Terry Davis shot holes through the sky with his extremely fast Pulse 60, while Marlowe Cassetti wowed the crowd with his Saito powered Piper Cub and its beautiful and slow flying characteristics. Quite the contrast between both Terry's Pulse and Marlowe's Cub in the way both of those planes wow the crowds.
We all enjoyed speaking to a couple of different spectators that showed up to watch the flying, and they are considering joining in with the club to learn to fly. I and everyone else sure hope they come back and join us in having a lot of fun on a regular basis.
Dennis Sporing did his usual great job of flying with his beautifully built Telemaster airplane, and he appeared to be filled with smiles and enjoying himself in the process too.
We also had a couple of student pilots flying on the buddy box system with FCRCC Club President Ed Vincent's capable assistance to them, learning the skills necessary to learn RC Flying skills.
Those student pilots were Steve Stafford and Mark Putzer who joined the club this summer, and are progressing very nicely with their learning the ins's and outs of RC Flying.
Steve had his home built trainer out that he had built by hand some several years ago, and is in the process of re-acquiring the needed skills again to be able to fly solo again real soon.
Mark was flying his trainer that he has put his own very own personal touches to it, since acquiring it from a fellow club member, just a month or so ago.
Bill Worthen showed up and flew his hot-rod Saito powered Super-Sport, to the admiring attention of everyone at the field watching him put that plane through its paces.
Club President Ed Vincent flew his Lanier pylon plane a few times, and I was able to watch Ed land it for the first time since I have seen it flying, with a power-on landing, instead of all those dead stick landings out of fuel from racing around the pylons. Ed also flew his "Ol' Reliable" SIG Kadet Senior several different times until some covering started to separate itself underneath one side of the wing. Ed skillfully landed it without incident to start the process of the easy repairs on the covering.
I got in a few nice flights with my Piper Pawnee this morning also, while learning to fly it lower and slower each time to hopefully be able to control it in some crop-dusting passes at a later date, once I learn the techniques necessary to be able to do that. On my last flight of the day with the Pawnee as I rolled down the runway and lifted off the ground, suddenly the Saito .82 size 4 stroke engine quit at a very low flight speed and altitude, and I had no choice but to make a very sudden dead stick landing in the soft dirt and weeds off of the North side of the runway. In the process of the low altitude and flight speed dead stick landing, it ended up suffering some minor landing gear damage to the bottom of the plane. Not a difficult fix to reattach the landing gear at all, and while I am at it, I plan on doing some reinforcing of the wire style landing gear setup, and also the structure inside the fuselage where the landing gear is attached to the bottom of the plane.
All in all it was an absolutely picture perfect day for lazy Sunday flying and/or tearing it up type of flying. Both styles of flying were in abundance throughout the entire day of flying at the FCRCC Club Flying Field.
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| A nice assortment of planes prepped and ready for flying. |
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| What a beautiful and calm day for flying at FCRCC. |
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| Student and Master hard at work. |
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| Minor landing gear damage to the Piper Pawnee. |
I hope to have the Piper Pawnee back in flying condition as soon as the back ordered wheels arrive, and I also get time and space available on the building table to conduct the simple repairs to it.
I hope to be able to see everyone out flying real soon, now that the intense heat seems to have taken a break for us in this region for the moment.
Submitted by Mark J. Sullivan
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