Dear Pilots, Jim said experience taught him not to fly gliders below 40 degrees. Today was sunny, no wind and I thought hand launching would keep me warm. After 6 throws my hands were numb. The wind chill temp is shown on my Kestrel picture. Jim is right. But maybe with hand Warmer’s——, and there is always supposed to be lift.
As in the past year, the event will be held on the third weekend in August (August 21-23, 2009). This follows up our hugely successful events in the last two years. We’ll have electric tugs that have demonstrated their ability to tow 15+lb sailplanes. If you don’t have a scale sailplane, bring any sailplane with a tow release. E-powered sailplanes will be allowed anytime all three days but must yield to towed and un-powered sailplanes. We have a large, mowed field, for gentle take-offs and landings.
Watch this space for details as they become available. In the meantime, RCGroups has a thread for your entertainment. Our friends at the ISSA helped with promoting the event by adding it to their calendar – thank you!
The AMR Twins are making waves on RCGroups. Below are two videos of the check-out flights.
We recommend pre-registration by adding a comment to this message to avoid frequency conflicts and to track how many are attending.
Where: Newark, Delaware – SKSS Big Pond Field
When: August 21-23, 2009
Check-in: 9am
Landing fee: $20/day, $30 for three days
After you’ve registered, please send your tow fee to:
Robert McCoy
1103 Barley Mill Rd
Wilmington, DE 19807
Be sure to put “SKSS Aero Tow” on the check.
Directions can be found here.
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There are several hotels in the Newark area if you’re staying over the weekend. Hotel #1 is the closest to the field. All are within a few minutes drive.
If you want to bring the family, there are several local attractions:
We fly within the State Park system so there is an entrance fee: $3/day for Delaware registered vehicles and $6/day for non-Delaware registered vehicles.
A total of 33 pilots participated in this year’s event. Unlike in the previous year, the weather was nice, with temperatures in the 70s and 80s and the wind never really making it above 5mph. A great BBQ lunch was prepared on both days by several volunteers as well as delicious home-made tomato salad, potato salad, cookies and other goodies. We held our first man on man contest and had a great time – learned a lot, too! We could not have done this without the help of many club members and seasoned ESL pros. I am sure the following list is not complete: Bill Jordan, Bill B, Bill Groft, Charlie Reeve, Rick, Tony Nunez, Terry Lisanski, Newt, John Kirchstein, Steve Lucke, Luis Bustamente, Dave Beach, Tony Guide, Pete Schlitzkus, Frank Strommer, James Griffith, Dick Dupont, Bev Groft, Ellen Derrico, Eric Teder, Walt Leipold, Gene Gresham, Tom Laky. Thank you to all who helped out! On Saturday, we started out with a seven minute round followed by six more eight minute rounds. Randomization was done by means of a couple of decks of cards. While that promised to generate fun, it proved to be a challenge with such a large group. Hence, Sunday’s flight groups were ‘computer generated’. That made things a lot easier for all involved. We finished six rounds on Sunday before 3pm. Other than having had to fight some scoring gremlins (thanks to all for being patient and understanding while things got sorted), the man-on-man format was very well received and we look forward to a repeat next year. The final scores are on the ESL website. John Kirchstein and Robert McCoy contributed the pictures below. John has a great panorama of the field on his website.