My recent excursion to the club field

There were more people at the Jackson Flyers Association field this Sunday than I'd seen before, and all sorts of awesome planes. I wish I had taken my camera since I can't remember what most of the planes were. There was some serious equipment and not one plane was smaller than the man or woman flying it.

This is one of them, an Extreme, with a 50cc engine and the LE was lined top and bottom with vortex generators, small pairs of angled tabs to control the vortices streaming over and under the wings. It's pilot was actually down at the CL field talking with me and watching me fly the Streak. He explained how they work to increase lift to lower stall speed and shorten takeoffs and increase climb. This thing also had some extreme deflection on the control surfaces that would certainly stall anything I fly. The Extreme jumped off the ground and flew straight up until it was a pinpoint, and he commenced to flying 3D tricks that until lately I didn't know existed. I didn't ask, but it must have had a wingspan over 6 or seven feet.


Another was a Yak that looked about like this. It looked like I could have thrown a saddle over it and taken my skinny ass for a ride.


One of the other guys had a large scale Special which I can't seem to Google a picture of. It had a Saito 100 if I'm not mistaken. It was the prettiest, really sleek. It was time for its maiden voyage. I'd watched him laboring over setting up servos and other last details for a few weeks. A couple of weeks ago I had asked him if he built it and he said, Yeah, most of it. Anyway He finally got it running while I was puttering around over at the CL field when I looked up and saw it coming down the runway. It didn't look to me to be doing takeoff speed, but I watched it roll on down the runway and plow right into a sand dune at the end, kicking up a cloud of white sand with the prop.

When he was lugging it back, he held up the landing gear and said it wasn't busted too badly. Later I asked him what the problem was and he said he just needed a smaller prop, and when it was rolling into the dune, that was as slow as it would go. Back at the RC field we were talking about it and I asked if he had done the Monokote job. He said, Oh hell no, that's the way it came. Strange, I thought he built it.

President Jim was flying a small(4 or 5' wingspan) yellow biplane with some sort of gasoline engine, and he did some pretty basic 3D and loops, and touch and go's... bounce and go's. I sure wish I could tell you what the others were. There were some pretty impressive electrics too. I'd kind of like to have one of those. A small F16 and a couple of prop panes. The day was perfect, about 75 and almost no breeze.
Pretty cool place.