Barbecue and Flying at Goble

Sunday the Cowlitz Valley RC Flyers were having a picnic and barbecue.  We were the first ones there, I got all set up and was taxiing out to take off when I remembered I wanted a picture.  I got in a couple of flights before anyone showed up.

Vera was taking pictures and got a good picture of me talking with the club president Mike.

There was a pretty good turnout, four members from the Lewis county club came down for the day.  I had a good time and got in plenty of flying.

Jordon's Shower

Saturday we went up to Debbie and Josh's to a shower for baby Jordon.

Kyla organized the shower, Bev and her are getting things ready.  Bev did the cooking on the barbecue.

Michelle must be telling quite a story.

I was outside during most of the games, but Debbie roped me into this one.  It was a race to see who could drink four ounces of beer out of a baby bottle the fastest.  It is harder than it sounds, I only managed to get two ounces out of my bottle before someone won.

The present opening.

They got lots of nice things for baby Jordon.  It was a fun afternoon, we had a good time.

Flying

We went up to Toledo this morning and Mrs. Herren's lawn looked fine so I didn't mow there.  When I got to the field one of the members was just finishing up so I unloaded my planes.  Just about everything I flew today had retracts, great fun shooting touch and goes and watching the wheels go up each time.

Toledo Flying

Sunday we rested up from the flying on Friday and the wedding on Saturday.  Monday I had an early eye doctor's appointment at Kaiser.  They checked my vision and made an adjustment to my frames.  Tuesday was forecast to be really windy so I posted on the forum I was flying Wednesday.

Wednesday we went flying at Toledo, this is out friend Steve with his new plane.  It is the same one that I did the inverted flat spin crash with.  I really like the color scheme on his, it should show up great in the air.

There were seven flyers out today, I gave Chuck a couple of lessons during the day.

Horty was getting pretty relaxed while flying.  He and Vera share the same birth date.

Most of the hay bales were gone by the end of the day.  I had a good day of flying with only a bent landing gear leg on the P-51 to repair.  I didn't use enough flap on take off and ran into the hay stubble.

Emmy and Dan's Wedding

Today we went to Adeline Farms in Woodland for Emmy and Dan's wedding.  Emmy's cousin Charb married them and did an excellent job.

Ava, Harper, Rielee, Macee and Auna were all bridesmaids for Emmy.  Rielee also did a great job playing her ukulele and singing a song for them.

Here is Emmy with the cousins.

It was pretty warm in the barn, so I took most of my pictures outside.

They had a bean bag toss going between the cousins, Ty and James are celebrating James' perfect toss through the hole without touching.

It was really nice getting to see my brother and sisters all at the same time.  The last time we got a picture like this was at Raye's wedding in 2008.  It was a fun afternoon and evening.

I had a text from Jackie while at the wedding and she sent me this picture of Cora eating her dinner.  Jackie said she did a pretty good job of feeding herself.  She is also walking about 15 steps alone.

Catching Up!

Vera has been out taking pictures of flowers again and I really like this one of the geranium Dianne gave us.

Monday was pretty much a do nothing day here, we are still resting up from the weekend.  Tuesday we went flying at Toledo.  I still had the B-36 in the motor home so I put a couple of more flights on it.  I also had not had the Champ out for a long time and it is still a challenge to land and take off smoothly.  I burned up the speed control in the Sukhoi, the warm weather must have gotten to it.

Wednesday I had a dentist appointment to get a filling.  It was an early appointment so I had to skip coffee at the Vault.  The filling only took a half hour, but my jaw was numb for most of the day.  I did some work on changing the speed control in the Sukhoi, a bigger one is going in this time.  I also made some changes to the air flow inside the cowling.

Thursday morning I was on Facebook messaging with Jeff who provided the plane I won.  I had made a comment a couple of days ago about hoping I wouldn't need the trailer to transport the new plane.  Jeff offered to trade it for a smaller one with a motor, it sounded good to me, so when he gets back from vacation we will work something out.  I finished up the Sukhoi, went around the lawn with the string trimmer and then mowed the lawn and trails.  I also charged some batteries for flying on Friday.

Friday morning I went up early so I could mow Mrs. Herren's lawn.  Dan was there flying so we took both mowers over and got finished much faster than normal.  When we got back to the field there was a group of members putting Thompson's Water Seal on the new tables.  When they finished up we started flying.

They were towing a glider up at the Toledo airport today, they came over low enough that I got some pretty good pictures.

They make a surprising amount of wind noise while they are flying.  The Sukhoi flew fine with it's new speed control, in fact the motor runs smoother with this one.  I was racing with Leonard today and we had a midair collision.  When we hit there was a big bunch of white debris, since my Corsair is dark blue and was flying fine afterwards, I orbited around the field up high until Leonard landed.  Then I landed and I couldn't find any damage to the Corsair, only a couple of white marks on the prop.  Leonard lost part of the right wing's trailing edge and about half of the right aileron but was able to land without any problem.  One of Leonard's first comments was "I have been wanting to put flaps on this plane".

What a surprise!

We went to bed early last night and I slept great after the big day.  I had breakfast and puttered on the computer most of the day until I got a call from my friend Steve.  He was on the way back from the Fun Fly and said I had won a couple of things and could he stop by and drop them off, of course I said we would be here.

Boy was I surprised when he told me I won the best scratch built model with my B-36.

I also won the raffle for a 50CC SU26M, it is a big plane like the ones I have pictures of in Saturday's post.  It has an 88 inch wing span and weighs 12 to 15 pounds and is made for a 50 cc gas engine.  The funny thing is, the only motorcycle I ever had was a Tuhatsu 50 which had a 50cc engine.  I plan on putting an electric motor in it after getting my fingers wacked Thursday by the 52 cc one in the Sopwith.  I saw several Saturday that had 50cc equivalent electric motors and they flew great.  Steve let me download the pictures he took off of his camera.

Since I wasn't there Sunday, I am not in this picture of the award winners that I got from Steve's camera.  We had a nice visit before we went to Steve's car and unloaded the huge box the new plane is in.

Faro Field Flyers Big Bird Fly In

After spending Friday loading the motor home and charging batteries, this morning we headed up to the Faro Field Flyers Big Bird Fly In.  We got there early enough to get a good parking spot and get all set up before the flying started.

I flew my first flight of the day with the Convergence and then flew the B-36 which I brought in place of the Sopwith Pup which I couldn't get to run.  Thursday afternoon while trying to start it my grip on the prop slipped and the spring starter wacked me and cut two fingers on my right hand.  Right away I decided to sell it and hauled it to the Fly In with a For Sale sign.

Here it is at it's new home, Jeff from Skyward Hobbies who was putting on the Fun Fly traded me a new MXS to replace the one I had the Oops with last Tuesday.

There were lots of nice planes there today!

Some awesome displays of 3D flying were put on by quite a few pilots.

It was a nice day and there were sun shades everywhere and lots of people under them with a pretty good crowd that turned out just to watch.

Vera went around with the camera taking pictures of planes and asking the owners to smile, she got some great pictures.

 Upright or inverted these planes fly great!

The Lewis County Radio Controllers had a raffle Saturday and also provided a free lunch for everyone there.

Jeff and Tina from Skyward Hobbies provided chili, cornbread and chicken for the pot luck dinner.  There was also lots of salads and desserts brought by people attending.

The owner of the farm provided a band to play during dinner.  It was our kind of music so we really enjoyed it.  They had a light system for night flying, but we left right after the band finished at seven, it had been a big day by then.

Faro Field

We went up to the Faro Field Flyers field today to see what it looked like.  They were getting setup for a Fly-In this weekend.  The field is located on the Pleasant Valley Road, one we had never been on before.  We drove right by it and didn't realize it until we came to the end of the road.  You have to cross this covered bridge on a private road to get to the field.

The runway is used by full sized planes also so it is plenty long enough for models.  They only mowed about a third of it real short for the models.

There were members from the Lewis County Radio Controllers and the Faro Field Flyers getting things set up and doing a lot of laughing.

While I was out on the runway taking pictures I noticed this cow, I don't think I have ever seen one with this type of markings.  We headed home about noon and I puttered on the computer and the new quad the rest of the day.

Three Oops!

No Oops on Sunday, Vera took this picture of the Clematis before we went to church, visited for a little while afterwards and went home.  I did a little work on the quad and got the Sopwith down from the ceiling.  I want to fly it next week and had to put the carburetor back on.  I also made up a new exhaust pipe as the old one looked a little tacky!

No Oops on Monday either, I had two appointments at Kaiser, one with a new doctor, my old one left Kaiser.  After the first appointment and stopping at the lab for a blood test, we made a quick run to Fred Meyer for my favorite breakfast cereal.  We were back in plenty of time for my dental cleaning.  We stopped at Safeway on the way home and of course left the list in the car.  We did manage to remember one item from it before we left.

I brought the Sopwith outside to test run the engine after we got home.  That did not go well, I could not get the engine to draw fuel.  After much messing around I gave up and pulled the carburetor back off and decided it needed one diaphragm that was not included in the kit.

Tuesday we went to Toledo for some flying.  It was overcast for a while but cleared off later.

Barry stopped by about noon, he had been to PDX and dropped off Mona for a flight to her sister's.  I got to show him how well the MXS flies and made a flight on the Convergence before he left.

Vera spotted this Sundog not long after Barry left.  After reading up on them, I guess they are fairly rare.

OK, here is the first oops, I did a Blender, which starts with a vertical diving left roll that changes into a left inverted spin, power is added and the spin goes flat.  There are a lot of negative G's, the battery came lose and unplugged.  From then on I was just a spectator as is did an inverted spin to the ground.  The damage was a lot less than I expected, most of it done by the lose battery when it hit the ground.  I had the same thing happen a couple of years ago with my Sukhoi SU-31 except that time the battery took the canopy with it as it flew out.  It was months before the battery was found.  The plane wasn't hurt too bad that time either.  The next oops was with the Cub, it turned on takeoff and headed off the runway, I should have throttled down to try again but I gave it full throttle and tried to takeoff.  It snap rolled and wrinkled up one wing tip and one stabilizer a little.  They will be easy fixes.  The final oops today was that I had set the SE-5 on the counter of the motor home and it rolled off on the way home breaking a servo horn and stripping the gears in one servo, another easy fix.  Regardless of the oops, I had a fun day.