A challenging wind coming from the north this morning caused contributed to a number of ugly crashes, including crashing my own T-28 while doing some inverted hooliganism. As always, I post my RC photos at Flickr.com.

First down was Eli with his Parkzone BF-109G. While making a downwind to crosswind transition, the plane stalled and never quite recovered. Up, down, left, up, down, spin, invert, crash! Thankfully his beautiful bird was mostly spared and came out with a tweaked cowl, broke prop, gear and a few scrapes and scuff. I hadn’t pulled out the camera yet at this point, so click here to see his sleek BF-109G from a few days prior.

My turn! First mistake was that I uttered the dreaded phrase, “Just one more flight.” I tried to cover up the damage but it was too late and the only option was destroy my Parkzone T-28. I had no choice. So up I went up and attempted to pull out from an inverted dive while flying downwind. That didn’t work so well and I didn’t have the airspeed to give me sufficient control authority to pull out while remaining inverted. I hit the ground pretty fast but at a shallow impact angle (this seems to be my preferred angle when crashing BTW!). I saw my tail feathers snap off, but it looked pretty good from where I was standing. Damage was limited to the vertical stabilizer, rudder, cowl, canopy and prop. She will fly again!

Next up, er, down was Chris with his 100 Mph+ nitro sport ship. Dear god, Chris knows how to fly this bird like nobody’s business. However, even the king of A-51 can make a mistakes and today it seemed from the start that he enjoyed flirting to the point of disaster.

He had a few close calls early on:

But later on the fun ended when he tried pulling at, well, I don’t know what he was doing:

I still love flying in the wind you weenies!

- Randy