Bald1eagle
Heliman
Location: St. Augustine Beach, Florida
| Darrell, Thanks. I'm glad you and Kevin had the vision in Mulberry. You stuck your neck out, and look what you ended up with. A great event. This was my first FF, so I have nothing to compare it with, but from what I could see, you guys up in Michigan have your act together. I hope you will have a 2nd annual event. I'll be there, so go ahead and sign me up.
Pete Niotis was nice enough to give me his name and Jim Stark's as contact names to look up when I got to town, and that's exactly what I did. Thanks Pete.
As a rookie pilot, only on my 5th gallon, I wanted someone to look over my setup. Jim Stark took the challenge with a smile. He adjuststed my heli, cranked it up, set my tracking, and showed me just what my Sceadu 50 was capable of doing. I've not had it in free flight myself, still doing low level circles tail in and some times on calm days nose first side view. Jim on the other hand can do anything. What a thrill I had seeing my heli flying. That was worth the trip. Thanks Jim.
Foregive me, but I've forgotten the name of the man who signed me up for my AMA license on Friday....Without him I would not have been able to thrill the crown with my full throttle starting of my heli! Now that's exciting! I'm actually surprised I was even going to stun the crowd with my hovering because of the wind. I know the wind was blowing hard because my hair was moving, and that takes a strong wind. So after my clutch stopped smoking, I took it down to the end of the field and hovered a wopping 5 ft off the ground, just enough to get the crowd looking and thinking I was actually going to do something......I didn't. Burned up that tank, shut her down, all in one piece. I waited for just a moment to see if the crowd was going to applaud. I didn't hear anything. I concluded it was because I was up wind, and just didn't hear it..
Kevin Bowers was a great help all throughout the event. He helped me with directions to my hotel, showed me how to cut grass with a heli, not to mention informed me of why my skid protectors were rotating and sliding off. Well I had the wrong size. I bought the .60 size thinking I was going to fool some people I had a larger heli than I did. Skid envy I guess.
I met lots of people this past weekend. All of them nice. All of them great pilots. Some pilots were just unbelievable. I hope none of the local pilots here read this, but you guys made your heli's dance. Thanks for showing me what these great machines can do. You all know each other, and you made this outsider feel welcomed.
Darin....Thanks for posting your photo's. I even ended up in a couple of them. I'm going to depend on everyone else's photo's to remember the event. I dropped the only lense I brought, and it didn't seem to focus after that....oops.
Thanks to all the supporters of this event. Darrell, I think you've got a winner. See you next year.
Vince |
