Flight Chronicles Vol IV 052510 (w/ wounded mongoose)

Well, a lot’s happened since my last entry. My rc flight coach has become a papa for the second time! Beautiful! Between him servicing machines for the shop, taking inventory, me and Rainmaker trying to piece together kits, three-quarters time school for me, full-time work for me and family- it’s a wonder I had time to crochet a blanket for the new little person in all our lives.

The road from Long Beach to Moorpark, U.S.A. is a ninety minute trek. If I’m not driving, I take some skeins of yarn, my toolkit and my iPod. My toolkit consists of a yarn-cutter with blades that resembles a ninja sherkin and crochet hooks of every size, color and material imagineable. Bamboo, metal, plastic…I love my tools. I joked with the man that his wife couldn’t deliver until the blanket was done. I was a few days short but oh well!

During this past week, I’ve logged in two flight sessions, some assembly assistance to Rainmaker, and G5 research. I figure, with Windows for Mac I should be able to nab my own simulator and practice nose-in scale flying. He turned me loose with my nose in and I could NOT get my bearings. I felt like I was drowning, if that explains the way I was feeling… it seems a pretty fair description of my sense of helplessness. It was so windy too! The wind had been kicking up off and on all afternoon and I kept hoping it would stay. I love to fly in the wind. Josef will say, “Look at that…” when I manage to hover with the wind blowing the way it does through the little valley and over the hill we trample through in Moorpark.

My son, Nick, got to fly and Josef said, “He gets his eye-hand coordination from his mama.” (Austrian accent. Don’t forget. That makes it sound even more special.) Personally, I think kids have more eye-hand coordination because of all the video games they play.

I think, because I have no simulator at home, my fine hand manipulation is geared more towards heavy-handedness. In other words, I’m hard on the sticks. I need to learn to be deliberately lighter to make smaller movements. The simulator should fix me. Anyway, I’ve made my peace with the wind.

A few weekends ago, Rainmaker had an accident and his beloved Mongoose that we put together needed a completely new rotor head, fly bar, blades ohmigod… I had never heard or seen an rc heli crash before. The sound of it turned my stomach. It looked like it was spasming on the ground. It was beyond awful. BUT, she’s back together and ready for action this weekend!

I got an A in math. On to Colonial U.S. History, Pre-Calculus and Introduction to Ethics.

Lingo:

Fly bar
Negative pitch
Clicks

Flight time: (since last post)

40 minutes (still pathetic)