Sorry guys, no update today! We just got back to the room (11:30pm). I will update tomorrow again.
I will say that we were out practicing with the UK, Ecuador, Norway, and one member from the Swedish, Columbian, and Irish teams at the Esperanza site today. Weather was decent with fairly stiff winds again.
Chad
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Monday, November 5, 2007
First Day of Practice
Well today we hit the Parana practice site around noon to start getting ready for the big week next week.
First we started off with a well needed breakfast to get us through the rest of the day. The breakfast at the Holiday Inn is pretty good.
After we ate we packed up the cars and took off toward Parana, on the way just happens to be a Wal-Mart, so we had to stop and pick up some essentials like water, chairs, snacks etc.
The Wal-Mart patrons in Argentina are not a lot different than the patrons at the local Wal-Marts in North America, just look at the picture and see if you agree?
The drive to the Parana practice site is fairly scenic with construction, a tunnel, police (or military we are not really sure) checkpoints that check to see if your lights are on! A few general shots of the country side during the drive...
We did fairly easily find the practice site and joined the team from Chile, and a couple of members from the German team who were finishing up and left shortly after we got there. We managed to get in a few flights and later in the day Adrian Wong from California along with the Hong Kong team and the team from Thailand arrived and began getting their gear setup and ready.
I managed to squeeze in 4 flights and start getting accustomed to the conditions. It was fairly windy today probably up around 15-20 mph at the top of the box. With the wind at our backs at this site and a bunch of tree's behind us landing was a bit interesting due to the turbulence. Everyone was having trouble with the tricking landing situation.
Rene of team Chile and his pair of Genesis (Genesi?)
Here are the guys from Thailand trying to get a YS 170 going. They were having a lot of trouble with this engine. We left before they were able to get it running but hopefully they got it solved.
Adrian Wong and his team mate from Hong Kong watch the flying. Adrian was just checking out the practice sites as he did not have his planes assembled yet. His primary suffered some damage to the canopy which is unfortunate as it is an Akiba built Proline.
We will be back out practicing tomorrow at one of the sites. Not 100% sure which one yet.
Chad
After we ate we packed up the cars and took off toward Parana, on the way just happens to be a Wal-Mart, so we had to stop and pick up some essentials like water, chairs, snacks etc.
The Wal-Mart patrons in Argentina are not a lot different than the patrons at the local Wal-Marts in North America, just look at the picture and see if you agree?
The drive to the Parana practice site is fairly scenic with construction, a tunnel, police (or military we are not really sure) checkpoints that check to see if your lights are on! A few general shots of the country side during the drive...
We did fairly easily find the practice site and joined the team from Chile, and a couple of members from the German team who were finishing up and left shortly after we got there. We managed to get in a few flights and later in the day Adrian Wong from California along with the Hong Kong team and the team from Thailand arrived and began getting their gear setup and ready.
I managed to squeeze in 4 flights and start getting accustomed to the conditions. It was fairly windy today probably up around 15-20 mph at the top of the box. With the wind at our backs at this site and a bunch of tree's behind us landing was a bit interesting due to the turbulence. Everyone was having trouble with the tricking landing situation.
Rene of team Chile and his pair of Genesis (Genesi?)
Some members of the local club were out to setup a shade shelter for us. Someone was missing the directions as it ended up taking about 10 people to finally figure out how to assemble it, easily the most entertaining part of the day!
Here are the guys from Thailand trying to get a YS 170 going. They were having a lot of trouble with this engine. We left before they were able to get it running but hopefully they got it solved.
Adrian Wong and his team mate from Hong Kong watch the flying. Adrian was just checking out the practice sites as he did not have his planes assembled yet. His primary suffered some damage to the canopy which is unfortunate as it is an Akiba built Proline.
This is an Extreme Composite Proline which one of the Hong Kong team members was flying. It seemed to fly very well and had a ton of power with the YS 170.
We will be back out practicing tomorrow at one of the sites. Not 100% sure which one yet.
Chad
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Ola!
Well we did finally make it! Actually some 36 hours after we left the airport in Calgary.
It felt like forever on the airplane from Toronto, around 12 hours I think with a short stop in Santiago, Chile to drop a few off and pick a few up.
Here we are standing around the airport in Chile waiting to get back on the plane to head to Buenos Aires.
A shot over the wing looking toward Santiago, Chile
It felt like forever on the airplane from Toronto, around 12 hours I think with a short stop in Santiago, Chile to drop a few off and pick a few up.
Here we are standing around the airport in Chile waiting to get back on the plane to head to Buenos Aires.
A shot over the wing looking toward Santiago, Chile
It was around a 2 hour flight from Santiago to Buenos Aires, which seemed extremely short in comparison to the marathon that we had just completed.
A shot over the wing as we approach Buenos Aires
A shot over the wing as we approach Buenos Aires
At this point my camera batteries decided to let me down and I didnt get any more pictures until after we were safely in the hotel today. However I will grab the ones that Xavier and Dez took tomorrow and paste them in here. Until then a story will have to do!
Once in BA at the airport, after grabbing our luggage we quickly cleared customs and security and proceeded to grab our rentals. The rental office was a brief 5 minute drive from the airport, and one of the staff came to pick us up and took us to get the cars. We left my dad and Xavier to fend off the porters trying to load our luggage and planes into every taxi that drove by!
A missed exit leaving the rental office cost us a few minutes of time trying to find out way back to the airport, however we made it back and jammed all the boxes etc into the cars and off we went.
We let Dez take the lead on the trip to Santa Fe since he had a GPS and Xavier had maps...what could go wrong! Well we ended up in downtown BA traveling some fairly busy streets and getting first hand exposure just how exciting driving down here is. A few years ago I spent a bit of time in Venezuela so I had a bit of understanding what to expect (I didnt actually drive in Venezuela myself), but nothing makes up for experiencing it yourself!
Long story short (well not really) we made it out of BA an hour later on the road to Rosario.....awesome its all downhill from here! (literally!). So I knew that there was a bypass around Rosario, unfortunately it was night time at this point so we pretty much missed the exit to take the bypass and into Rosario we went. Ok, long story short (this time I mean it), we spent two hours trying to navigate our way back to the highway. A gas station and a few more maps later (to hell with the GPS!!) we were back on highway 9 and hit Santa Fe and quickly found the hotel (Holiday Inn) at about 2am local time.
So we slept in a lot today, and while most of the crew went out walking around I stayed in the room and got my gear all charged up, assembled etc etc etc.
A shot of our hotel room with parts scattered about during the assembly of the planes
The plane survived the trip without even a scratch on them, which is always a great thing. Once of my boxes had some minor damage to it on arrival so I was quite happy to see it unscathed. All the other equipment like batteries and chargers were as we packed them in the luggage prior to leaving Calgary.
Before we went out to supper we hit the Esperanza practice site and had a chat with the locals flying out there. This looks like a really nice site and we will be out there tomorrow AM after we hit the local Wal-Mart for a couple of cases of water and some chairs! You can always count on a Wal-Mart and McDonalds to be nearby where ever you go in the world to ensure you feel right at home! We can actually see the McDonalds sign from our hotel window (I will get a picture of that tomorrow)....and no we have not been there yet.
Tomorrow we should get all the pictures sync'd up and now that my batteries are charged I can continue to get more!
Thats it for today!
Once in BA at the airport, after grabbing our luggage we quickly cleared customs and security and proceeded to grab our rentals. The rental office was a brief 5 minute drive from the airport, and one of the staff came to pick us up and took us to get the cars. We left my dad and Xavier to fend off the porters trying to load our luggage and planes into every taxi that drove by!
A missed exit leaving the rental office cost us a few minutes of time trying to find out way back to the airport, however we made it back and jammed all the boxes etc into the cars and off we went.
We let Dez take the lead on the trip to Santa Fe since he had a GPS and Xavier had maps...what could go wrong! Well we ended up in downtown BA traveling some fairly busy streets and getting first hand exposure just how exciting driving down here is. A few years ago I spent a bit of time in Venezuela so I had a bit of understanding what to expect (I didnt actually drive in Venezuela myself), but nothing makes up for experiencing it yourself!
Long story short (well not really) we made it out of BA an hour later on the road to Rosario.....awesome its all downhill from here! (literally!). So I knew that there was a bypass around Rosario, unfortunately it was night time at this point so we pretty much missed the exit to take the bypass and into Rosario we went. Ok, long story short (this time I mean it), we spent two hours trying to navigate our way back to the highway. A gas station and a few more maps later (to hell with the GPS!!) we were back on highway 9 and hit Santa Fe and quickly found the hotel (Holiday Inn) at about 2am local time.
So we slept in a lot today, and while most of the crew went out walking around I stayed in the room and got my gear all charged up, assembled etc etc etc.
A shot of our hotel room with parts scattered about during the assembly of the planes
The plane survived the trip without even a scratch on them, which is always a great thing. Once of my boxes had some minor damage to it on arrival so I was quite happy to see it unscathed. All the other equipment like batteries and chargers were as we packed them in the luggage prior to leaving Calgary.
Before we went out to supper we hit the Esperanza practice site and had a chat with the locals flying out there. This looks like a really nice site and we will be out there tomorrow AM after we hit the local Wal-Mart for a couple of cases of water and some chairs! You can always count on a Wal-Mart and McDonalds to be nearby where ever you go in the world to ensure you feel right at home! We can actually see the McDonalds sign from our hotel window (I will get a picture of that tomorrow)....and no we have not been there yet.
Tomorrow we should get all the pictures sync'd up and now that my batteries are charged I can continue to get more!
Thats it for today!
Friday, November 2, 2007
Well we made the first leg of the trip to Toronto safe and sound. A small bit of convincing and a Visa transaction later and we were on the plane in Calgary. Here is a shot of our plane in Calgary as they load on the luggage....hopefully the planes are safe and sound!
Here is a shot of my dad Brian who is coming along for the first time to watch the World Champs. He doesn't fly himself so this should be quite the experience to see what its all about. Or at least see what all his hard earned money went towards when I was still a kid!
Once we hit Toronto we went out for supper with my sister as we have a 6 hour or so stop. After a nice supper and doing a bit of catch up over coffee at the local Tim Hortons (its a Canadian thing) we made it back to the airport. After a quick visit with security and the transmitters we met up with Dez Vaghy (pilot), Xavier Mouraux (Dez's caller), Harry Ells (team manager) and his wife Rosemary. Dave Reaville and his caller Mark Byrne along with their wives will join us in Santa Fe in a couple of days.
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