Corning Fun Fly
September
16~19, 2004
Once again I attend the Corning Fun Fly in the Central Valley of Northern California; about a four and a half hour drive from home. Several other members of our Fort Bragg Fog Busters club also made the journey. Some of us arrived early, Wednesday, and stayed late, Monday! Almost six full days of sun and fun!! Wednesday and Thursday got a bit windy in the afternoon but the rest of the time was perfect. 85 to 90 during the day and around 55 at night.
I used my ShadyBoy sun shade and my 20 watt solar panel. Both worked great.
Here Ron 2 and Dick get Dick's 1910 French war plane ready for a early morning flight.
It flew beautifully and is headed towards the moon!
Dick also had his Liberty Sport with him and put on a show.
This time doing smoke rings around the moon!
Leon, from Ukiah, had two of his war birds at the Fun Fly.
Here is one with a close up of the detail on the right.
This is the other war
bird and its detail. Leon's eyes have reached a point where he
can no longer fly and so he had a friend fly them for him.
Beautiful craftsmanship.
As us old timers ease out
of the picture the younger set moves in flying 3D electric planes.
It is good to see young boys and girls getting into the hobby.
A guy named JJ and his buddies entertained us by taking a twin engine ARF that was made for two .25 size engines, and replacing those engines with two OS .46 FX with tuned pipes. It screamed! But. Not good enough...
They sawed off the nose, installed a plywood bulkhead and added a third OS .46 FX! It really screamed but...
The next day they had it back and it was improved with ...
a fourth!! OS .46 FX engine mounted on a pod!!!
When they got that puppy
fired up and all engines running the crowd gathered!!
I have no photos of it flying. It was gone before I could focus!
JJ would take it off , rotate, and fly it out of sight, straight up.
Nothing but a trail of smoke indicating where it went! Totally
awesome! And amazingly, it didn't self destruct! JJ and
his buddies ended the day talking about adding a fifth "pusher"
engine to the back of the pod!!
And "Sullivan" showed up again this year to put on an amazing show.
He can almost make that plane talk!
Overall, I had a great time. I flew both my SchoolBus and my Free Mexican Air Force LazyBees. I flew Pete a couple of times but still had trouble taking off and damaged it, again. I flew my Swift on occasion. I sold my Bird of Time sailplane to a Central Valley flyer who will have a better place to fly it and I ended up coming home with a new plane.
Eee Gad! A 76 inch wing span Ultra Stick with a 1.5 MVVS engine!
Stay tuned!