Day Two

Got in a few more flights today for practice, not flying for the past 5 months is starting to show up a bit, but a few more flights should get most of that polished off.

Ivan came down from Ocala (where he is staying at the field in his motorhome) to get in some flights with us. He is flying his trusty Genesis from last season with a 170 CDI motor that is running really well for him.

Jason actually brought his plane out today and as usual is looking a little better than the rest of us (his flying that is, he needs a haircut lol ). We ran through both the P and F patterns and spent the afternoon playing around with the Eagletree datalogger getting a look at some inflight data of various setups.

I decided to go up for another flight, and I guess Jason was getting bored with flying and decided to try his skill at nature photography....so for his first subject a bee seemed like a good choice! I think the camera was less than 1" away when he took this shot.

Tomorrow we hope to get out a little earlier and put in a few more flights, so far I am up to 9 flights and hope to get in at least 30 more before I leave :)

Chad

First Day

Well, I arrived safe and sound late last night and Jason was still awake to get me at the airport. We got back to his place and unpacked as little as possible and pretty much went straight to sleep as it was nearing 2am local time.

This morning I was pretty lazy, and almost outslept Jason....and didn't get up until 11:30am. The plane came out of the box and everything was assembled and readied to hit the field...after a quick stop at the local McD's...(hey you can't hang out with Jason without going to McD's).

I manged to get in 4 flights today mostly of the F-09 pattern. I figured it was better to start out with F-09 because I have not flown since November.... :) The weather here is nice, perfect shorts weather for a white Canadian boy like me, maybe mid 20's. The wind was straight in our face at about 15-20 mph, so not too bad for the first flights in 5 months. There were a few other locals at the field practicing, Don and John Lowe, Dave Stoddart and Al McCaskill. Jason didn't bring his plane out so he flew Al's Dirty Birdy and found out on landing that its not so great at knife edge :)

Jason got a couple of shots, I was lazy and left my camera in the car tonite so my pics will have to wait until tomorrow.

John Lowe with his new Osmose Evolution, YS 170DZ power. Plane looks really nice and flew well with lots of performance. I would expect to see quite a number of these around this year.

Jason caught this shot of my Integral, not sure if its taking off or landing....must be taking off because all my landings ended up at the other end of the field :)

For all my friends at home enjoying the nice cold weather....see the shorts...ya its nice and warm here, and sunny......and no snow :)

2009 is starting!

It has sure been a long time since the last update, really not much has went on. It has been a normal winter, with some indoor flying but that is it. There are new projects on the way, and when they arrive there will be more content.

March has started to pick up, I just did an aerobatics seminar this past Saturday to kick off the season. Tomorrow I am heading to the airport to catch my flight to Orlando, FL. where I will meet up with Jason Shulman and spend a week practicing for the upcoming season. Coincidentally the Ocala contest will be on the weekend I am there, so we will be attending that. My friend Ivan Kristensen from Ontario has already made the trip down so I hope we can all meet up and get in some flying in the Florida weather. Keep your eyes on the blog for updates of the activities.

As soon as I get back from Orlando on the 26th, I will be busy getting ready for the first ever Canadian E-Fest type event. This will include an F3P contest and F3P-AM contest that I will be participating in. I am not sure there will be time to update the blog again until after that event, but in any case check back for pics and results of it as well.

Chad