray, Jack, and Corky finished.  Dave’s Gentle Lady showed an unhealthy attraction to pine sap that finally busted up the tail on the second go-round.  John’s Spirit popped its horizontal stab off the fuselage but remained functional enough to land safely.  My Dove proved to be not trimmed at all nicely and scared me into packing it in after the first round.

GL's Love Pine Sap

Chet, Phil, and Dan started out to fly the Radian class.  Dan won by default after Chet chose discretion as the better part of valor and Phil trashed a prop on a weird take-off impact.

Unlimited saw Ray and Corky continuing on with their 2M Little Birds while Darwin broke out his Sapphire.  Phil came back in time to turn in three round with his repaired Radian along with Dan, although I didn’t see scores recorded for Dan on the card for unlimited.

All in all, it was a day of decent flying.  There were thermals although the wind made it challenging to center them.  One of the caveats for competition flying is learning how to fly in the wind and today was a great day for refreshing those skills.  We had a lot of fun despite the cold and wind and we were very grateful that the forecast rain held off a lot longer than the weather bug said it would.

Lil' Birds Everywhere

There was also a lot of moaning on my part for missing yesterday’s fun with the guys.  Apparently Saturday was a “big air” day with killer boomers thermals and minimal winds.  Corky and Ray were sure rubbing our noses in it, let me tell you.

All in all an acceptable start to the new season.  Lots of folks dropped in to visit in addition the hardy few who jumped into the fray.

Ray also shared some words about the contest:

Glad you guys showed up to fly and hope you had a good time, I surly did.

Holzy, Hope all goes well Monday, it stayed chilly all day, you made a good decision to take it easy.

John Trim, Glad you stopped to say good bye. Hope all works out for you back in Ferndale, MI.

Till next time … Practice … Practice … Practice.

Ray

You’ll be able to check out the scores as soon as Denny puts ’em up.  I also uploaded all the pictures I took to my Picasso album on Google.  The link is on the Gallery page.