Hi Flyers:  After I attended church this morning I met up with Chris at Buder Park.  We were joined by 3 guys from the church group who had never seen high performance sailplanes fly.

Initially there were a number of power fliers but they didn't seem to mind the sailplanes and we didn't contest airspace with them.  I remember Jeff's trying combat using his DLG against a .60 size power plane some time ago.  The power plane was not hurt.

I brought out my new, to me, ICON for it's maiden flight.   I know, the plane is "not quite a virgin".   Ok, so it's been around the block a few times.  But not with me.  And I was flying it with my new JR9303.  Dry mouth, pounding heart, up it goes on the winch,  zoom, IT FLIES!!!!!   And better yet, IT LANDS SAFELY!!!!    And I did it a bunch of times.  Whewwww!

Chris had an interesting experience with his Supra.  He had worked out a neat way of inserting the ballast that he wanted to play with today.  Which he did.  And the result?   Not too much damage....  :(

The story contains a good safety lesson for all of us.  The lesson is that one should check to make sure that ALL control surfaces are moving before launching.    So what was the story????

When inserting the ballast in the new way Chris managed to pull the elevator plug out of the receiver.  This manifested itself at the top of the launch when the zoom turned into a rather strange series of aerobatic maneuvers.  It didn't look good.  As he stood with a stunned look on his face his good friend, Robert, ran to his side and gently coached him to pull the flaps ("pull the flaps you idiot"!!!!!).   That slowed the plane down but with no elevator to give elevator compensation the plane started a series of loops.  Better ..... but still not real good.  However Chris' mind then took back over and he eased the flaps on and off to get the plane down to a fairly good landing.  Not badly damaged.  But unfortunately there was some damage.  Darn!

It would have stopped that average person.  But Chris is definitely not average.  I didn't say if he was above or below average.  But definitely not average.  After the ballast debacle Chris felt the plane was flyable and proceeded to do just that.  He said he wanted to test whether or not the wing/fuse junction had been compromised.  I watched him launch/zoom that puppy such that the wings clearly flapped violently.  Nothing compromised there!!!!!

Then we flew DLGs for a while.   Oh, by the way, the forecast had been for 10 mph winds, cloud cover and temps in the high 60's.  The reality was clear blue skies, low winds and thermals popping.

In most ways, a great time flying.

El Roberto