Ep 157: Joe Nall 2024 Wrap Up

[00:00:00] All right. So we are all together here at our first stop. Tommy is running away because we were trying to put air in the tires on the trailer. You guys excited? What do you think? We're finally meeting up for our first trip to Joe Nall. Wonderful. He's so excited. I'm so excited. Let's do this. Daniel? Let's go. Reggie's way over here filling up the fuel. We don't want to know how much that was. What do you think? Are you excited? Hell yeah, I'm excited. All right. Let's go.

[00:00:38] All right. First real stop for fuel. How's everybody doing? Awesome. What are you doing now, Tommy? I'm getting ready to wash the windshield. Because that windshield, that windshield takes bugs and just absolutely kills them all. And it's bigger from the outside than from the inside. Let's go see. Reggie's doing the same thing. Reggie, how are you feeling?

[00:01:05] You got to pee. Go inside and pee.

[00:01:09] I'm doing some good.

[00:01:10] All right. So it is about 1038 at night. And I think we're in, where are we, Dave? I don't know. Somewhere past Mount Vernon. So we're Southern Illinois. Does Marion sound right?

[00:01:25] Yeah. We're not quite there.

[00:01:28] We're getting close. So how are you doing? How's your drive?

[00:01:30] We were a little wiggly. I just tightened up the, anti-sway. Ah. Feeling good, though? Nice and wide awake? Oh, yeah. I'm good. Yeah, no problem. I was real wide awake after the truck went into shutdown mode. Oh, what happened there? I don't know. we hit something. The truck started wiggling real bad. And it threw all kinds of lights. And, yeah, yeah.

[00:01:53] Yeah. That's, that's scary. And that's only our first trek. Where'd Daniel go? Went inside. Well, we'll have to get him next stop. Stop for fuel number two. We are in Nashville, Tennessee. It is now, what time is it? It is 2.13 in the morning. Tommy, how are you feeling? You've driven this whole time so far. How are you? I feel pretty good. I'm ready for Reggie to start driving. Reggie? Reggie, have you had a nap enough to where you're, you're good?

[00:02:28] We're, well, hopefully.

[00:02:31] Oh, God, that scares me. Let's see how Dave's doing over here. We got lost. We took a wrong turn. Sorry. Yes, this is not the best site of town to be in. But, Daniel, how are you doing?

[00:02:45] I'm good. I made it to the bathroom back without getting shot or stabbed.

[00:02:49] Shh, not, don't jinx it. Yeah, we'll, we'll see how it's going. What?

[00:02:54] How'd you like it going off the road back there?

[00:02:56] I didn't notice.

[00:02:58] The one semi went fast, Dave.

[00:03:00] I noticed that one going by fast.

[00:03:02] Yeah, he's not blessed. It ripped the wheel out of my hand.

[00:03:04] Dang. Well, how are you doing, Dave? Are you good?

[00:03:06] I'm good. I'm going to check on the inside and use the rest of it.

[00:03:09] That's my plan. I have to pee. 2.15 in the morning. I know. I've only slept for about an hour.. Well, hopefully, last stop. Maybe one more stop before we get there. We are somewhere in Tennessee. I don't know where.

[00:03:29] Woo-hoo! About three and a half hours away. Woo!

[00:03:33] I'm tired. I just woke back up. Sun's up. Guns. Sun's coming up. Tommy's excited. Have you slept at all? yeah, I probably got, what, a couple hours? Oh, well, that's kind of close to me. If you double it.

[00:03:49] Or triple it.

[00:03:50] No, there's been some times back there I've been trying to sleep, but I haven't.

[00:03:53] Oh, sorry.

[00:03:55] Reggie, how are you doing? I'm good. I'm good. He's good now. All excited.

[00:04:00] I was getting there.

[00:04:01] Well, I mean, I was getting there. It wasn't an emergency.

[00:04:05] No.

[00:04:07] Somebody have to poo-poo?

[00:04:09] Oh, that was slow. He was good. Good. Just wanted to make sure the camp was good in first.

[00:04:15] All right.

[00:04:15] I'm just going to concede, man.

[00:04:16] Let's get going.

[00:04:28] Hello, everyone, and welcome to the RC Flame Lab podcast, the Joe and I'll wrap up for 2024. I'm Ron. I'm Tom. I'm Reggie. I'm Daniel. And I'm Dave.

[00:04:39] Why did you sound tired every time you did the little recordings there? Because I was tired. And out of breath.

[00:04:47] Crystal said the same thing about being out of breath. Maybe I'm just fat and old. I don't know. I told her the first time it was because I had to run around to find everybody. And apparently, we missed… You do that every time, apparently. We missed… Thank you. We missed Dave and Daniel on that last one, too. I didn't realize. I think then I actually was tired. So, what's up? What do we want to talk about? All of it. All of it. Okay.

[00:05:11] You want to start with the new stuff from Horizon real quick? We can do that. Yeah. So, a new X-Cub and a new P-51 from Hobby Zone for $99.99. Ready to fly. Everything you need in the box. Transmitter, charger, a couple batteries, I believe. Seems like a good deal, but, you could also get something very similar from AliExpress, Dave discovered. Identical. Yeah.

[00:05:35] So, that's the only thing that sucks about that one is it doesn't work with our transmitters. Go figure.

[00:05:41] Well, I mean…

[00:05:42] But, I mean, a good way to get into it. Yeah, for 100 bucks. If you don't know what you're doing. Yeah.

[00:05:46] So…

[00:05:47] And two batteries.

[00:05:47] I like that, too. Mm-hmm. They're optimistic you'll need the second battery. I bet they fly just fine.

[00:05:54] They're optimistic that it will survive long enough to use a second battery.

[00:05:58] Yeah. I bet it flies good. Well, I mean, it has safe.

[00:06:00] So… So, even Reggie could fly it. Wow.

[00:06:05] We're on the opposite side of the table right now, so he can't reach me.

[00:06:09] Yeah, but he can throw this at you.

[00:06:11] No, I'm keeping my dirt.

[00:06:12] Which… Yeah. Go on. Yeah. I was just going to say, this was… Dave put these together for us, and what I'm holding in my hand is a plastic vial, for lack of a…

[00:06:23] Do you really want to know what those are? No.

[00:06:25] No, no, no. No, I don't. Because I think it has to do with… Sample collection tubes. It was my previous… Yeah, yeah. But they are full of dehydrated Joe Nall mud. He washed this off of his truck and camper and collected it for us and dehydrated it. So, now we have a little piece of Joe Nall anytime we want it.

[00:06:44] You now own a piece of the Triple Tree Aerodrome.

[00:06:46] I actually like that. Which I think is awesome.

[00:06:48] I do see. That is so cool. I never would have thought that.

[00:06:50] Nope.

[00:06:51] That's a great idea, Dave. I might have to put it in another container, just because.

[00:06:56] They are brand new. Never used. Oh, okay. That makes me feel better. Yeah, they're not recycled. Well, I… I don't know that.

[00:07:06] But it's so cool because it's got the dirt inside of it, and it's labeled Joe Nall 2024. Thank you, Dave. Yeah. Very much. Yeah, very cool idea.

[00:07:15] Thank you.

[00:07:15] That was a great idea.

[00:07:16] And fitting because we dealt with a lot of mud. I have a lot more if you want more. The golf cart still has a ton of it on there, too.

[00:07:23] Oh, there we go. Just scrape some off of that. We could make a… I don't know. Maybe I need to re-level my yard or something with it. Yeah, you probably got enough. There's a bunch on there.

[00:07:31] Yeah.

[00:07:32] Before we get into that, though, one other thing that came across my news feed not that long ago. So, the Reno Air Races are moving to Roswell, New Mexico.

[00:07:42] Roswell, New Mexico. It's a former, well, without saying too much, a former military installation that they're going to have the races there now, which I think is fantastic. Was that Area 51? It is. Oh, wow.

[00:07:58] Yeah.

[00:07:59] But they've…

[00:07:59] That's where all the aliens are, right?

[00:08:00] Yeah. After Daniel was kind enough to say, hey, Tom, check this out. I did. I went and checked it out. And it looks like they've got a course set up out there in the desert. It's not the old Reno Stead location. If you're familiar with Stead Airport, it's got the Valley of Speed and all the other,… Accoutrements. Yeah, accoutrements. But they've got a nice course set up out there. To me, it'll be interesting to see how they accommodate spectators.

[00:08:36] Because they'll have to build, I would assume, a flight line that is accessible to the public, because they are not accessible to the public right now, or at least as far as I'm aware. But anyway, I'm just happy that the unlimited air racing will continue in the future.

[00:08:53] It is not going away. That's cool.

[00:08:55] Yeah.

[00:08:55] I was happy to see that. Thanks, Daniel. You're welcome.

[00:08:59] Okay. So now… So now we should talk about Joe Nall?

[00:09:02] I mean, if you want to. I mean, kind of what the point of this episode would be. Correct?

[00:09:07] It was another awesome week. I mean, every…

[00:09:13] Like, yeah.

[00:09:15] I just… There's so much stuff that happened in such a short period of time that it's hard to recall everything that happened.

[00:09:23] What I mean? I know. That's always the hard part, trying to remember everything. So I made a couple notes while we were there. Good for you. I have something to remember and talk about. First thing I want to say, though, is thanks, Jeff, for the woodpecker.

[00:09:38] Yes.

[00:09:41] That's really all I was going to say. Oh, okay.

[00:09:43] Well, have you stabbed yourself with it yet?

[00:09:45] No, it's actually still…

[00:09:46] Did it come with a box of Band-Aids?

[00:09:48] No, it did not. And actually, Tommy, yours is over with your stuff to take home. Okay. That way… I'll get right on that. And it does not have any of my DNA on it because I never even took it out of the package.

[00:09:59] Well, that's good.

[00:10:00] But no, so I said a long time ago on here that I wanted to find one. Oddly enough, they are hard to find.

[00:10:06] Like, very difficult to come across. That is hard to believe because I can't believe everybody that's ever had one hasn't either… Just thrown them away because… Thrown them away.

[00:10:13] Well, maybe that's the problem. They threw them away as opposed to selling them. But anyway, so Jeff R. Snow reached out. He is our buddy from Joe Knoll up in Rhode Island. And he said that he would trade me a soda for one, which…

[00:10:24] You still own a soda?

[00:10:25] I think it's a really good deal. No, he got a soda.

[00:10:28] Oh, did he?

[00:10:29] Okay. For him. Yeah, for him. No, not for me.

[00:10:32] No, it's a really good deal for him.

[00:10:34] Oh, for him? No. To get rid of it? I'm happy to have it. It's one of those dying tools that's hard to find, come to find out. And now I have one even if I never… Well, I'm planning on using it. But even after this project, if I don't use it, I will still have one.

[00:10:49] Okay. Thanks, Jeff.

[00:10:51] Yeah. What else? I mean, somebody else can talk. Well, you were working on your last…

[00:10:58] Oh, no, we can go through it. Like, I just want to make sure I didn't forget stuff.

[00:11:01] -huh.

[00:11:02] Like Tommy's crashes and Reggie's crashes. So I'll… Oh, sorry.

[00:11:07] I'm sorry.

[00:11:08] No, that's okay.

[00:11:09] I was just… Right off the bat, how about that campsite?

[00:11:12] I like that a lot.

[00:11:14] The premium camping was so worth the snafu that we went through to get it.

[00:11:19] Yeah. Because we don't have to go through it again.

[00:11:22] Right. And the fact that it's ours now, forever, until we don't take it or sign up, miss a year or whatever, which hopefully we won't do. But what a great location.

[00:11:33] So let me ask you something. If we have the chance to move, do you want to move somewhere else?

[00:11:38] No.

[00:11:38] Me neither. No.

[00:11:40] You're up in the high ground there. Why would you want to move?

[00:11:42] Right.

[00:11:42] Exactly.

[00:11:43] And, yeah, with a very small adjustment to wherever we parked the camper, trailer, whatever we ended up taking, yeah, we'll be dry no matter what the conditions. Yeah.

[00:11:53] I would say next year, park 20 feet farther forward than we did this year. Agreed. But other than that, everything worked out perfectly.

[00:12:00] And what a great view. I know. Yeah. It just was such a different experience this time than last time.

[00:12:09] Yeah. By the time this goes live, I will have all the pictures uploaded to the website so people can go see all the pictures we took at Jonal 2024, which means I need you to send me any that you took.

[00:12:20] Same with you guys. You mean the five pictures I took? Probably.

[00:12:24] I know. I got pictures of mud. I don't take a lot of pictures. I'm sorry. You don't. Like, I'm disappointed. I know.

[00:12:30] I think I got two from off the top of that hill going toward the showers and whatnot.

[00:12:34] Okay.

[00:12:35] Over our entire campsite.

[00:12:36] Oh, sweet.

[00:12:37] Send them to me.

[00:12:37] Yeah. Gotcha.

[00:12:38] Yeah.

[00:12:39] Daniel, check out. I got a lot. Oh, you did? Good. Oh, yeah.

[00:12:42] Oh, yeah.

[00:12:43] Okay. A little closer. So, Ron and Daniel are the picture takers then.

[00:12:49] Okay.

[00:12:49] I think I ended up taking, like, not as many this year as last year. I spent a lot less time taking pictures because once you've seen the views, you've seen the views already, so you don't need to redo it. But I think I probably end up taking about 600 or 700 pictures.

[00:13:07] Oh, I didn't take that many.

[00:13:10] Of actual NOL, I've got six. Nice.

[00:13:13] And one of them was the rain pouring down.

[00:13:15] Yeah, I've got a few of those, too. That was some rain.

[00:13:19] So, yeah, I'm looking through my phone here real quick. Yeah, about eight pictures. I just don't take pictures, sorry. I'm in the moment,? I'm just, like…

[00:13:30] Yeah, I get that.

[00:13:32] But I also like… It just doesn't occur to me.

[00:13:33] Like, when I'm sitting at work board, I like to pull them up every now and then and go, ah, why can I not be doing that right now?

[00:13:41] What I mean?

[00:13:41] Yeah. Kind of like the text I got from you that Monday afterwards. You messaged me at work, you're like, I'm really not getting much done today because I am still in NOL mode.

[00:13:52] Yeah.

[00:13:52] Yeah. Me, too. It was hard to focus. It was very hard to focus.

[00:13:55] Yeah, so…

[00:13:56] And that was after having a couple days at home decompressing. Yes. Like, trying to get back into…

[00:14:01] Yeah, the first day of work after Joe Nol is rough.

[00:14:06] Yeah. Sorry about that. Yeah. I spent all week catching up. I finally caught up at three o'clock yesterday afternoon.

[00:14:12] Yesterday? Holy smokes. Yeah.

[00:14:14] Ouch.

[00:14:15] Yeah.

[00:14:15] So, this is a week after we got… Actually, a week to the… No, this is Saturday. Yeah, a week to the day after we got home.

[00:14:22] Wow. That's sad. Yeah. Anyway, that campsite was amazing. And the premium, if you're going to Joe Nol and you can get a premium spot, you should.

[00:14:36] Yeah. Mostly just for not… Although, you guys didn't have to go get fuel very often, did you? We never went and got fuel.

[00:14:41] No.

[00:14:41] Okay. Well, I guess that's just us. We burned.

[00:14:43] Me. Whatever. Well, they had several cans, too.

[00:14:46] We had… We burned about, what, five gallons? Seven gallons? Something like that. Really?

[00:14:49] That's it?

[00:14:49] We did that every day.

[00:14:50] But we didn't leave it run all day. I mean, we ran it when we were there to charge batteries and… Well, AC here and there. And the weather was good at night. Yeah. We never had to run it at night. In fact, we shut the windows because it was just cool. Yeah.

[00:15:04] I mean, so we didn't have to run the AC. It was very chilly, yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, last year we had to run the AC.

[00:15:09] Yeah, it was a lot hotter last year when we were there. So… Yep. I was happy with the way everything turned out. Yeah, we came back with one full jug.

[00:15:16] Yeah, we came back with one full jug of fuel. Nice. So, we had, what, two five gallons and a two gallon, I think, we took.

[00:15:23] Yeah.

[00:15:24] So… Mm-hmm.

[00:15:26] Okay. Well, I guess weather changes things.

[00:15:29] It does, yeah. Well, and you like it really, really cold.

[00:15:32] It's really, really cold. I think I had the air set to see you. If I'm not shivering, you're too warm.

[00:15:37] We'll have to admit, the little soft start on my air conditioner works really, really well. Yeah. Didn't bog the… That's good….generator at all.

[00:15:43] Even though you had to rebuild the generator.

[00:15:45] Even though I feel stripped the generator in the rain.

[00:15:47] Oh, that's right. It was in the rain, too.

[00:15:49] Yeah. Not just the rain, the pouring rain. That was the day that we got the really bad weather. Yeah. Which really was only one day. Like, we had planned, like, I guess normally at Joe and I, you get a day of rain. Like, that seems to be the norm from people we've talked to and stuff.

[00:16:05] Well, that's what we had last year. It was a day.

[00:16:07] Right. Yeah. And that was the day we were going to sit down with Jeff and his Rhode Island crew and record again. But we never got that day. Like, there was just too much going on that we didn't have time to… I mean, we didn't want to quit. I mean, I think that was the biggest thing of it.

[00:16:26] Yeah.

[00:16:27] And time got away from us. It really did.

[00:16:29] Yeah.

[00:16:29] We were counting on a day of sprinkles, of dreary whatever, but we never got that.

[00:16:34] So, it rained all night, Tuesday night. Yeah. I was going to say, we got more than one day. We got a night of rain.

[00:16:39] Nice and soggy Tuesday.

[00:16:40] Got it soggy, and then it started to dry out a little bit, and then we got the deluge

[00:16:43] There in the… Was that afternoon or…

[00:16:45] Yeah.

[00:16:45] It was four o'clock in the afternoon.

[00:16:47] Yeah. But it wasn't enough to keep us from flying.

[00:16:49] No. So… Unless you're field stripping a generator. Well… Well…

[00:16:55] But… Without the proper tools.

[00:16:57] Yeah.

[00:16:58] Vice grips go a long way.

[00:17:00] Yeah. So, who wants to tell stories about what happened? I mean… I mean, I feel like I've talked a lot already. Okay. Let's go to the other end of the table.

[00:17:13] So, Reggie, this… And, well, Daniel and Dave, this was your first Joe Knoll experience. You want to put that into words?

[00:17:21] It was pretty awesome. I mean, definitely need a golf cart. No matter what you do, you need a golf cart. That and a little bit of knowledge of more so what you need to bring. Yeah. So, you can be ready to do it and not forget a bunch of stuff by the time you get there. First time float flying ever. So much fun. It was cool, right? It was sweet. It was sweet. It was sweet. I love it. It's just… I don't think my planes were prepared to that. How do you mean?

[00:17:47] Well, the Cub, the Carbon Z Cub, it was taking water on through the fuse. Right up through the cow breathing hole.

[00:17:56] Because you were taxiing with your floats where the push water up and the prop was blowing it back. Exactly. You needed to taxi faster or taxi with more elevator to get the tips up.

[00:18:05] Now you tell him.

[00:18:07] He told me. He's kind of fixing his aircraft anyway.

[00:18:10] He told me. He told me. But by that time, it was already too late. And on top of that, the ESC was laying in the bottom of the fuse there. So, it was just laying on whatever was going on. Got waterlogged. Yeah. So, that and somehow got water in one of the servos. Was it wicked up into, I think it was an elevator servo or something.

[00:18:27] One that you were having issues with the rut.

[00:18:29] Excuse me. With the rut or two. I think so. It was… I think that might have been through the ESC. Those two servos close together? Yeah. They were right beside each other. But only one was wet.

[00:18:37] Well, more than wet.

[00:18:39] It was like full.

[00:18:40] Remember you handed it to me? I did. You could shake it. You could hear the water sloshing around inside the servo case.

[00:18:46] So, if I do that again, I'll make sure to have everything ready to go. as far as being waterproofed or sealed or something. Anything. Yeah. But between that, the timber, which had a couple little accidents out there with that. Twin timber. Right. And yes. Yeah. Yes. And…

[00:19:04] Yeah. I didn't see that happen. Like, I still don't…

[00:19:07] I came in kind of hard. Like for landing?

[00:19:11] For landing.

[00:19:11] Oh, okay. And I think it might have ruptured it one time. I didn't catch it. So, when it took back off, it came back in. One of the floats. Yeah.

[00:19:19] Okay. And second time coming in landing, it just ripped them off. So, you came in a little hot, a little fast.

[00:19:24] Yes.

[00:19:25] And then, okay. Well, that makes sense. I'd say kind of hard landing it. Coming fast. Because if you looked at what was left of the floats, like from the back strut back, they looked pretty solid. So, to me, it looked like you may have caught in a tip or both tips, tip of each float on the water and then it ripped them off or whatever. Yeah, just the tip came off.

[00:19:49] Just the tip. It was probably the first two or three inches of it. It was gone.

[00:19:55] That didn't make it better, did it?

[00:19:56] No, it didn't. Not at all. No, no. But, it's learning lessons.

[00:20:00] Yeah.

[00:20:01] I learned you need a good, strong battery in the boat of shame because the row one's going to suck.

[00:20:05] Yeah. So, I had to go out in the boat of shame again this year.

[00:20:09] Yeah.

[00:20:10] Although, I feel like I…

[00:20:12] You get a freebie on a lot of this.

[00:20:13] Yeah, I'm not going to take full ownership of that because it wasn't really my fault that I had to row the boat of shame out to the… And so, like, where our campsite is, it's on, like, the opposite end of the lake from where the actual float line is. And we were doing a little bit of flying there, which we got in trouble for later. But anyway, that's where I was flying. This was the Turbo Timber Evolution first flight, well, first weekend of flying for me with that airplane.

[00:20:41] Looks like it flew really good, though. It did until it didn't. Yeah. And the second flight, after the flight immediately following the maiden, yeah, I think I was upside down checking the CG or something, and it just lost all power and it spun in upside down into the lake. Flat spinned. Yeah. So… Oh, it was flat.

[00:21:00] Yeah.

[00:21:01] It was very flat. And slow. And very slow. But it took me a very, very long time to get to it because it was on, like I said, the opposite end of the actual float line, flight lines. And then, yeah, there was no battery in the boat of shame. So, I had to row myself to the wreck site.

[00:21:20] Against the wind, even.

[00:21:21] Yeah. I got… Both ways.

[00:21:23] I tried to help you out. How's that? The tugboat going out. You did. Then I got in trouble because I got too far away. So, then my tugboat was stuck out next to your plane, so that was kind of a twofer on that one. I had to…

[00:21:36] Once I finally got there, I had to free the tugboat so it could go back and then, yeah, picked up the turbo timber. But, yeah, I know what you mean, Reggie, about rowing the boat. That was…

[00:21:46] No, no, no. Reggie didn't row the boat. Well, he… I started to. He started to. He whined enough and somebody felt bad for him and went and got the… Because he was the first one to use it with an actual battery in it.

[00:21:58] I was.

[00:21:59] Yeah.

[00:21:59] Well, really? No one else had a battery yet?

[00:22:02] No. That's what I mean. Like, he went up, I don't know what to do. Blah, blah, blah, blah. And everybody's like, oh, hold on. We'll get a battery then.

[00:22:08] And so they went and got…

[00:22:09] That's your story.

[00:22:10] No one offered to give me a battery. You didn't… The young man came up and he said… He didn't throw a fit in wine.

[00:22:14] There's a little difference. It was a good workout, at least. It was a nice upper body,.

[00:22:20] Yeah, my shoulder wasn't going to take that. Yeah.

[00:22:23] It was a long way to row. Oh, like that's… It doesn't look like it's that far. Yeah, but it does. That's a pretty good distance.

[00:22:29] Well, you're not rowing, you're paddling.

[00:22:31] Well, that's true.

[00:22:31] Yeah. Yeah. Because they didn't have actual row…

[00:22:34] Right.

[00:22:34] Yeah….just for it.

[00:22:35] Yeah, I was starting to paddle and I was just doing a circle. Literally sitting there going… Have you ever rowed a boat before? No. -huh.

[00:22:43] Never.

[00:22:43] And still hasn't, really? No, not much. Okay. At least not in a circle.

[00:22:46] Yeah, so you have to do some on one side and then a little bit on the other side. I was trying that. Yeah. It just was not working. It just went in circles. No, it was not working, so…

[00:22:54] Need to say, we got out there, we got it, we got it back. And, of course, when the cub went down a little while later, that was because of the water, I do believe. I think that was the next day. It was the next day.

[00:23:07] Yeah, because you were letting it air out, right?

[00:23:09] Yes. Yes, and didn't realize it was still that much water up in the servo there, so…

[00:23:14] Yeah.

[00:23:16] Nonetheless, we went and got it. And it was just offshore, so I didn't have to go out there and really go nowhere. I think we got it at the fishing line or something.

[00:23:23] Yeah, now that one I saw. And I saw… Yeah, you took off. We were flying at the float line this time. And, yeah, it took off and it just looked like it almost went into a stall right as soon as it broke the surface of the water. And then you kind of fought it away from the crowd, kudos. And then, yeah, it went in like just a few feet off the shore. I was struggling with it.

[00:23:42] I had not much of anything.

[00:23:44] Yeah. Yeah, it looked like a handful. It looked like a really, really tail-heavy, like, trainer is what it looked like. The way it was mushed in the back. Yeah. Well, and the servo not responding.

[00:23:55] I did find out later that one of the floats had water in it.

[00:23:58] Ah.

[00:23:58] So that was another issue.

[00:23:59] Okay.

[00:24:00] Yeah. So I think you found that out when we were just packing stuff away. Okay. Because I hung it upside down. I was wondering why it was dripping. Oh, because it was dripping? Yep. So. Yeah. It is what it is. I mean, it's lessons learned here, so… Well, yeah, I mean, now. I'll make sure next time we go.

[00:24:15] Make sure the floats are sealed and all that kind of good stuff. Like, during the rain we had during the day, I had left my little kingfisher up at the float line underneath the awning. And even that got waterlogged. And it was underneath an awning. So, yeah, water, it was blowing.

[00:24:33] Got everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that new carbon ZT28, as you saw, was… Yeah, it got wet, too.

[00:24:39] That's right. And it was underneath the… Nose underneath the camper. It was…

[00:24:43] Yeah.

[00:24:44] Yeah, that rain was no joke. And the wind was pushing it, too. Like you said, it was blowing.

[00:24:50] Okay, so raise your hand. Who crashed?

[00:24:53] You guys didn't, really? I had an incident, but not a crash.

[00:24:57] Do you consider the demo the cardinal combat?

[00:25:00] No, that's intentional. Combat. No, no, no. You can't count those. So, three of the five. I had a motor fly off my Alteryx 600. Oh, that's right. I made an off-site landing. Yeah, but that's not… It didn't crash. It's not a crash. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, the 3D motor mounts don't work.

[00:25:16] The 3D printed mounts that Ron got for you? Yeah. Didn't work?

[00:25:20] Sorry, guys. There's a $25 motor out there somewhere if anybody wants to go find it.

[00:25:26] You might get poison ivy if you're all the way out in the trees. I don't know.

[00:25:31] Yeah, just Reggie and I. The only two. Well, I did, too. Oh, that's right. You did.

[00:25:35] You didn't raise your hand, though.

[00:25:36] I did, too. You raised his hand.

[00:25:37] He did. He did. Oh, did you? Oh, my. So, three of the five crashed. Three of the five crashed.

[00:25:41] Oh, I thought you were going the other direction.

[00:25:43] No. So, yeah. That was fun, though. We'll talk about that in a little bit. That was… Well, I mean, I crashed. Completely my fault, though. Oh, me too. But it was worthwhile. So, flights. How many flights did we all get in? Did we keep track?

[00:25:58] Oh, I don't know now. Why do you not? I don't know now. I'm trying to think.

[00:26:04] Dave knows. I know. To the flight. To the flight, yeah. Which is how it should be if you're keeping track of your flights. I know, but…

[00:26:12] I sent myself an email every night with my flight count. Oh, nice. Why didn't I do that? I couldn't find my notepad in the trailer, so I just started sending myself emails. That's a good idea.

[00:26:21] That's a great idea. I just updated my list every time I flew.

[00:26:25] I didn't keep track.

[00:26:27] Wow. Okay. Okay, so… I love everybody has their phones out. I'll just…

[00:26:31] I don't have my phone out.

[00:26:32] Every other person.

[00:26:33] I use my hands to talk, so…

[00:26:34] No, I just meant they were looking at me. Oh. I think they're trying to figure their numbers out.

[00:26:38] So, I think on the way home, I was kind of doing a mental sort of recap, and I think conservatively, 30 flights for me. Conservatively.

[00:26:48] I think it's higher than that. Because I know my number, and you flew at least as much as I did. Except for that first… There was that one morning where I got like seven or eight in without you.

[00:26:57] Yeah, coffee with the guys.

[00:26:58] Yeah.

[00:27:00] Yeah.

[00:27:00] I think other than that, we were almost one for one. I ended up with 42, which is ironic because it was Joe Knoll. 40. Yeah.

[00:27:09] 40-second Joe Knoll.

[00:27:10] Yeah. Yeah, so I'll just go with that then. I had 14. You had what? 14. You only had 14.

[00:27:17] You were out like flying all the… Well, he was waiting a lot for electronics to dry out. Like when we were flying, he was waiting.

[00:27:24] Oh, okay.

[00:27:24] Back on the Cub. I was taking a step apart, trying to get water out of it, and spraying stuff out. He did a lot of wrenching. Reggie did.

[00:27:32] You shouldn't have to do that. I mean, like honestly, I had float planes and stuff, and I didn't have the issues that… I said first time.

[00:27:40] First time.

[00:27:40] Oh, I didn't last year either.

[00:27:43] I had zero issues with the float planes.

[00:27:45] Yeah.

[00:27:46] I don't know. I just… I'd get water in a couple of them, and that was it. I had to wait. I had to wait for a couple of days for the Kingfisher after the rain.

[00:27:53] That was the rain, though.

[00:27:55] Which…

[00:27:55] Well, yeah, but still, waterlogged electronics take time to dry. And that's all dried out and good now, though? Yeah. Like… Yeah, absolutely. A note of something to bring is a hairdryer.

[00:28:04] Oh, I never thought of that.

[00:28:05] Oh, that's it. I think there was one in the camper.

[00:28:09] Maybe. I almost brought my heat gun, and I left it at home. I probably should have.

[00:28:13] That's a good idea. Well, your idea with the WD-40 and the electrical contact cleaner was perfect.

[00:28:20] Yeah, I've done that many times. It works pretty well.

[00:28:22] That'll be something that I'll bring. And not to mention, get that Corrosion X, the one gentleman was telling us about.

[00:28:27] Yeah, so what Reggie's talking about, for the listeners, if you have waterlogged electronics, open them up to the best of your ability. Hose them off with WD-40, which stands for Water Displacement Formula 40. Makes sense. Correct. And then, yeah, clean it off with a little CFC or contact cleaner. And sometimes that works. It did. And it did for Reggie. So, cool.

[00:28:52] My count, by the way, was 22.

[00:28:54] 22. Daniel?

[00:28:56] I think I was at about 13 or 14. Nice. But I got to think, I don't like flying with other people, so that kind of. Well, yeah, I mean. And most of mine were, well, I did fly the float plane quite a bit, but then when I bought that wing, that wing was kind of, the night. Kind of fun. Yeah. A lot of night. It was a lot less people.

[00:29:19] And can I just say that, so as everybody that listens to the show knows, flying wings and I don't get along, Daniel mastered the technique of launching these things on his very first toss. Now, I mean, that's incredible.

[00:29:38] Nice. I want to give you a little shelter here because the only one that you have ever tried to launch has been that crappy, that doesn't work very well, whatever, I don't even know what it is. It's not an assassin. It's not like a brand that I know of. And it just, it does not fly as good as the ones Daniel and the Dave got.

[00:30:00] I was very impressed with the one I got. I mean, it flies.

[00:30:03] It looks like it flies really good.

[00:30:04] I love it. It's a nice little. So, what'd you guys get?

[00:30:08] What? I said, it looks like it flies really good.

[00:30:10] Oh, I didn't even catch it. We got it from Tim at ReadyMadeRC. Oh, that's right.

[00:30:15] ReadyMadeRC.

[00:30:15] Yeah, it's the Shadow Seeker.

[00:30:17] Shadow Seeker. Remember, you thought it said Shadow See Her.

[00:30:20] Well, that's because the K didn't have much of a, the K looked like an H. It didn't have much of that little bump cut out.

[00:30:27] But it does fly well.

[00:30:28] Easy to put together. I did it right there at the campsite.

[00:30:31] Yeah.

[00:30:31] A couple hours and it was ready to go and lights.

[00:30:34] So, at the end of the week then, you didn't feel like running it over with the camper or anything like that? No, no, no.

[00:30:43] Did you with yours, Tommy?

[00:30:44] Yeah.

[00:30:44] So, you did get to fly it, though.

[00:30:46] I did. And boy, well, Dave witnessed it.

[00:30:48] It bounces nice.

[00:30:49] It was a handful.

[00:30:51] Really?

[00:30:51] Like, I mean, the launch, okay, yeah, the launch is.

[00:30:54] Is its own thing.

[00:30:55] Is its own thing. But like, once it was airborne, it didn't get any better. Like, it flew. It was a rodeo ride. It flew a lot like the launches looked.

[00:31:05] Well, and that, so here's the thing. Like, we studied other people launching their wings.

[00:31:11] Yeah.

[00:31:11] And I'm going to be honest. They were not doing anything differently than what you were doing. Theirs just were successful, which tells me it probably has something to do with the airplane.

[00:31:21] Because when you got it last year, the guys that you got it off of were having problems.

[00:31:25] Yeah, they couldn't even get it launched. So, I, I think if you started with another wing now. A better wing? Yeah, a shadow seeker.

[00:31:34] A shadow seeker? You should have really flew, yeah. You wouldn't fly mine, but you should have. I mean, it just.

[00:31:39] Yeah, I was just done with wings.

[00:31:40] I know, yeah.

[00:31:41] Maybe, maybe next year. We'll see. Maybe I'll buy one at Joan Hall next year.

[00:31:45] It's well worth it.

[00:31:46] I love it. maybe that can be a tradition. Buy an airplane at Joan Hall and fly it at Joan Hall. Like we did the decathlon.

[00:31:52] I know, that was so much fun. So, first off. Sorry. I know, I want to. Try and make sure we stay in some sort of order. Who flew everything they brought? Not it. Not it. No. Except for my mainline plane.

[00:32:07] Okay.

[00:32:07] So good. How many did you bring and how many did you fly? X out of how many?

[00:32:14] I had 14 and I flew 13.

[00:32:17] Five out of six. You really? Wow. You brought that many? I know you brought that many.

[00:32:20] Yeah. That's awesome. I didn't realize that either.

[00:32:22] That is awesome. I was moving around. I didn't realize there was that many.

[00:32:26] There was a sailboat and a truck. Oh, yeah.

[00:32:29] That's right. Yeah.

[00:32:30] And the trailboat.

[00:32:31] Are you counting the boats in with that? It was just aircraft.

[00:32:33] Okay. That's awesome. Wow.

[00:32:34] That is pretty cool. That's prolific. That's what that is.

[00:32:38] Beat me. I'm five for six. I try to fly two airplanes different every day.

[00:32:45] Oh, okay.

[00:32:46] So you had like a method. Yeah.

[00:32:49] See, I didn't have a plan. I didn't either. As I was packing, I was like, oh, there's room for this little box. Oh, there's room for this one. I'll throw this one in there too without much forethought. What about you, Daniel? I think, no.

[00:33:00] I brought the Ledger Streak, which didn't get flown. The Beaver, the float plane, that got flown. The Alteryx, that got flown once until I got the wing. And then once I got the wing, the Alteryx didn't come back. I was afraid because we were flying those at night and the guys with the wings were out. And I was afraid I was going to get clobbered because I was kind of floating around. These guys were zipping by. So I stopped.

[00:33:29] And then the next day I bought the wing and I never did bring the Alteryx back out.

[00:33:33] I'm going to be honest. The Alteryx is not a perfectly dark, like completely dark night flyer for me.

[00:33:41] Yeah. I have no problem with mine.

[00:33:43] I know.

[00:33:43] Mine was fine.

[00:33:44] Yeah.

[00:33:45] I prefer the wing. Well, I'd never flown night before. So that was my first time flying with the lights on it.

[00:33:53] And I felt like I was in people's ways because I was. So I just stopped. We need to do that more often, by the way.

[00:34:00] Night stuff. Oh, yeah. Like I say, once I got that wing with the lights on it.

[00:34:05] Yeah. That thing was really easy to see, too. It was really easy to see. Very bright.

[00:34:09] And it looked like it flew really good.

[00:34:12] I mean, it was a simple build, but yeah. So the joke is every time Ron and I see an airplane fly, it's always, oh, that looks like it flies. Like literally every plane except for one, maybe two, that we saw this last week. Like it was one of us saying, oh, that looks like it flies good.

[00:34:30] Yeah.

[00:34:31] So now the joke is it always flies good.

[00:34:33] Yeah. And I mean, that was completely.

[00:34:36] And there's rare exceptions to that.

[00:34:39] But there are exceptions.

[00:34:40] There are.

[00:34:41] Oh, yeah. Yeah.

[00:34:43] And I happen to own. Well, actually, you own it now.

[00:34:46] No, I don't. I lost it.

[00:34:48] You lost it.

[00:34:48] No, actually, I did bring it inside because for some reason you accidentally just left it here.

[00:34:53] Oh, I didn't. It was no accident. It was left in the grass. Well, you said you wanted to tinker with it.

[00:34:58] No, no, no, no. I said I wouldn't mind trying to fly it sometime.

[00:35:01] Dave, how would you take that if he said that to you? Oh, and then I should leave it here.

[00:35:05] You should leave it here.

[00:35:05] Exactly.

[00:35:06] Seriously? Yes. No. That means I would like to try to fly it sometime. Here you go. It means it's yours. That doesn't mean I want to own it. So in my thought, it was, well, next time we go out to the field, if you take it with you to fly, I wouldn't mind trying to fly. That's what I was trying to say.

[00:35:22] You would never fly, I think, because I will never take that airplane to the field.

[00:35:25] Right. And so as I was carrying it in, I don't know if you noticed, and perhaps it was like this before, but the ailerons or the elevons are delaminated.

[00:35:34] Wow. That may have happened in the sun.

[00:35:36] Could that have happened before you flew it? No, they won't. I was trying to give you another out.

[00:35:40] No, I looked it over before I tried to fly the ding thing. So anyway.

[00:35:44] Well, it's pretty much this durable chunk.

[00:35:47] Yeah. Oh, it is. That? It is. So, Reggie, how many for how many?

[00:35:52] I flew three of the four I brought. Three of the four? Okay. A Viper, 90 millimeter, the Carbon Z Cub. Twimber. Twimber. I also flew that Carbon Z T-28, so I actually, I bought three. Well, but you bought that there.

[00:36:08] Yes.

[00:36:08] So that kind of doesn't count.

[00:36:10] Of the four you took, how many did you crash? All three.

[00:36:15] Yeah, he only took three with him. Oh, I'm sorry.

[00:36:18] Yeah. I'm sorry. I took four by crash three. You took, what was the fourth you took? This Altrics laying on the floor here that I forgot as well. Oh, the Altrics.

[00:36:25] Yeah. Yeah.

[00:36:26] He would have crashed that. Don't fly it. You can't wreck it.

[00:36:28] That's true.

[00:36:29] Stay in the box. It was safe. But everything that crashed got fixed and it's still flying.

[00:36:34] Bye, Dave.

[00:36:35] One of his planes has part of my camper in it.

[00:36:37] Yeah.

[00:36:38] Which, by the way, that was ingenious. That repair was something to be proud of, I would think.

[00:36:44] So explain. So, Reggie broke the end off of his strut for the, what was it, the carbon cub? Carbon Z cub, yeah. Carbon Z cub took and broke the end of the wing strut. Well, both of them, right? Both sides. Both ends.

[00:36:58] One of them got broken on the way to Jonal. Yes. It got damaged in the trailer.

[00:37:02] And then the other one got broken in the… And then he folded it back together, melted both ends and smooshed it together.

[00:37:18] Mm-hmm.

[00:37:19] Seemed to work. Because it didn't break again, did it? No, it did not. And then the second one, he broke the end of the strut off where it bolts to the fuselage. And that's kind of an important one.

[00:37:27] Yeah.

[00:37:29] So I had, when I got my camper, it had these plastic hatch latches on it. And I replaced them with aluminum ones just because that's what I do. So they don't break, yeah. But like being Dave, I didn't throw anything away. And I had the old plastic latches in the trailer still.

[00:37:44] Yeah.

[00:37:45] And I ended up cutting up one of those and bolting it to the end of the strut. Yeah. It looks like a factory piece. It really does.

[00:37:51] It does. It doesn't even look like it's been repaired. It looks stronger than what it was, to be honest with you. Yep.

[00:37:57] Cool. There's that. Everything flew great.

[00:38:01] Yeah. We showed up and Reggie saw that piece was broken. You made a beeline to Dave's camper.

[00:38:06] It wasn't quite a beeline.

[00:38:08] It was as straight as you could get without going through water. I just knew Dave could do it. I must go get Dave. Dave, fix this.

[00:38:16] Well, you were originally trying to put metric bolts into a, no, you're putting standard bolts into a metric system. That was a problem. No, you just got to turn it harder, cut new threads. Yeah. I dug in my box and got them the metric bolts.

[00:38:32] Dave brought everything. I've got everything.

[00:38:35] Yeah. Dave, Dave was like the RC savior. Like if any of us had an issue, Dave would usually have the fix.

[00:38:44] Yeah.

[00:38:45] So, so I was, I think I was four for five. I flew four of the five that I took because I did not fly the telemaster because it did sustain some damage on the way to Jonah also.

[00:38:57] And I'm kind of happy about that.

[00:38:59] Why? I really wanted to fly it.

[00:39:01] Yeah.

[00:39:01] That's the reason I didn't fly the L4 because we were all going to fly the main line together.

[00:39:04] Well, I'm not happy that that didn't get flown there, but I'm kind of happy that it had some damage because now it is out of my hangar.

[00:39:11] Oh.

[00:39:12] And into yours.

[00:39:13] I did take it home so that I could repair it.

[00:39:16] And I think you said you will keep it. And I said.

[00:39:19] While I repair it.

[00:39:21] No, no, no.

[00:39:21] You can keep it. And then when the repair is finished. When it's repaired, it's finished. It can go in your room. It can come back and be stored in its rightful place. No, it's not a rightful place.

[00:39:28] It's got a slot right there in the garage. Right. It is about to get taken up, by the way. That's my, one of my goals for this weekend is to get everything taken down out there and re-hung because I've gotten rid of a few. I've gotten a few.

[00:39:41] Yeah, you need to re-space everything.

[00:39:42] And I need to figure something. I get it. And I need to cut more hangars for the, what are those things called that are on the wall? The brackets? Yeah, I need to make more brackets for the little system thing that's up there. Cool. Which, that reminds me, Daniel, way off topic. Are you ready to take the Mystery Man? The one from Toledo? The three channel? Oh, yeah. Okay, it's all yours. Like, I really, I'm going to be honest. I want to do something with that.

[00:40:14] But if you want to.

[00:40:15] Oh, is this that Goldwing thing?

[00:40:16] Yeah, it's a cool airplane.

[00:40:17] It's a cool looking airplane.

[00:40:18] But honestly, I'm not going to do anything with it anytime soon. So, I would prefer to see somebody that will do something with it, at least fly it or whatnot, have it and take it. So, there you go. Merry Christmas. Well, no, it's 40 bucks. He said he'd give me what I paid. Oh, yeah. Well, I thought he was. I just wanted to get rid of it. That took less than a month. No, like I said, reality is hitting that I'm not going to have time to do everything.

[00:40:48] Stop looking at me like that. What? That was judging eyes.

[00:40:52] Well, you haven't seen my room with all the ones sitting there. I haven't gotten done yet either. And I keep bringing more home and somebody keeps telling me, you've got enough to do.

[00:41:01] Yeah, you have seen my room and it's an airplane hangar.

[00:41:07] I redid my account last night. I'm actually, with all my acquisitions so far this year, I'm actually down to 50.

[00:41:13] Down to 50.

[00:41:15] Man.

[00:41:16] So, you're not, you're net negative so far?

[00:41:19] I'm net negative two or three. Oh, I'm still down a lot, so I'm happy. My net negative is better than that.

[00:41:28] But with the new acquisitions.

[00:41:30] And we will talk about those in a little bit, maybe? Yeah.

[00:41:33] Okay. Okay. But if we're telling, of the five that I took, I crashed one. If you're telling. Does that count the wing? Well, no. I guess I crashed two then.

[00:41:44] Yeah. The wing isn't crashed.

[00:41:46] Yeah, it's not crashed. It's still flyable as well as it was. It bounced?

[00:41:51] Yeah. So, I guess, yeah.

[00:41:53] Well, if you count that, when we tried to fly my wing the first time, it bounced because we had to, or I guess I had the elevator the wrong direction. Oops. Oh. And we just thought that we were having a hard time launching it. Yeah. I asked, everything checked. Yep. It moved.

[00:42:09] Yeah. There's this thing that we recommend, doing before every flight, a pre-flight check.

[00:42:14] But there was, there was something about with the setup on the radio. We had to switch to a long V. Yeah.

[00:42:19] You had me set it up.

[00:42:20] It was one way.

[00:42:21] Because the reversing is wonky.

[00:42:22] Yeah. So, that kind of screwed it up. And we just thought it was hard to, and I was like, well, here's another Tommy wing.

[00:42:29] Speaking of radio, I'm sorry. Speaking of radios, I was so excited. Can I just say, I freaking love my new radio.

[00:42:36] So, before you say that, I took nine, I took 12 and flew nine. That's fine.

[00:42:41] You took 12 and flew nine. Oh, you didn't fly the big Radian.

[00:42:44] No. I didn't fly the big Radian. I didn't fly the Draco or the UMX A10.

[00:42:51] Okay, now we can go on. There we go. Now we're around the room.

[00:42:54] And of the ones you took, how many did you crash?

[00:42:56] One. And we will discuss that later because that was completely my fault, but completely fun.

[00:43:03] Yeah.

[00:43:04] And worthwhile. Yeah.

[00:43:06] Yeah.

[00:43:06] But what did you get? Because you started to talk about something, Tommy. Oh, I bought a new radio. I'm proud of you. I actually…

[00:43:12] So, Verizon, shows up and they always have deals, show specials, whatever, and no shipping and no tax. So, yeah, I bought a new iX14.

[00:43:23] Nice. Yeah. I love it.

[00:43:25] It's so much faster than my other radio. Hip boots within this decade. Yeah. Yeah. It really does. Like, it's super, super fast compared to the old radio.

[00:43:34] I mean, it's still not DX8 fast, but it's fast. But it does a lot more than DX8. Well, that's true. You actually have a lot more built into it. Yeah.

[00:43:43] The screen is bigger, too. I was not expecting that. I thought it was just the same screen, but it's actually a bigger screen, too. Oh, than the 12? Yeah.

[00:43:49] Yeah.

[00:43:49] So, that helps also. Because, pointing in my eyes.

[00:43:54] Yeah. I'm there, too. I get it.

[00:43:56] So, yeah, I was very excited to pick that up along with my other new acquisition.

[00:44:02] Should we talk about what we got then?

[00:44:03] I mean, you can. If you want.

[00:44:06] You can.

[00:44:06] I mean… I bought a jet.

[00:44:08] I don't know why. That wasn't even on my mind. Oh. You did. So, go ahead.

[00:44:12] Oh, you're thinking about the charger?

[00:44:14] No, I was actually trying to go through my mind and remember what you bought, because you made that, like, you bought something. I'm like, what did he get?

[00:44:21] Well, I mean, it's not really a Joe Nall purchase. I purchased it before Joe Nall. I just took delivery of it at Joe Nall.

[00:44:26] I still count that as a Joe Nall purchase. Okay. Because had it not been for Joe Nall, you would not have gotten it when you did and how you did. Do you agree?

[00:44:35] Probably true. Yeah.

[00:44:37] Probably true. Was that your phone? Shush. I'm trying to… It's always his phone.

[00:44:41] It's always his phone, and he chastises us to make sure we have… Well, he doesn't do it anymore, so I shouldn't say that. I chastised. Used to. In the past. But anyway, so what'd you get? So, a couple weeks before Joe Nall… Well, we went to Dayton.

[00:44:54] Yes, I do know that. Because you were there with me.

[00:44:56] I was. And I sold everything I took, so I had jet money.

[00:45:01] You had fundage. Yeah.

[00:45:02] So, I had been kind of looking around online. I didn't… I knew I did not want the Hangar 9 one, because you had the Hangar 9 one. I didn't want, like, two of them,? So, I wanted something that wasn't that, and I stumbled across Boomerang RC Jets. Well, they make the Elon, and they make a smaller version of the Elon that looks like a Sprint, and then they make this new one called a Lancer, and in between that lineup, they make one called a Ranger.

[00:45:26] So, I did a little more research and looked at YouTube, and it's a pretty nice little sport jet. It has a cockpit, which is nice. Most sport jets are usually just a blacked-out canopy, so I don't know why that was important to me, but it was. So, yeah. And they make this Ranger in two versions. Well, the original Ranger was a… It's a two-piece fiberglass fuselage that gets bolted together, kind of like your MB-339 hub, bolted together, but built-up wings, stabs, and fin.

[00:46:00] But they're replacing that with a new one that is all composite. So, one-piece composite fuselage, composite wings, so on and so forth. And they were closing out the older version, and they had one left in orange.

[00:46:12] So, they told me… Which is your color.

[00:46:13] Which is my color. I mean, just look at my microphone here. And then, on top of it being kind of a close-out price, they also gave me, like, a Joe Nall kind of a special deal with an additional percentage off. So, I got a pretty good deal on this kit, and so I went ahead and purchased it and told them, hey, if you guys are going to be a Joe Nall, I'll just pick it up then, if you got room to put it in the trailer.

[00:46:38] And they said they did, and I picked it up a Joe Nall, and I was the only one excited about it.

[00:46:43] I was excited about it. I just don't show excitement in the way I guess I should. I need to practice my excited face.

[00:46:50] I was really excited, but… So, yeah, I have a jet airframe right now.

[00:46:57] So, you're ahead of Reggie.

[00:46:59] Well, for now. Like, his is on the way.

[00:47:02] Yeah.

[00:47:02] As soon as they unpack it from the container when it gets off the boat from China, then they'll process it and then send it to him eventually.

[00:47:12] I think that's about the only thing I don't have right now.

[00:47:14] He at least has an engine.

[00:47:16] I don't have an engine yet.

[00:47:17] Hey, can I borrow your engine? Yeah, if you want to test run, go ahead. I'm just teasing.

[00:47:21] Test run in your jet for a couple years.

[00:47:24] But yeah, I mean, so I still got to buy the rest of the stuff, to make it pliable. Yeah. Yeah. At least I'm heading that direction, and I'm really super excited. Like, I'm so excited. I could not wait when I got home to take it out of the box and just throw the pieces together and take a picture of it and send it to you guys, because I was really excited.

[00:47:43] It looks nice. I really, I like it a lot.

[00:47:45] Thank you. I think it's sharp. I can't wait to get it flying.

[00:47:51] It's going to be fun. So maybe not this year, but next year for sure, Jet Meet.

[00:47:56] Maybe. I'm not making any promises. I've learned my lesson from Reggie. Don't say another word. Just let it go. I'm not going to make any promises. But that would be awesome.

[00:48:08] Yeah. Yeah.

[00:48:09] So that'd be cool.

[00:48:10] That's awesome. I'm glad to hear that. So you are joining the Jet Club.

[00:48:13] Yeah. I tell you, it's like, it just snuck up on me. It's weird. Like, this time last year, you were talking jets and stuff like that, and I was like, eh, that's years away for me,? And then, yeah, now here I am. I've had a kid, at least,?

[00:48:30] And that's funny. Before I ordered mine, before all that came out, and I did the serious figuring stuff, jets were years away for me, too. That's weird.

[00:48:39] Oh, they just came out. That's, like, perfect size, good price. Yeah.

[00:48:44] And, yeah, so made it happen. Yeah. So, yeah.

[00:48:48] I'm joining the Jet Club, I guess.

[00:48:50] And then, Reggie, also while we were gone. Yes. I purchased a jet as well. He ordered his.

[00:48:58] He did.

[00:48:58] He finally pulled the trigger.

[00:49:00] They gave me some good pricing. I couldn't pass it up. And you've got the new version that's like the military scheme, right?

[00:49:06] Yes. Same jet as Ron's, just the new color scheme, which I…

[00:49:10] Which scheme is it supposed to be, anyway? It's French. The French? Yes.

[00:49:14] It's French. French line jet of some sort. It's definitely better looking than that orange and blue.

[00:49:20] See? I disagree. I like the orange and blue better.

[00:49:23] I like the orange and blue better if the orange was red. But, like, I'm usually… you could recover it. I don't want to. That's too much work. But I do like, like, I like the military look of the new one. But in my mind, I just keep thinking, if you punctured, if you put a hole in it, you're

[00:49:41] Not going to be able to fix any of the fabric. The same idea that they did with the Bronco, with the printed covering. So, yeah. If you ever have to do a repair…

[00:49:49] It's a recover.

[00:49:50] Yeah. And I'm not a big fan of the artificial weathering. Like, I don't…

[00:49:55] Oh, see, I like it.

[00:49:56] See, I just…

[00:49:57] It was a little heavy-handed.

[00:49:58] It usually looks over… Yeah, thank you. It usually looks overdone to me, but…

[00:50:03] It looks like if I had a real jet, that's what it would look like, because I don't clean stuff. So, I mean, it doesn't bother me at all. I mean, I should take offense at that, but I don't, so I can't.

[00:50:12] I mean, you can't, really.

[00:50:13] Yeah.

[00:50:15] But, yeah. So, yes.

[00:50:17] Jets are cool. Three of the five of us, looking at you guys now. Not happening. Not going to happen. That's what Tommy said a year ago, too. That's exactly what I said.

[00:50:26] And for me, I mean, it was… I mean, it was the cost, but…

[00:50:30] Yeah.

[00:50:31] If you space it out a little bit at a time, and you can be patient…

[00:50:34] Like, monthly? Like, well, I mean, no. I mean, it's going to take me longer than that, but… Yeah.

[00:50:40] It's doable, I think.

[00:50:42] Yeah. It's going to be fun. Like, I'm interested to see how everything goes together, and…

[00:50:48] Well, I mean, the airplane's together.

[00:50:50] Well, but… You have to put everything in it.

[00:50:52] Like, all the… Yeah, I haven't done any installs yet, because I don't have anything to install.

[00:50:56] You have the gear, though, right?

[00:50:57] Yeah.

[00:50:57] Is the gear put in? Yes. Nice.

[00:50:59] That's awesome. Yeah, the gear's in it, the… Did you put a cheap receiver in it just to cycle the gear and stuff with it?

[00:51:06] Well, that's…

[00:51:07] I'm going to. I'm surprised you didn't. Yeah.

[00:51:08] Like, I was really close the other… Last night, night before, whatever it was, and I almost did that, because you actually have to slide the wings in. You have to… Because the gear retracts kind of into the fuselage.

[00:51:20] Mm-hmm.

[00:51:21] Okay. I was like, so you have to, drop the gear to pull the wings off. Oh, okay. So I was, like, really, really close to just throwing an AR600 in there just to run the

[00:51:30] Gear, but I didn't.

[00:51:31] I might, though.

[00:51:32] I see. I would have. I mean, that's… Yeah.

[00:51:34] Well, I…

[00:51:35] So, to be honest…

[00:51:36] Well, actually, if you need to… I'm a little afraid of burning up my brakes, like you did with yours. Like, I'm petrified I'm going to…

[00:51:44] As long as it's hooked up right, it won't.

[00:51:46] Have you seen the instructions with this thing?

[00:51:49] No.

[00:51:49] I actually haven't. The best Chinglish that you can hire somebody to translate.

[00:51:55] Well…

[00:51:56] It's terrible.

[00:51:57] So, on yours, do you have to have a receiver in order to cycle the gear? Because my gear controller will do it without any radio input. I don't know.

[00:52:07] I haven't…

[00:52:07] Like, there's a button on mine you can…

[00:52:09] Like, I tried to read the instructions that came with the controller, and I can't, like, decipher what they actually…

[00:52:15] Is there a button on yours?

[00:52:16] …are telling you. I haven't actually had the controller out of the package yet.

[00:52:19] Oh, okay.

[00:52:20] You should try that, then. I might. I got you. I thought you meant you had it all hooked up in there. No, no, no.

[00:52:24] No, I mean the…

[00:52:25] The gears, actually. Yeah. Okay.

[00:52:27] Physically, and… Yeah. And I've developed a plan for how I'm going to run all the wiring and stuff. I just haven't… Well, that could be done now. I know.

[00:52:36] I'll have to pull them out anyway. Are you going to get the multi-connector thing to do just a single… Yeah, I already got those. Do you? Okay. That's where I screwed up.

[00:52:45] Well, so there's going to be a lot of wires in each wing.

[00:52:47] Yes.

[00:52:48] And not to derail the Joe Nog conversation, but there's going to be like… So, four individual wires for the… two wires for the brake, two wires for the gear.

[00:52:57] Yes.

[00:52:57] Then there's going to be six wires for the lights that are going to be in the wingtip. Oh. So, there's six… there's ten, nine, whatever that… Yeah, ten wires right there. Plus the six wires for the flap servo and the aileron servo. So, I mean, that's a lot of… So, it'll probably be a combination of connectors. Okay.

[00:53:19] Big connectors.

[00:53:19] Like, I've got…

[00:53:21] The quick connects ones?

[00:53:22] Yeah. I've got the… I think they're called Ashlock connectors, and I have them all the way up to eight pins. So, it may take two eight pin connectors. But, yeah, I am going to simplify it at least.

[00:53:31] I'd probably do an eight pin and like a six pin if you can. That way you don't accidentally… Well, I was going to do opposite ends. Oh, okay. That makes sense. Do what I'm saying?

[00:53:38] Like, do the female.

[00:53:39] Male, yeah. That way you can't accidentally. Exactly. Yeah.

[00:53:42] But, anyway. Yeah. So, I'm excited.

[00:53:46] So, what else did you buy there?

[00:53:48] So, I got the charger, which I was really, kind of dragging my feet on updating to smart technology. But, I finally did buy an S2200, and I like it a lot. Mm-hmm. I knew I would, but… Mm-hmm.

[00:54:01] I get it.

[00:54:02] But, they, again, Horizon with the show specials, got a good deal on it. And then I bought a Decathlon, which I think all of us here at the table, minus Dave, bought one as well. Wow, Dave.

[00:54:11] I bought one.

[00:54:12] Yeah, he gave it away. Well, that's true.

[00:54:14] That's true. Yeah. So, the RJG… RJ… I always mess that one up. RJG Decathlon. Yep. We all own now. And it was funny, because it wasn't just us that bought them. There were a few other guys that were…

[00:54:28] A couple of the Rhode Island guys bought them.

[00:54:29] Three guys that were there. Yeah. And I think we ended up having, what, seven or eight of them? Eight. That we all had. And I think six of us flew together at once.

[00:54:37] Yeah, we were able to get six of them in the air at the same time. And I'll be honest, I had no trouble at all.

[00:54:42] Oh, me neither. Like, it wasn't…

[00:54:44] It was easy to see. People were like, oh, are you going to tell your… It's actually not…

[00:54:48] I was spotting for you, and if I looked away, it would take me a second to find yours. But… Yeah.

[00:54:52] Yeah. Like, honestly… They fly really good. I figured if I was to kind of lose which one was mine, just a quick elevator up and down to see which one's porpoising, we'll get you right back on it. Yeah. At a wide view.

[00:55:05] But if you don't take your eyes off of your airplane…

[00:55:07] I didn't. You'll never lose it. I was like, the whole time. Yeah. No, I didn't have any problems with that either. I was a little concerned before we started, but all…

[00:55:17] Yeah, no problem.

[00:55:18] …horities were…

[00:55:19] And by the way, they do look a lot better with black windows, I think.

[00:55:22] Oh.

[00:55:22] They do. Tremendously better. I like that. That was a good picture.

[00:55:24] Yeah.

[00:55:24] How'd you do that, anyway? I used… So I just masked it off, which you got to be careful with the masking tape. It will pull. It will pull.

[00:55:31] Yeah.

[00:55:33] But I just used the old, gosh, the water-based style craft paint. Acrylic paint. Thank you. Yeah, the acrylic craft paint from like…

[00:55:42] Hobby Lobby or whatever.

[00:55:44] That's what I was thinking about. Tend it down and masked it off and sprayed it through with my airbrush.

[00:55:48] Right on top of the gray. Painter's tape? Mm-hmm.

[00:55:51] Yeah. And I stuck it to my pant leg a couple times, so it wasn't real sticky.

[00:55:55] Right.

[00:55:56] And even then, it still pulled… Post-its.

[00:55:59] Oh. That's a good idea. That's a great idea. Yeah.

[00:56:03] I've absconded with a few packs of Post-its. Yeah. That's a great idea. Yeah. That's a very good idea.

[00:56:07] I will have to try that. Yeah, me too. Because those are not very sticky.

[00:56:11] No. No.

[00:56:12] Just sticky enough if you don't go blasting the edge.

[00:56:15] Yeah. And that's the other thing with, I mean, with thinning the craft paint down so much, it is going to bleed under, but it's really, I mean, it's water-based. It's really easy to clean those. There are your Q-tippings. That's exactly what I did.

[00:56:26] Well, in my case, spit usually, but…

[00:56:27] That's usually what I used to. Yeah. I just sprayed them with craft paint because you don't have to be fuel-proof. They're electric.

[00:56:35] True. Okay, so I bought a few things then. You did. So I got the decathlon also.

[00:56:39] You bought more than a few things. No, depends what a few means.

[00:56:43] So I did get the decathlon because I, how could you not?

[00:56:47] It was such a good deal.

[00:56:49] I was, I had no plans on buying that airplane.

[00:56:51] I didn't either.

[00:56:52] Me neither. And then after seeing it fly and seeing it in person, because it looks better in person.

[00:56:58] It really does. It doesn't photograph well for some reason.

[00:57:01] Right.

[00:57:01] But yeah, up close, I really like them.

[00:57:03] But like, I understand that's what a decathlon looks like.

[00:57:08] Yeah.

[00:57:08] But I don't like what a decathlon looks like because it looks… Like a decathlon. It looks too bulbous on the top. Like somebody, it looks cartoony to me. Like the bottom, like the windows need to be short. Like it's just, it's out of proportion.

[00:57:23] The windows do look a little big.

[00:57:26] They look weird.

[00:57:27] And I was going to try to, but then…

[00:57:29] Anyway. But like I said, if you look at the pictures of the real ones, that's what it looks like. So anyway, decathlon, I, for some reason, bought the EC-1500, which…

[00:57:38] That was a total impulse buy.

[00:57:40] I loved it. That was a total regret buy at this point. Oh, really? Because I don't know if I'm ever going to do anything with it. I might, but it's still in a box over there and we'll see. Eventually, maybe. But going back…

[00:57:54] They look like they fly good.

[00:57:57] Going back to what is going to go higher on my list of things to do, that is not one of them, even though it's an easy put together. Reggie got one too, didn't you?

[00:58:05] I did. Have you flown it yet? I was almost going to this morning, but my radio is in the shop now, so I didn't. Why is your radio in the shop?

[00:58:12] Back to me, people. Gosh.

[00:58:15] Yes. We'll get back to that.

[00:58:16] So EC-1500, then I bought the 90 millimeter Viper, which… Oh, that's right. I planned on doing that before we went.

[00:58:22] You did.

[00:58:24] S2200, I planned on doing that. Also, I bought another charger. A few batteries. And then for the Takano project I'm working on, I bought 100 amp ESC.

[00:58:34] And then… You bought a receiver too, didn't you? Just for the heck of it, I bought a six channel, an eight channel, and a 10 channel AS3X receiver. And I think I'm going to put the eight channel in the Takano. Why not? Because now I think I'm going to need more than six.

[00:58:50] Yeah, probably.

[00:58:51] I put a light in it.

[00:58:52] Which Takano did you get? That's that one.

[00:58:55] Sitting right back there.

[00:58:56] Is it a Seagull? I don't remember. I think so.

[00:58:59] I think it's a Seagull one.

[00:59:00] Yeah.

[00:59:01] That was the one I got in… Where was that? It was one of the swap meets. I think you were with me when I bought it, Reggie. Was that Decatur?

[00:59:07] Was it still in a box at that point?

[00:59:09] Yeah, it was. I think I remember it, yes. I would think it was Decatur. Yeah, that would have been Decatur. Yeah. So, yes, that's the few airplanes. Another one of the swap meets that I didn't get to go to. Well, that's on you, not me. So, yeah, that's the stuff I got. We'll go around the room and get to Reggie since he's the last one that is going to be talking about his radio now that's apparently in the shop.

[00:59:28] Okay.

[00:59:28] Dave, what did you buy? Save me for last because mine won't take but 30 seconds.

[00:59:32] Well, then we can just get it done now. All right. So, I bought the Decathlon for Daniel and a four-foot aileron extension.

[00:59:38] That's not true. You bought something else.

[00:59:41] No, that's all I bought.

[00:59:42] That's not true. You bought something else that you put together after you got home.

[00:59:46] Oh, he bought it.

[00:59:47] Oh, God. You guys must have a fan who buys what.

[00:59:51] Okay. So, to rephrase it, received.

[00:59:54] Yes. What new airplanes and toys did you get to come home with? I acquired. Yeah, there you go. Well, okay. I got my 48-inch extension and a Shadow Seeker. There you go. Oh, he got a Shadow Seeker, too. Yeah. I hope the K is cut out better on his.

[01:00:09] Interestingly enough, he built his in one evening. It took me four days. What? Wow. Why?

[01:00:15] So, you're saying he's better than you at putting things together? I let the glue dry. Oh, whoa.

[01:00:19] Oh, easy. Easy.

[01:00:21] That reminds me of putting the decathlons together. Remember that? Yeah, I remember that.

[01:00:26] You're not, which is funny because you're really not competitive, but man, you were really

[01:00:30] Like, so quick jolt off of this really quick then. We all bought the decathlons the first night that we had them. You and I wanted to go back to our camp to put them together. Jeff said he was going to come with us and put his together. And for some reason, I got all my stuff out in my mind, just in my mind. I never said it out loud. I was thinking, I'm going to get this done before anybody else. I was already telling myself I was going to be done first.

[01:00:55] Well, then Jeff made the mistake of saying, well, I'm going to get mine done before anybody else is.

[01:01:00] He issued the challenge. Oh, hell no, you're not.

[01:01:04] So I did get mine finished before everybody else because he didn't read the directions

[01:01:08] And had to take his apart because he missed.

[01:01:11] What did he miss? I think he missed plugging in the wire on the tail, right? I did that.

[01:01:18] Oh, that was you?

[01:01:19] Yeah. Well, he had to take his tail off or something. I don't remember what it was. I don't remember. But anyway, so yes, I won on that one. And it made me feel good. Yeah.

[01:01:26] Anyway, Daniel. I think he had his program, though, before you.

[01:01:30] I don't think so. I had mine on first. Like, I was the first one to actually turn mine on, run it through all the stuff, and then bump up the phone. I'm pretty sure he beat you to the program. He did not. Actually, he might have. But being completely finished, I had mine on first. Okay.

[01:01:45] I was just enjoying the build.

[01:01:47] Nothing. Like, it was. And it was easy.

[01:01:49] It was a super easy.

[01:01:49] It was easy.

[01:01:50] So, I took it apart to put it in the box to bring it home.

[01:01:53] Yeah.

[01:01:53] I put it together last night in, like, five minutes.

[01:01:56] Yeah. Same here. I did mine last night, too, actually. Yeah. Right after you sent the picture, I had already had the box out, and I was getting ready to do it. Yeah. And you sent the pictures of yours put together, and I'm like, ah-ha, that's what I'm doing now, too.

[01:02:07] So, Daniel, what'd you get?

[01:02:09] So, what I received was decathlon, and then, of course, the wing. Oh, it's not me this time. Of course, then the wing. And I think that's all I got.

[01:02:21] You bought some little odds and ends. Well, yeah. I mean, shrink tube.

[01:02:26] Shrink tube.

[01:02:28] Yeah, because there is a hobby shop on, well, a mobile hobby shop on site there, so they had a pretty good selection of stuff.

[01:02:35] A lot of vendors. It's the same company that's at Toledo all the time. which one I'm talking about. We get the motors, the batteries.

[01:02:46] Oh, yeah. That place is there, but there's also the guy with the trailer where we bought our chairs last year. That's like another.

[01:02:52] Oh, I never did go in there. Every time I went to go in there, there was. There's too many people in there. Oh, yeah. There was always full.

[01:02:58] But, yeah, he's got a, that guy always has a pretty good selection of stuff, so.

[01:03:02] He didn't have the chairs this year, did he? No.

[01:03:04] No. I didn't see one chair except for ours.

[01:03:06] I was looking for, because I wanted a stand for the planes.

[01:03:10] I'll be honest. I'll probably never use that as a chair. No, me neither. It's a great stand. It's a great stand. It's perfect.

[01:03:17] Although, honestly, if we ever make it out to where we just do like the glider day, those are good chairs for gliders.

[01:03:24] Oh, that makes sense.

[01:03:25] Yeah.

[01:03:25] Because you can lean back and, yeah. Yeah. I just want something, I need just something to sit that cub on to work.

[01:03:33] That might be too small for the cub, for your big cub.

[01:03:35] Yeah. I don't know. It's pretty good. Like it, I mean, I had the jet, of course, no engine or anything in it, but fully assembled on that.

[01:03:43] Well, I had mine on there fully.

[01:03:45] Well, that's true.

[01:03:45] With the engine and everything. I think his cub would probably be okay on it.

[01:03:49] And it's well padded, too, those things. Yeah.

[01:03:51] So, is there a weight limit on that?

[01:03:53] I don't know. Probably. Probably. Well, if it's used to a chair, maybe not. I have 400 probably.

[01:03:59] Well, I would be more concerned with the 3D printed things that go on top. Oh, yeah.

[01:04:04] The rest.

[01:04:05] Yeah. Of actually having that break than anything, but.

[01:04:08] Or the cradle or whatever you want to call it.

[01:04:09] Yeah. You could make one of those. I mean, you have a 3D printer. Yeah. I mean, if you look at, I can show you how ours is constructed. It's pretty simple. Just design it up and print it.

[01:04:19] I need to get something.

[01:04:21] And then we'll all go buy more chairs at Menards, because that's where I saw those.

[01:04:25] Yeah. I saw those, too, after I saw what your original was. Yeah.

[01:04:29] So, they have the backs of them or whatever they have. There's not fabric over the top of them?

[01:04:34] No. It's just, that's exactly how it is. No kidding. Because the chairs. Okay. The chairs hook on to the top of it.

[01:04:40] Right. Yeah.

[01:04:41] So, I guess I'm not understanding what you're saying.

[01:04:44] They're only like 42 bucks there. Oh, that's cheaper than.

[01:04:47] A lot cheaper than what we paid. Anyway. But, anywho. It's okay. I mean, like, I'm glad we got them.

[01:04:51] I think I saw those at Sam's, too, actually.

[01:04:53] I bet. They're everywhere.

[01:04:55] Yeah. Hmm. Interesting.

[01:04:58] But, yes. Good idea. Try and print some. If you do that, I'll buy another one, too. I think we all would.

[01:05:05] Yeah. They're great stands. All right, Reggie.

[01:05:08] What did you acquire? A Carbon Z T28. The EC 1500. The Decathlon. A bunch of parts and pieces. The Synapse receiver. Oh, you bought a Synapse while you were there? Nice. An A360T receiver as well. And I think that was it. That I can remember at this moment.

[01:05:39] Hmm. Cool. Various trips to the hobby shop for little odds and ends and stuff.

[01:05:44] But, yeah.

[01:05:45] Well, you bought some stuff from, just escaped me, the fastener place.

[01:05:50] Yeah. The, that's in Boston.

[01:05:52] RTL? No.

[01:05:53] I can't remember. Microfastener. Microfastener.

[01:05:55] Yeah, because they were there. So, yeah, you bought some stuff from them.

[01:05:58] Yeah. From there and also over at the other place that had all the Sullivan stuff down there. I can't think of anything.

[01:06:03] Yeah. That's, yeah. Sullivan.

[01:06:06] Is that the name of it? Sullivan?

[01:06:07] I think so.

[01:06:07] I didn't know if you had a different name for the shop. Yeah. Those are two places I've watched stuff.

[01:06:13] So, what's going on with the radio?

[01:06:15] Oh.

[01:06:15] This is the NX20?

[01:06:17] Yes. Okay. The H switch. I don't know what. The H switch, the motor kill.

[01:06:23] Yeah.

[01:06:23] I was putting the radio away and then caught my wrist or something with it and snapped it right off.

[01:06:28] You sent it in and did have a switch changed?

[01:06:30] Yeah.

[01:06:32] Dave is rolling his eyes right now, as am I.

[01:06:35] Well, if that was a warrantied issue, because I didn't know how far down in there it missed something up.

[01:06:39] I mean, it doesn't cost anything to have him do it, so.

[01:06:42] But he's out of radio for a five-minute fix. Well, I got the 18 at home. I just didn't bother to mess with it.

[01:06:47] Yeah, because he took my radio apart while we were there, too, and fixed all my switches. Plus, he's gone a week, too.

[01:06:53] Well, that's true.

[01:06:55] I'll give him that.

[01:06:56] He's got a week to kill. In India, in his defense, he's probably not going to be flying for a week. Because he doesn't fly from his truck anymore.

[01:07:04] Yay. Well, that might change. Oh, Reggie. What have we learned? Oh, if I get my jet, I can just go ahead and take it with me in the truck and fly at truck stops.

[01:07:14] No. No.

[01:07:16] I'd already got a plan where I'd go. I'm going to California this week. So, my first drops are in Denver and eventually over to Utah and Nevada. So, there's places out there that I can pull off, rest areas that are just wide-open desert with actual places to land. Watch out, Stucky signs.

[01:07:33] Yeah, Stucky's or Jack in the Box, yeah.

[01:07:35] No, I'm not going to be flying in. McDonald's. Mm-hmm. Buc-ee's. I just can't get past that, can I? Just cannot never get past it. No, I'm not going to be flying around anybody or anything. It'd just be wide-open areas.

[01:07:47] Okay. With your DX18.

[01:07:50] Probably, if it doesn't show up here by tomorrow or today.

[01:07:53] I'm with Dave on that. I mean, that is such a simple fix, but I get it.

[01:07:58] I could have asked you, but what? Why stop now?

[01:08:01] You ask everything else.

[01:08:02] Yeah, you're right. You're right. But I just didn't want to. I know everybody's busy, so I can't keep asking all the time.

[01:08:09] So, what else? Oh, remember when we had to go buy lights for the canopy? Oh, yeah.

[01:08:17] That was a good time.

[01:08:18] So, first night we got there. Like, we didn't have camp set up last year the same as this year.

[01:08:24] No. Well, and we didn't really know what to expect with the campsite.

[01:08:29] Right.

[01:08:29] Because we didn't know how much space we're going to have stuff.

[01:08:31] Yep. So, we had an easy up this year that we had set up, and it got dark when it was dark. Go figure.

[01:08:38] Yeah.

[01:08:39] So, that second day that we were there, we made a trip out to pick up some Christmas-type lights.

[01:08:44] To hang up in the…

[01:08:45] Which are incredibly hard to find in May. Very. Yeah, it's weird. Very hard to find. Strange. The fourth place we found, we did end up… Or, the fourth place we stopped, we did end up getting some.

[01:08:55] Buying all they had, by the way.

[01:08:56] Yeah. And as we were leaving to go buy this stuff and try and find it, Reggie said, if you can come across any hand sanitizer, pick some up. So, as we are checking out at the last place we were going, I don't know if I said something or Tommy said something.

[01:09:17] It wasn't me. I was already outside waiting on you guys.

[01:09:20] No. Oh, you mean at the checkout. We started off… That's right. We were talking to each other and said something about, oh, we didn't find any… Hand sanitizer. Hand sanitizer, but we're going out, I'm not all that worried about it.

[01:09:32] Yeah.

[01:09:33] And so, the woman that was checking us out heard, and Southern Hospitality really, like, just took over.

[01:09:42] Oh, yeah.

[01:09:42] They are… A lot.

[01:09:43] They are super, super hospitable.

[01:09:46] To where she tells us, I have some in my car if you guys want it. And, I mean, we're both like, no,… Oh, no, that's okay. It's really not that big a deal.

[01:09:55] Thank you, though. We appreciate it.

[01:09:56] We do have some back at camp, but we, we're fine. Don't worry about it. And then she just kept going on and on and on. And then…

[01:10:04] Well, you guys would just wait.

[01:10:05] Yeah.

[01:10:05] My car's just right outside. It's like, no, thank you.

[01:10:07] I appreciate it. But, no. So, Tommy and I walk outside. And as we're walking out, they knew that… Or she knew that you, Dave, and Daniel were with us. And so, I heard her say something to them. And I just kind of chuckled. And I'm like, oh, that's funny. But,… And she went on and on.

[01:10:23] Yeah.

[01:10:23] And so, Dave walks out. And I see her follow him out. I'm like, oh, are you serious? Like, there's no way.

[01:10:32] She's really going to go to her car.

[01:10:34] Well, then it hit me that he bought ice. Ice, yeah. So, she was going out to get ice. And I was like, okay, cool. They're just getting ice. no big deal. Then I see them go to the ice machine. I see Dave get the… Or the, the cooler thing. I see Dave get the ice. And it's locked. Right.

[01:10:51] Yeah.

[01:10:51] And then I see them walking away from the ice machine.

[01:10:55] Not towards our car, but away.

[01:10:57] Farther away. And then, I think, Dave, it was you that came back with a box of hand sanitizer.

[01:11:03] Of, like, 18 of those individual hand sanitizer bottles. That she just gave you.

[01:11:09] Yeah.

[01:11:09] Yeah. So, it's like, at this point, I'm not going to fight with her over it.

[01:11:13] I don't think we were leaving the parking lot without her. We were not leaving without sanitizer. And there was… She's thinking Yankees are that dirty. That's true. I never thought of that. Oh, wow.

[01:11:22] But there was a line inside.

[01:11:23] I'm like, there was a heck of a line that she just happened to left. Now, granted, she had to… And I apologize to the customer behind me as we were walking down. I was like, I'm sorry. Yeah. I just want ice.

[01:11:33] I mean, she did have to go outside to unlock the ice chest to get to your bag of ice, which, okay. But then, yeah, while she was out there, yeah, she went to her car and made you guys follow her so that she could follow through on…

[01:11:46] I thought that was so funny.

[01:11:48] So, we've got lots of hands in it. But, yeah. I mean, very, very, very nice. Thank you so much. Yeah. She was not going to let us get out of there without us taking her hand side.

[01:12:01] Yeah, I know. It was funny. But, yeah. So, no, that was a good time. I was surprised at how insistent she was. But I thought that was funny. Yeah. I'm trying to go through my list here. Southern hospitality, man. Oh, so I learned last year to not overpack by a lot of clothes because there was a lot. Yes. This year, I took almost the same amount of clothes I did last year, and I was glad I did.

[01:12:29] Oh. Well, with the rain and the mud and stuff.

[01:12:31] I actually went through all five of my pairs of jeans that I took with me. And, well, let's… I wasn't sure if I want to talk about this or not, but whatever. So, I always bring extra underwear just in case. And this is not where… It's not going where you might think I'm going. Sure is not.

[01:12:50] I know where this is going.

[01:12:52] So, the first… So, the first night when we went up to… Oh, wait a minute.

[01:12:58] Have you guys heard this story yet?

[01:13:00] I've not heard this story.

[01:13:01] Oh, this is awesome.

[01:13:02] So, the first night that we go up to shower, we take all our stuff with us, obviously, because the shower is 300 or 400 feet away from the camper and stuff. So, we got on the golf cart, go up to the shower houses and stuff, pack everything you need, and then you go shower, obviously.

[01:13:16] And it's a hoof, too, because it's uphill. Yeah. Pretty significant hoof from where we're camping.

[01:13:20] And so, as I finished my shower, I went to, underwear up, and I didn't have them with me. Like, I had them when I left. The camper. So, somewhere in between the camper and the shower house, there was… Luckily, they were new. But there was a brand new pair of underwear, striped underwear, that I could not find. So, somebody since picked them up and hopefully threw them away. But, yes. So, I lost a pair of underwear at Joe and all. This is a nice rag.

[01:13:55] Let me just wipe my face off for this. Oh, that's so gross.

[01:13:58] Well, they're clean.

[01:13:59] They were. But you don't know that.

[01:14:01] When you pick them up off the ground. Especially when it was muddy. So, they probably didn't look clean.

[01:14:06] Yeah. On Thursday, I gave up and just started wearing swim trunks because everything I sat on was wet. Yeah.

[01:14:11] Yeah. And that's why I was glad, like I said, I had enough pants and stuff because I don't think Tommy bought or brought more than one pair of long pants, right?

[01:14:20] No. I took one pair of jeans.

[01:14:21] Yeah. So, I went through all of mine.

[01:14:23] I wasn't planning on wearing jeans.

[01:14:25] And I really only. That's usually all I wear. So. Well, yeah. I wear shorts. And then I had my. So, for when it did rain, I thought ahead. And I. So, I have slip-on shoes that are kind of uncomfortable. So, I bought some Hoka slides that are very nice and comfortable. I like my shoes that are by them. They're very supportive. So, I wanted to get the same kind of shoe to wear. So, apparently, maybe I shouldn't have, or at least in the color I got.

[01:14:57] Like, I like the color I got, but apparently nobody else does. Crystal told me not to buy these. Like, I showed her what I was going to get before I get it. But they're red-soled with blue top. It's blue. It's purple. We have been over this. It's blue. We had people tell us it was blue. But so, I wore those without socks, obviously, because it's rainy and stuff, and had my jeans hiked up like Huck Finn. I shit you not.

[01:15:24] There were actually people that pointed and laughed at me. People that I didn't know. Yeah, I wonder why. And that bothered me for a minute. Like, I was like, are you serious? You're pointing and laughing? But then I got over it, and I just owned it.

[01:15:37] You did own it.

[01:15:38] But it's, yeah, for some reason. Even I thought it was funny.

[01:15:41] Funny enough to actually whip out my phone and take a picture of it.

[01:15:44] So, I don't take pictures. Can we get that posted? That was one of the eight pictures you took, apparently.

[01:15:49] I think I put it on Discord. So, if you're on Discord, it should be on there.

[01:15:54] You did?

[01:15:54] I didn't see it.

[01:15:55] No, he did. And then, apparently, for some reason, he found, like, Mr. I don't know how to do things on phones, found it necessary to zoom in and circle my shoes as though nobody would know what you were talking about in the picture you posted.

[01:16:10] Speaking of shoes. Oh, yeah. Reggie's shoes. So, hold on. Before you start, Reggie. So, Joe Knoll, it gets, you can expect usually at least a day of rain and mud,.

[01:16:24] Okay. So, about halfway through our adventure, all I keep seeing is, is in flashbacks of Woodstock, in my mind. Yeah. Thousands of people and mud.

[01:16:36] And mud, yeah. That's actually a pretty accurate description because there was thousands.

[01:16:40] That was, like, 20 years before my time. So, like, what about Burning Man then?

[01:16:44] But Reggie.

[01:16:46] It's closer.

[01:16:48] Packed for his trip to Joe Knoll stark white tennis shoes.

[01:16:54] I did not think. You did not think this through, did you? I actually had boots in the truck.

[01:17:00] But, I mean, like, even if you're just camping, like, if you're just, have you ever camped before, Reggie? Okay. Well, I guess, I guess I can kind of excuse that decision.

[01:17:09] Like, have you ever gone flying before when it's been wet outside? I have. Would you wear those there? The black ones, yes.

[01:17:18] But, but bright, light, bright, crystal clear white. Yeah. The black ones were becoming really raunchy smelling after the first double range. So, we know.

[01:17:29] That was really gross. Yes.

[01:17:30] So, I wasn't even for sure if that was even my shoes smelling like that. Well, when you put them outside along with your socks, the smell went away. Well, we just took care of that. And, of course, the white shoes is the only thing I had left. And once those were basically. And they got destroyed. Destroyed. So, at that point, all I had left was flip-flops. And I just, that's great. Yep.

[01:17:52] And the problem with flip-flops is they flip-flop and they flop stuff.

[01:17:57] Oh, yeah. And I know. I'm sitting in a chair and get a face full of mud as he walks by.

[01:18:01] Well, I didn't realize the flip-flops were white until you sent the picture.

[01:18:08] Well, at that time, they weren't. No, I was surprised.

[01:18:12] Yeah, so his white tennis shoes were brown when we came home. And then you got them clean. I can't believe how. They were close. In the picture you sent us, they look stark white.

[01:18:23] There is a shortage of bleach in the Springfield area.

[01:18:27] Yeah, we color-safe bleached them. So, yeah, it came out pretty good. It took a wall of scrubbing, but we got it.

[01:18:32] So, next year.

[01:18:33] Wait, hold on.

[01:18:34] We? Who, we? You mean I? Like, did you do it yourself? Yeah. Oh, well, you said we got them clean. I was thinking. Well, just. Oh, me. No, I didn't have the way to help me do it. Okay, I was just thinking, like, did you have Lisa do them for him? Like, is that what I want to hear? These are dirty duties.

[01:18:49] No, I don't do that. I don't do that. I wasn't sure. She's still at home. So, but I spent about 30 minutes scrubbing. Yeah. I would just want more new shoes, to be honest.

[01:18:59] I'd have been done.

[01:18:59] And I was borderline. I was really borderline with that.

[01:19:04] Yeah, I can't believe you got them clean, because they were brown. Yeah. I should have probably tossed them, to be honest.

[01:19:12] You got them clean, though. Well, we haven't seen them. We've just seen a picture. No, we saw the pictures of them. We've just seen a picture. So, if we inspect, they might be stained. Well, I mean, I'm not going to get that close to his shoes, to be honest. They're what?

[01:19:22] They're going to probably be stained.

[01:19:23] Yeah, I would think so.

[01:19:24] I mean, it's a light, light, light tint, but it's probably going to be stained.

[01:19:27] Like my plastic shoes, or rubber shoes, whatever you want to call them. They almost were stained.

[01:19:32] They're not purple. No, that's… They're blurple. It's a nice blue. Blurple.

[01:19:37] There you go. what I forgot to talk about my purchase, too? See if you remember it. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. I don't buy so much stuff. I have no clue. Was it an impulse purchase? No, it was one you told me about that I didn't realize you were telling me about. You lost me.

[01:19:54] The Hornet. Oh, that's right. I forgot about that one.

[01:19:58] I know. Me too. So, I also got, oddly enough, a second E-Flight F-18 Blue Angels Hornet.

[01:20:04] Yeah.

[01:20:05] I'm happy about that. Yeah.

[01:20:06] Does it make you feel better about the other purchase?

[01:20:10] I don't know. Like, I don't… All right. I have a spare now, so I guess that makes me feel better about that, but not how much I spent on the other one.

[01:20:18] But this was a good deal. I would say that you got a good deal.

[01:20:21] This was… I'd say it's a little bit beat up. Not bad, but… I don't think it's that bad.

[01:20:25] No. I mean, it looks like it's been flown. It was just the nose. Right around the nose camera.

[01:20:29] Yeah. But that's what I mean. It's a little bit beat up, but it's not, like, in bad shape. Nice thing about Flying Spectrum is the guy had an iX-12, and he was able to send me the setup files over Bluetooth, so I just… I stood three feet away from him, and he's like, oh, let me go. Here you go. Blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, oh, cool. It's on mine now. And the nice thing about that is when you actually import it into yours, trims are saved.

[01:20:54] All the settings are saved. Switch positions are saved. Everything is set up. Even the picture. Yeah. Even the picture came through. I thought that was neat.

[01:21:01] That's really cool.

[01:21:02] So, that is ready to go. I, like I said, I…

[01:21:06] Which, by the way, that's exactly how I did my… Updated my iX-14. I set my iX-12 right next to it, and just, like, five minutes, all of my models are in my new radio. It's so easy.

[01:21:17] I mean, it really is. Are you now going to take the new one and make it a static display since it's your unicorn?

[01:21:23] Mm-mm. No, you're probably going to leave it in the box. I'm not going to open it out of the box, unless I need it.

[01:21:27] Yeah.

[01:21:28] I think that's what I would do also.

[01:21:30] Five or six years down the road, this one will probably be torn up too much to fly.

[01:21:33] Especially if it's your unicorn,?

[01:21:34] Yeah. Keep it protected as long as you can.

[01:21:36] But I want to actually enjoy it.

[01:21:38] Like, just having it sit in the box. Well, you will.

[01:21:39] But you've got one that you can enjoy now.

[01:21:41] But now that I have two.

[01:21:42] And you have its twin, also, that needs flying.

[01:21:44] I know. I know. I was thinking about taking that today, too, but I don't know if I'm going to have enough room. We'll see.

[01:21:50] I've got some room if you want to take it. We might. Okay.

[01:21:55] Yeah, I completely forgot about that. It was funny because you… I don't remember if you texted me, or you called me, or you told me, when you saw me, that there's an F-18 Blue Angels up on the main line.

[01:22:08] Yes. We were on the golf cart, and we went past it. I was like, oh, there's an F-18 back there. And by then, you couldn't see it. And you thought I was talking about the one from last year, the big jet. Yeah, the big turbine. Yeah. And then you just didn't even think about it again. And then later on, you saw the same one I was talking about.

[01:22:27] Yeah, later on, I was walking by, and I was like, oh, it's for sale. So I was talking to the guy and stuff, and I bought it. And then you were not as excited as I thought you were going to be when you saw it. And you're like, well, that's what I told you about.

[01:22:37] Yeah. And I was like, you did not.

[01:22:39] I did. And then it hit me what you were actually talking about. Because like you said, I thought you were talking about the one sitting up here. I didn't realize it.

[01:22:48] Yes, I wasn't as excited because I figured, oh, well, he's got his unicorn now. So I guess he doesn't want another one. So, okay, I guess, whatever.

[01:22:55] Absolutely not. I wish I would have realized I would have run right then up and got it. But anyway.

[01:23:00] Either way, it worked out. You got it.

[01:23:01] It worked out great. And I was happy to have that. Yeah. So what else? Oh, what we did? Pylon racing.

[01:23:14] Oh, yeah.

[01:23:15] So we can talk about that. That is how, by the way, I crashed my UMX Consendo. I did, too.

[01:23:24] It makes a cool noise when they hit the ground, too.

[01:23:25] Yeah. No. Not like the UMX Ultras. Oh, and then when three of them in a row hit the ground. Yeah. Clack, clack, clack. Yeah, they make like a clack. That's a good description of it. Like, when your UMX Ultras hits the ground, it's more of a woof. But the same with yours, by the way. When your UMX Consendo hits the ground, it's more of a clack. I've seen you crash here anyway.

[01:23:46] Me? Yeah. So apparently I flew into a pylon. Okay. Oh, is that what you did? Okay. So I thought I ran into somebody else because it.

[01:23:54] Well, that means me. I just flew into the ground.

[01:23:57] It happened so fast. And like, luckily, eFlight posted the video of that flight on their page. So I was able to watch it. The guy that I thought I ran into, I didn't run into. So I crashed first.

[01:24:13] And then he crashed.

[01:24:14] And then it was like a couple laps later. Oh, okay. He crashed going the opposite way because the way the course was set up was kind of weird.

[01:24:20] It's weird, yeah. It's not really pylon racing. It's more of an obstacle course.

[01:24:25] With a chicken run down the center. Yeah. Exactly. Where you can head on with other airplanes the way it was set up.

[01:24:30] If you're not careful, yeah.

[01:24:31] And I think that might have been what happened to him because his wing ended up right next to my fuselage. Yeah. And then 30 feet away, maybe, my wing ended up next to his fuselage. Yeah. So it was not a lot of fun trying to figure what was which.

[01:24:47] And yours was well and truly crashed.

[01:24:50] Mine. The fuselage is great. Like, it's in perfect shape. It was just the wing. So as I was going around the pylon, obviously, I nicked a wing and it just tore that wing right off. And then the rest of the fuselage just lawn darted.

[01:25:04] So yours must have happened at a relatively high speed. It did. High-ish for these. Yeah. So my crash, I literally just flew it into the ground.

[01:25:13] Yeah.

[01:25:14] Like, during a turn, right? Yeah. It was in the turn around the pylon and I got it just a little too low. But luckily, I was almost throttle off because I was trying to do the whoop-dee-doo, whatever, on the backside slow. And then when I would round that last pylon, I would go full throttle for the chicken run down the center. Well, I had not gone to full throttle yet and it just tumbled.

[01:25:35] Yeah.

[01:25:35] Like, all it did was knock the canopy off. Like, I put the canopy back on it and I flew it again.

[01:25:40] Yeah. So I survived the first round. I did not survive the second round.

[01:25:45] I did not survive the first round, but I survived the second round. I finished second. That's good. I was pretty happy.

[01:25:49] That was great. Yeah. With some of the guys we were flying with that actually had done that before. Like, that was my first time doing anything like that.

[01:25:56] Me too.

[01:25:56] And I almost didn't. I've never pylon raced before. Like, but when the-

[01:26:00] That's a good airplane for that, by the way.

[01:26:02] I know.

[01:26:02] It was a lot of fun.

[01:26:03] Like, when the opportunity arose to do something like that, I could not pass it up.

[01:26:07] Well, and then, so like when they talked, like, we didn't know they were going to do that before we got there. So we had really done no preparation from that leading up to that. So we really didn't know about it until the day before. So I was like, oh, cool. Pylon racing. Well, I know what pylon racing is. It's two pylons and you race around in an oval,.

[01:26:26] Exactly. In a racetrack. That's what I was expecting.

[01:26:28] So that's what I went out and practiced doing. I know. I watched. And then they threw this obstacle course thing. It's like, oh, this is a slalom with a- Yeah, this is not what I practiced for. So I was woefully unprepared.

[01:26:40] Yeah.

[01:26:41] But it was still a lot of fun.

[01:26:42] And they were not very tall. I mean, like, the pylons were-

[01:26:46] 20 feet, maybe?

[01:26:47] I don't even think they were that much. Yeah, I'm being generous. I was thinking like 10 or 15.

[01:26:50] Yeah, they're very short.

[01:26:51] And so, yeah. We were a lot lower to the ground than- Yeah. Although the ground didn't bother me. Apparently, it was just the pylon that I flew into. Because that was hard. Dave, though. Dave did it. And Dave did- Well, I don't want to say well, because the guy was sandbagging you, because there's only two people in your class.

[01:27:08] Well, let Dave tell the story. Last minute, I decided to enter this. And they have a timber class. And as hard as I crack on timbers, I own one.

[01:27:18] UMX.

[01:27:18] Yeah, I got a UMX timber. What the heck is it? It's the jet-looking one. Evolution. Anyway. Oh, the UMX turbo timber. Turbo timber.

[01:27:27] Jesus.

[01:27:28] Good luck. What is it?

[01:27:30] There's only 15,000 of them. No, it's not the Evolution, because that's the one I have.

[01:27:33] No, you have the Evolution. That's what I raced against was the Evolution. Right. Ah, okay. So I have the original turbo timber. Turbo timber. It's so hard to say.

[01:27:40] It is. The two-cell version.

[01:27:42] Yes. Ah-ha. Which, earlier in the day, I had down at the float line. So it still had floats on it. Sorry.

[01:27:47] Yeah.

[01:27:48] Floats.

[01:27:49] You're still doing it with floats.

[01:27:51] Yeah. Yeah. It did well. Well, yes. Yeah, it actually ran really, really well. Yeah. Now, a big complaint I got about the, not the Evolution, this particular timber.

[01:28:02] Yeah.

[01:28:03] Whichever one. Is the slow roll rate. Ah, yeah. I've went through and moved everything as far as I can to get as much throw as I can out, and it's still relatively slow.

[01:28:11] Mm-hmm.

[01:28:12] So doing the zigzag down the back, I mean, I would come around one corner, slam the stick to the corner.

[01:28:17] Yeah, you'd already be turning for the next turn.

[01:28:19] And I'd have the stick slammed over, waiting for it to come around for the next one. Yep. And as soon as I got to that cone, slam it the other direction and just hold it. And in the meantime, this other airplane is ahead of me, and I can tell he's sandbagging because it's a three-cell with wheels. Yeah. So, I mean, he's gobs faster than I am.

[01:28:36] And is a Horizon guy.

[01:28:38] Yeah. Yeah.

[01:28:39] That probably flies every single day.

[01:28:41] But I'm keeping on his tail. Yeah. It was close. And at one point, I almost passed him. He got a little slow in a corner, and I cut in. Almost got it. Because with the floats, there's a lot of drag. You can slow down fast.

[01:28:51] Yeah.

[01:28:53] So, anyway, it was fun to do five laps with that. That was a blast. And then coming in to land, I clipped one of the pylons.

[01:29:00] I think it's the same pylon Ron got.

[01:29:02] I think so. Yeah. It crashes, lands on its floats. Yeah, so you take off again. And so we just took off again.

[01:29:09] Yeah.

[01:29:10] That was funny. That was a lot of fun to do. Yeah. I really had a good time with it.

[01:29:13] There were lots of comments, wisecracks, whatever, from people back where we were sitting watching. Oh, that one's on floats. And then they all shut up as soon as they saw how well it was doing.

[01:29:27] It was pretty cool. Yeah. That was a good time. Yeah. I would like to try that again sometime, to be honest. Not like with other people. But just like set up a couple of pylons, just us. Yeah, that would be fun. And do that.

[01:29:38] Yeah, that would be fun.

[01:29:40] I enjoyed that more than I thought I would. So that was the other thing, too. I thought we were going to be doing it one person at a time. You were time trial on it.

[01:29:48] Why would you think that?

[01:29:50] Because of the way I overheard them talking about spotting and stuff beforehand.

[01:29:55] Oh, no. I figured it would be a melee.

[01:29:57] See, I didn't.

[01:29:58] Especially when all of the Horizon guys showed up with them. I was like, okay, this is cool.

[01:30:02] When I saw that, then I was like, oh, what did we get ourselves into? It's like everybody had a blue shirt except for you two. Yeah, pretty much. But it went better than I feared, but worse than I hoped.

[01:30:14] I didn't hit any other airplanes.

[01:30:16] I really figured there'd be a head on.

[01:30:18] I did, too. Yeah. Like, especially in the center. Yeah. I thought for sure that's what would take me out would be another airplane. Not myself.

[01:30:25] Right. Not just dumb thumbing it into the ground. Yeah, exactly.

[01:30:27] So did you get a new one, Half Rice?

[01:30:30] No. No, they didn't have them there. They're in their back order, but I did get a wing.

[01:30:33] Yeah, you got a replacement wing.

[01:30:35] Got a replacement wing, and then I need to put the servos in it. You need to put an honorary scuff on the wing, though. I know. I'm going to miss that. Yeah.

[01:30:42] From taking out my extra.

[01:30:44] I know, but now. Speaking of combat. I was going to say, now, though, I get to cut out a piece of vinyl of a pylon somehow and put it on the front tube.

[01:30:53] Yeah, but you didn't kill the pylon. The pylon killed you. That's not a kill marking.

[01:30:57] Oh, it moved, though. It moved. I guarantee it's still feeling the wound from that. Okay. Okay, no, you're right.

[01:31:05] I guess I don't deserve to do that.

[01:31:06] I mean, it's up to you. It's your airplane, but either way. And yeah, so those were the planes that we took to do combat with.

[01:31:13] Yeah.

[01:31:13] I was unable to do combat. Yep.

[01:31:15] And I chickened out. I mean, let's be honest. It's such a good flying little airplane, I did not want to destroy it. And I did not have a backup combat plane.

[01:31:24] But no big deal. You guys did combat, though. Yeah, with the combat cardinals. And who else? It was just you and Daniel. Just those guys, yeah. Just Dave and Daniel.

[01:31:34] Okay. The rest of us chickened out.

[01:31:35] So Dave and Daniel did combat with their cardinals. Yeah, pretty much. How did it go?

[01:31:41] I tied for third.

[01:31:43] Daniel? I thought I was up there longer than I thought I was going to be.

[01:31:47] I hit only one airplane the whole time I was up there.

[01:31:50] He hit me.

[01:31:52] Yeah. But he didn't take me.

[01:31:54] Yeah, he wasn't the one that did it. Yeah, somebody put a hole in your wing. Yeah, I got hit a total of three times, including him.

[01:32:03] Which is bizarre to me. So Dave prepared his airplane to be the biggest target in the sky. He had streamers from each wingtip, a streamer from the taillight.

[01:32:12] No, just the wingtips. 20-foot streamers. Yeah.

[01:32:15] And like, he got hit once by you. No, the guy took me out.

[01:32:20] Oh, at the end. That's right. Yeah. He wrapped the streamer around his prop.

[01:32:24] Yep.

[01:32:24] That's funny. Took you both out.

[01:32:26] We landed five foot apart. Yeah.

[01:32:27] Yeah, I flew a long time with a hole in the wing. I couldn't make, what was it? I couldn't make right turns. So everything went left.

[01:32:37] I loved it because I watched you. When you first launched.

[01:32:40] Oh, yeah. I don't know what happened. To this day, I do not know why that bird went straight up and straight right back down. And I don't know why.

[01:32:49] Straight up and straight back down into a person. Like he almost caught it. I don't remember. Was that, that was Jimmy from.

[01:32:56] Oh, yeah.

[01:32:57] Okay. From Rhode Island.

[01:32:58] Yeah. Oh, yeah. It was. Yeah. Yeah. Because he handed it to me and goes, go. Throw it again. So you did and it was perfect. Yeah. I don't know if it caught my finger when I launched it. It literally went straight up. Yeah.

[01:33:12] That was funny. But you guys, so that was the second day. That was Thursday that you guys did, right?

[01:33:17] Yeah.

[01:33:18] And then Wednesday was the first one we saw.

[01:33:21] Yeah.

[01:33:22] And that was the one Jeff won. Jeff won.

[01:33:23] Yep.

[01:33:23] That one.

[01:33:24] And then he finished second on the second day. Hey, Tom here from RCA Plane. I'm standing here with Jeffrey Arso, who just won the first combat event of Joe Nall 2024. How are you feeling, Jeff?

[01:33:34] Oh, I'm going to Disney World.

[01:33:36] Hey, I've been asking around, what does Joe Nall mean to you?

[01:33:41] It's the friends. It's the flying is the second part of it. It's the friends and maybe petting a lot of dogs.

[01:33:47] There you have it. Friendship and dog petting. Hey, congratulations on the win, Jeff. To be fair, he made a lot of dog friends over the week.

[01:33:56] He did. And I was also going to say, I didn't mean to hit that button yet. Sorry. I was trying to move my cursor around. I was like, ah, crap.

[01:34:03] But anyway. Yeah. So Jeff won the first day. And so you say he won. I'm not sure his aircraft contacted another aircraft the entire, I think he said 20 minutes.

[01:34:17] I was up for 18.

[01:34:19] Yeah.

[01:34:20] Yeah. So it's. I still have 30% battery left. To win combat, your best bet is to just fly a big battery and an airplane that can last a long time.

[01:34:30] Yeah, because the chances of getting hit are really, like it's, like it's really, really hard to intentionally fly into another airplane.

[01:34:37] Yeah. See, I've always heard that. And it is.

[01:34:40] How many were up?

[01:34:42] They were. 25.

[01:34:43] 25 on the second day.

[01:34:44] And. It was 24 on the first day. Yeah. You're flying through there and you don't hit anybody.

[01:34:49] And you occupy a very small amount of it. Like it was like, I mean, there's a few exceptions. People, get a little farther out, but like really it's the area directly in front of the flight line, the width of the runway or the length of the runway.

[01:35:03] It's a hundred foot box. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:35:04] And it's surprising how few mid airs there are.

[01:35:09] What surprised me is the number mid airs I heard. And airplanes kept flying. Keep flying. Oh yeah. They weren't hard hits.

[01:35:14] Yeah. They're really more. I got hit three times where I finally went down and the last one pretty much took a big chunk out of the wing and that's, and then I just swirled right into the ground. I mean, it was.

[01:35:26] I think my, yeah, my experience last year is like the exception to the rule. Really?

[01:35:32] Yeah. It was, that was very quick.

[01:35:34] Yeah. It was like less than 30 seconds and it was total.

[01:35:37] You were in and out in six seconds.

[01:35:44] Anyway. Not the first time I've ever heard that.

[01:35:48] But yeah, like. And you're aiming for other people and you still can't hit them. Absolutely. I know there was that guy with the wing and he kept, he would just start twirling, spinning and he couldn't even.

[01:35:59] There was one guy, I think it was the first day he had one of those, I call it a round to it. the big round looking pancake thing. Electric powered. He was literally just hovering.

[01:36:11] Yeah.

[01:36:11] Like in front of the flight line and nobody hit him.

[01:36:14] Yep.

[01:36:14] For like three or four minutes. So you just hovering there.

[01:36:17] So about 10 minutes in, I'm getting tired. I'm standing on one leg. I'm a little shaky. Yeah. It's like, somebody hit me and get this over with. So I just start trolling around. Yeah. And this guy's been stalking me for 10 minutes. Making multiple attacks. He finally does get me.

[01:36:33] Ah, okay.

[01:36:34] But it's like, I can't make this any easier for you.

[01:36:37] Yeah. But he took himself out when he did take you.

[01:36:39] Yeah, exactly.

[01:36:40] Because he wrapped the streamer around the motor. So both of you went down.

[01:36:44] It's like, somebody please hit me and get this over with.

[01:36:47] Yeah.

[01:36:47] I'm not going to land. But it's fun. Right.

[01:36:50] Yeah. I'm not going to like take myself out. But somebody. Yeah. Yeah. So next year, I have to have something. Because that was. It is fun.

[01:36:59] Well. I'm taking a chair.

[01:37:00] That's a good idea.

[01:37:01] And speaking of combat, though, Reggie had his own combat with another plane.

[01:37:06] Oh, yeah. I forgot about that. That was like ground combat, though, wasn't it?

[01:37:11] Yeah. I didn't see it happen. That was ground and pound.

[01:37:15] I can't think of who my guy was for this spotter, but he called out.

[01:37:19] Jimmy. It was Jimmy again, yeah. The one that Daniel hit.

[01:37:23] Oh, that explains a lot. He just said, Jimmy called out. I was landing. He called out three or four times. Okay. And I'm watching my plane come in. And apparently somebody had just landed. And he left his plane down there.

[01:37:36] And this is the new decathlon, by the way.

[01:37:38] Yeah. You were flying your new decathlon.

[01:37:40] Yes. And just as I'm getting down there, all of a sudden, there's a plane sitting there. And I'm not for sure which way to go. And then just T-boned him.

[01:37:49] So had you landed yet? I was down. So you were down on the ground. And it was basically the rollout after your touchdown?

[01:37:55] Yes.

[01:37:56] That's what I thought happened. And then there was a plane. You thought he was flying.

[01:37:59] I thought he was still in the air, yes. Or at least landing right into him.

[01:38:03] Sure enough, his prop went right up through the wing.

[01:38:05] From the bottom.

[01:38:06] From the bottom. Yeah. And put a nice… Put a nice hole.

[01:38:09] I think it pulled the wiring out, too, didn't it?

[01:38:10] For the servo? No. I think it missed it. Either way. So, but needless to say, just my plane ate his plane up pretty good. So we had some words down at the end. We just kind of…

[01:38:24] Well, did he not communicate that he was sitting on the… Or on that?

[01:38:28] No. We didn't. I heard nothing. I heard my caller… My spider call out. Yeah.

[01:38:32] Did he say, hey, landing on two or three, whatever?

[01:38:34] Jamie came down and was like, hey, I told you he was landing. and we all three kind of had some words going, and we picked up our planes and walked away.

[01:38:41] So I hadn't seen that guy previous, because we spent a fair amount of time on the E-line.

[01:38:47] Mm-hmm.

[01:38:47] And I had not seen that guy or his airplane. I was familiar with the airplane. It was a…

[01:38:52] No, I can't remember what it was. I have no idea.

[01:38:54] But it was like an extra. It was a pretty popular… I think it was an extreme… Like an older extreme flight extra, I think is what it was. Anyway, popular color scheme, and I would have recognized it had I seen it before, because I'm an extreme flight fan, if you guys didn't know that. So I had not seen that airplane before, and I didn't see him again after that happened. So he may have been a new guy, and maybe just not familiar with the process, but…

[01:39:20] And Reggie scared him off?

[01:39:21] If you're sitting on the runway, just let people know.

[01:39:24] Well, no, he wasn't on the runway, though. I mean, like he was… Well, he was on the grass…

[01:39:31] He was not on the taxiway. He was on the runway. Yeah, he wasn't on the geotextile runway proper. But not everybody used that. Like, I preferred to land on the grass.

[01:39:40] I understand.

[01:39:41] Directly in front of… So I call that the runway, and that's where this guy was sitting at the end. So… Yeah.

[01:39:47] So, needless to say, it was not pretty.

[01:39:50] I still don't understand, though, how you don't have peripheral vision where you're flying.

[01:39:54] I was watching that plane the whole time. See where it was going. Wasn't it the maiden?

[01:39:58] It wasn't the maiden, was it?

[01:40:00] No, it was the maiden. No, no.

[01:40:01] I mean, if it was the maiden, I could understand being hyper-focused on your plane and not seeing anything else. But, yeah, usually when I'm landing, there's a certain amount of peripheral that I can see. But, like, with all the other stuff going on, I don't know.

[01:40:13] Yeah. I don't either. I'd just stick with the plane, and since Jeff was calling me out… Which is good, because that's what we've been telling him to do for years. True. Don't look away. And Jimmy called it out, and that's… and there's one thing. There's nothing down there. Yeah, you wouldn't expect to see another airplane where you're landing.

[01:40:29] Oops.

[01:40:30] Things happen. Yeah.

[01:40:32] But the airplane did… You flew it again, though. Yeah, I flew it again.

[01:40:35] But you ordered a new wing, and that was waiting for you when you got home. Everything was waiting for me but the jet when I got home. The battery charger bags, the new wing, the rudder, the whole type of thing. Rudder for the Viper Jet. Oh, yeah. You were a new Viper.

[01:40:54] Oh, what happened to the Viper Jet? You didn't tell that story, either. No. But it wasn't on floats. It wasn't on floats, yeah.

[01:41:01] So this is four. This is number four.

[01:41:03] This is three.

[01:41:05] No. Well, this is number four that we're talking about. This is three before the Decathlon, which made it four.

[01:41:11] Okay. Yeah, true. Reaching for the reverse thrust switch after a beautiful landing. Grab the kill switch.

[01:41:20] The Rhode Island guys, Tim specifically, gave you mad props on your landing.

[01:41:26] Oh, it's easier to land on safe.

[01:41:28] Directly before what happened next. Did you say on safe? I didn't.

[01:41:34] I said it's easy to land on safe. Whatever. I landed the plane off of safe perfectly fine.

[01:41:41] And Tim said it was a beautiful landing.

[01:41:43] And went to go reverse thrust it, to kind of get slowed down toward the end. Ended up killing the motors, what it did.

[01:41:50] Actually, the kill switch. Oh, so you hit the cutoff.

[01:41:53] Exactly.

[01:41:54] Okay.

[01:41:54] And fumbling, trying to get that, I turned on reverse thrust. Turned it back off and ended up hitting the kill switch back on.

[01:42:02] Oh, while you were at full throttle?

[01:42:04] I had killed throttle. Throttle's off. Okay, so you don't want to do it while it's, as far as being throttled up.

[01:42:10] Okay.

[01:42:11] So thinking now it's in reverse, I went to full throttle. And you start to take off again. I killed it, winged over. Oh, and then you panicked. And dragged the rudder. Yeah. And ripped it off.

[01:42:21] That was a fairly easy repair, though. Oh, yeah. Like you had it ready to go the next day.

[01:42:24] Absolutely, the next day. Yeah. But just being a jet, I just don't like having glue back there and something. Oh, I get that. So it just decides to go ahead and get into the rudder.

[01:42:34] Oh, which, by the way, Dave, sorry, another topic. The yellow wire that everybody's asking about, more often than not, that's for the reverse thrust channel.

[01:42:43] Yeah.

[01:42:43] On what? Like, so that extra wire that comes off of, I think it's a speed controller. It's a four-wire connector, I think. Like, there's, like, an extra wire that used to be, back in the day, a remote gain for your gyro. It's actually how you hook up reverse thrust now on a lot of the spectrum stuff.

[01:43:00] Pretty sure that's still program. If you look it up in the manuals, it says program. Program, what do you mean? Like, for programming. It's for programmed.

[01:43:11] Oh, because the manual I read said you plug that into an extra channel, and that's how you get your reverse thrust.

[01:43:16] Oh, well, the one I have, oddly enough, says it's actually for programming. Oh, wow.

[01:43:21] Weird. Well, wouldn't you be programming the reverse thrust in through your radio? Or at least through one of those little programs? Well, reverse thrust requires another channel.

[01:43:29] Yeah, I understand.

[01:43:29] And that's where that, on the one I read, that's where that, you find an empty channel, and you plug that yellow lead with the connector on it into a spare channel, and that's how you get your radio.

[01:43:39] My Grand Tundra is that way. It was just the extra lead.

[01:43:41] My turbo timber that I'm sending back to Horizon, that's what that lead is on mine.

[01:43:46] Huh, okay.

[01:43:48] I'll have to look into it. I mean, I guess it doesn't matter. But all the ones that I have, those have all been programming. Like, not for… To plug it into where, though? Like, your programming cable will plug into that, I guess. Oh, because all the forward programming now, you don't have to do that. Well, it's not with forward programming. Forward programming, you just use your transmitter. Yeah.

[01:44:10] Well, then your programmer, then. Your programming box, you just plug that into that.

[01:44:13] That's what you… I think that's what it was supposed to be for. It just said P-R-O-G.

[01:44:19] Well, anyway, on my turbo timber evolution that I'm sending back to Horizon, that's what it's for. Okay.

[01:44:24] Well, good to know. So, it's different things, though, I guess, is what it seems. Read the manual, I guess. Yeah, depending on what you have. The bottom line. One of the things I did there, too, though, with Joe from the Rhode Island group, got my first FPV flight in.

[01:44:40] Oh, yeah.

[01:44:41] Did a ride-along. I'd never done that before. Did it make you sick? Not as bad as I thought. Like, it gave me a bit of a headache towards the end, but I was able to stick with it the whole flight. But that was in his Viper, though, right? Yes.

[01:44:53] Oh, wow.

[01:44:53] You got to do a Viper flight?

[01:44:54] Maybe a little different perspective than if it was, like, in a decathlon or something, maybe.

[01:44:59] And had that propeller blur in front of you.

[01:45:01] Yeah, it could have been.

[01:45:02] I mean, I don't know. But it just wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. So, you had never tried it before?

[01:45:08] Oh, see, I have, and it for sure would make me easy.

[01:45:11] Well, see, I've done the VR stuff, like PlayStation VR and all that, the Oculus and whatnot. And that, if I'm in something that's moving a lot, it gives me instant, which is why I figured it would be the same with this. And it probably didn't help either, though. Or it didn't hurt, I should say, that, like, the goggles I had on were, and I don't know much about VR. Or not VR, but about FPV stuff.

[01:45:33] But it was, like, a lower resolution, which probably helped a little bit to where it wasn't, like, very sharp. And it wasn't, like, full frame, like, wraparound, like, VR. It just looked like a screen in front of me.

[01:45:46] Oh, okay.

[01:45:47] So, I don't know. But it was neat because it had on the screen, like, the old, like, fighter movies and stuff, where it showed your roll, your pitch, your speed, your height.

[01:45:56] Artificial horizon.

[01:45:56] Yeah. Yeah. So, it was kind of neat to actually try that.

[01:45:59] Now, he was setting that up with, I forget what he called it, something to do with head.

[01:46:06] Head tracker, which he did not have that. They just locked it because it wasn't working right. They were having issues with one of the wires, I think, to where if they moved wrong. It was binding up on the binder figure. Yeah. The wire would get messed up.

[01:46:20] So, when that's operational, basically, you fly the airplane with your head.

[01:46:24] Yes. Well, no, not with your head. You look around with your head. You still fly it with your transmitter. Oh, I see.

[01:46:29] Okay.

[01:46:30] But, like, if you look left, then it looks left out of the airplane if you look up and down.

[01:46:36] Okay. That's pretty neat. That would be kind of cool to try. But, yeah.

[01:46:41] Not for me. Some years ago. Something slow would probably be better. Yeah.

[01:46:46] I would think so.

[01:46:47] Even something like a helicopter that could just hover. Yeah. Good times. Then, the other thing, last thing I have, I saw a lot of people flying night radians. Oh, yeah. Brought mine. Didn't fly it like I meant to, but, honestly, the time got away from me with stuff. It really did. One of the things that I've always had issues with is telling if it's coming or going. And, when it's coming and or going, it disappears.

[01:47:13] Yeah.

[01:47:13] So, as you and I, Tommy, were leaving our camper one night, there was a guy sitting on the bank flying it, or flying a night radian, and I saw he had forward-facing lights on the front, two of them, and a single flashing light on the rear. Genius. And that just, like, blew my mind for some reason. It really did. I went and talked to him, and I got excited about that. You did? I was actually, I guess that's my excited face then.

[01:47:39] Okay.

[01:47:40] But, anyway, so I went and.

[01:47:41] You were definitely more excited about that than you were me getting a jet.

[01:47:44] I'm going to be honest. With the jet thing, I think it might hurt a little bit that I didn't know about at first.

[01:47:49] Well, it was supposed to be, like, a surprise. I didn't. I thought I was excited for you.

[01:47:53] That was beautiful.

[01:47:55] Your comment was, you looked at the box, you looked at me, did you get a jet? And I was like, yep. And that was that.

[01:48:01] I said, awesome. I said, that was awesome. That was awesome. And then you finally showed it on Discord. That's gorgeous. Anyway.

[01:48:11] But, so, I actually went out of my comfort zone, went up and talked to the guy. You did. And asked him how he did it and stuff. And he explained, really, just wiring LEDs into the power bus and stuff that was on the night radian already. And so, I ended up getting on Amazon. I ordered them that night. I ordered. You did. You were very excited. I was. Five millimeter LEDs for the front and then five millimeter flashing LEDs for the back.

[01:48:38] I put two on the front and two on the back because I couldn't actually tell where he had put his single one in the back. And now that I think about it, he might have just had it mounted off three or four inches. It wouldn't have made any difference. But I ended up mounting two on the back that flashed. That way I can see front or back. And I actually did that when I got home. And I'm ready to fly it again.

[01:48:59] I'm excited for that one. I wish I knew you were up to that because I would have given you some more of that LEDs that I put on the paramotor. What were you put on the white ones?

[01:49:08] Yeah. To make it look like a moon?

[01:49:10] Yeah.

[01:49:11] I love flying that thing in the fog.

[01:49:13] Yeah. It's cool.

[01:49:14] Was that a strip of them though or was it just? Yeah. They're strips. Oh, yeah. So, I got literally just single LEDs and wired them in because I don't want to pull a lot more current through it because I know that's already going through the bus and stuff on the receiver to power them. But I just did single LEDs on the front and back. I'll show you how I did it sometime because you have a night radian, too. You need to do it, too.

[01:49:34] I need to get rid of it. I hate it.

[01:49:36] Well, Tommy wants one.

[01:49:37] So, make a deal for something. I'm sure I have something you would like to have. We'll work something out.

[01:49:44] Okay. Like a Goldberg cup kit or something.

[01:49:49] I already got a Goldberg cup now.

[01:49:51] Oh, did you get one? Yeah. Dang it. Toledo. Yeah.

[01:49:54] Dang it. Okay. Well, I'll find something else. We'll figure something out. But you don't have one that's not built. They'll give you a whole bunch of wooden sticks.

[01:50:03] Paramotors, though, worked out really well with the new LEDs I threw on it at the last minute. Yeah. That thing is super bright. I've learned to close my eyes when I plug it in. And I can see red as soon as they come on. It's like, oh, they're on.

[01:50:15] Yeah. So, for anyone listening who's not familiar with a paramotor, it's basically a parachute with a cage underneath it and a pusher electric car. A little trolley. And then around the prop is a shroud to protect your – Prop guard. Yeah. The entire shroud lights up, and it looks so cool. Yeah. And it even – it gives off enough light to where it kind of –

[01:50:36] It lights the canopy. Yeah.

[01:50:38] It illuminates the canopy. It looks really cool.

[01:50:41] Yeah. There's no problems losing it at night.

[01:50:44] Yeah. And Reggie has the launch of it down finally. Oh, he's gotten that down. Yeah. First try every time now. He knows what he's doing. Yep. So, that's awesome.

[01:50:53] I only get mine together.

[01:50:54] See? Are you still having done that yet? I still haven't done that. Yeah, and the LEDs were only $12 on Amazon.

[01:51:00] Nice. So, are those powered through the receiver then, too?

[01:51:02] No. I actually am powering them through a separate battery.

[01:51:05] Oh, okay. Yeah, weight doesn't really seem to be an issue with this thing.

[01:51:10] No. Plies good. No, in fact, you have to add weight to it just as is. Well, there you go. It doesn't fly real well. Yeah. Flop around. It's more of a pendulum. Yeah. So, I've got an old puffed up 1300 milliamp free cell that I power the lights with. Nice. And interestingly enough, the motor and the battery and the lights pull almost at the same rate.

[01:51:29] Really?

[01:51:29] Oh, good.

[01:51:30] So, that way you're not up there and then all of a sudden the lights go off and you're like, where is it?

[01:51:36] Awesome. Yeah. It looks really cool.

[01:51:39] Highlights of the trip. Dave, what's your highlight? Night flying. I really like the night flying now. I don't like to go out in the daylight anymore.

[01:51:47] Yeah.

[01:51:48] See, we really need to do that more often here.

[01:51:50] Yeah. I know I've said that before. Daniel? I think night flying.

[01:51:54] I mean, it's quieter. With his… I mean, I did like the… I'd never flown floats before. I think I did all right. I didn't end up in the boat. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:52:04] You didn't take any rides in the boat.

[01:52:05] No, I didn't take any rides in the boat. No, that wasn't. Yeah. So, that was…

[01:52:09] I'd say that's a successful float flying introduction.

[01:52:12] Yeah. That was a new experience. I was worried, but… There were no issues. It wasn't…

[01:52:16] It's simple. There's no… It is. There's no reason I have to get into a boat. It's my second year in a row.

[01:52:22] He's looking at Reggie and I both. Yeah.

[01:52:24] But yeah, I was kind of nervous about that, but really it wasn't. I mean, it wasn't bad at all to do. Yeah. So, just seeing all the other planes that you don't see around here.

[01:52:35] So, would you say you got more out of the night flying or the flying off the floats for the first time?

[01:52:43] Put you on the spot. Probably the night flying.

[01:52:46] Yeah. That was cool.

[01:52:47] I liked the night flying also. Yeah. Reggie? I didn't do any night flying there. I did the float flying, but I did no night flying. But I will say when I got home… We had airplanes.

[01:52:57] They were all broken.

[01:52:59] Thanks, Dave.

[01:52:59] And it wasn't me this time.

[01:53:02] I guess I highlighted the truth. But that's true. The float flying. So, what is it about the trip that would make you want to go back next year? Float flying? Is that what you're saying?

[01:53:10] Yeah. I'd like to be more float flying. I actually will be prepared for next year's show. But I got home and took out the Viper and the Carbon Z 228 toward evening. And they were pretty well illuminated. I mean, I flew into darkness. And it was actually really nice.

[01:53:26] So, talking about flying into darkness. So, you did fly the Viper at Joe Knoll at just past, I would say, dusk. Deep dusk. Deep dusk. There you go. Almost dark. I guess it was. So, Reggie… Or, I'm sorry. Ron and Jeff were up at the flight line. I think… Were you spotting for them?

[01:53:44] No, I was spotting for them.

[01:53:45] But you guys were kind of off behind us having a conversation. And I overheard somebody, and I think it was Jeff, comment saying, oh, no, he really is going to fly.

[01:53:59] Yeah. So, I told Jeff, I said, oh, get ready. Reggie's going to take off with this. And he's like, no, it's way too dark to fly that airplane. And then, not 45 seconds later, the battery goes in, the lights goes on. And I think that's when you heard him say, oh, he really is going to. I get to experience a Reggie moment. And at a distance. Yeah.

[01:54:21] But in Reggie's defense, the lights on that Viper are actually quite bright. Like, I had no trouble seeing… I didn't either….the whole time he was flying. So…

[01:54:30] When I finally brought it in, then I was kind of like, yeah.

[01:54:33] It was good. But, like, I could still see it and not get confused by turning away or turning towards you. But…

[01:54:41] How is that when it's a mile away?

[01:54:42] Well, that's what I was going to follow that up with.

[01:54:45] Oh, sorry.

[01:54:46] If he kept it close enough. But you like to fly far away. And it did make me uncomfortable a couple of times when you were over the trees. And I thought, he's going to lose orientation because I don't know what direction it's going right now. But you managed to get it back.

[01:55:01] So, let's put it this way. I spotted for him once at that same time. I think it was a different day. And he took off, flew away, and as he made his first bank to come back, to go perpendicular in front of us, he said, I can't tell, are my gear up or not? Oh, jeez. To which I told him, it's too dark. I can't see your gear. And he said, well, neither can I. So, he didn't know they were up or down until he made the next pass right in front of us.

[01:55:31] I couldn't see.

[01:55:33] Right, because it was dark.

[01:55:34] No, it was that. It was the fact that I hadn't cycled the gear. And I could look like the gear door was still down. And I was waiting for it to close, and I just couldn't tell if it had closed or not. So, when it came by, I knew. Let me ask you this.

[01:55:49] Had it been broad daylight, would you have asked that question? Would you have been able to see it in broad daylight?

[01:55:55] Yes. Yes, probably, probably. I mean, even as far as I fly away, I could still probably see it.

[01:55:59] He's not alone with this gear problem. The Hobby King guys, which had their brand-new Takano out there, were doing a night flight. Nav lights only. I'm not sure how they pulled that off. But they had to do a real slow, low flyby with a flashlight to see if the gear was up or down. Oh, jeez.

[01:56:14] I could see the plane. It was just, I wasn't for sure if that gear door had closed. And I'm starting to think, okay, one of them is hung up or something. I didn't know for sure. We're starting to develop a plan for the landing in case one's stuck.

[01:56:27] No, I got it.

[01:56:28] And that was one thing I saw this year that I thought was kind of neat. So, usually, you'd have the planes that are illuminated from inside to fly at night and that kind of stuff. There was one guy out there flying. It was more 3D flying, so it was kind of hovering and stuff. So, it wasn't like going very far away. That was just illuminated by somebody with a flashlight on the side.

[01:56:47] I saw that. What?

[01:56:48] Yeah, I have a picture of that.

[01:56:49] How did I miss that?

[01:56:50] I don't know. Where was this at? It was right down on the 3D type line, like when all the assassins are out flying and stuff.

[01:56:56] So, the electric 3D line? Mm-hmm. Oh, I didn't watch any of that.

[01:56:59] I mean, we were just sitting at the regular line, like the regular E-line.

[01:57:03] Was I right there? Why didn't you say, hey, that guy's flying his plane with a flashlight?

[01:57:06] Maybe you were spotting for somebody.

[01:57:08] Oh.

[01:57:08] Maybe that's what it was. But I've got a couple pictures. Oh, my gosh.

[01:57:12] Yeah, I thought that was kind of funny.

[01:57:13] And in the picture, because it was a night that it was kind of hazy a little bit. Yeah. So, you can actually see the beam, like, spreading out and going to the guy flying.

[01:57:21] So, that would have been the night you were flying the paramotor in the fog. Paramotor in the fog. Yeah. Well, maybe that's why I was watching that and not the…

[01:57:28] That was so cool in the fog.

[01:57:30] I loved that. It was cool. Yeah.

[01:57:31] But, yeah, good times. I already have the next two years taken off at work. Just saying. So, yeah.

[01:57:39] Yeah. So, what… You didn't answer the question. The highlight of the trip?

[01:57:44] I think the highlight was probably everybody buying decathlons and flying them together. Oh, and then the shirt I'm wearing, RC Nation shirt with the decathlon on it. I had no clue that was the shirt they were going to have for… Or the Horizon was going to have for the RC Nation stuff.

[01:58:01] Yeah.

[01:58:01] And that, I think, was the icing on the cake.

[01:58:03] Yeah.

[01:58:04] Having a shirt with the airplane we all bought and flew.

[01:58:07] That was pretty cool. It was pretty neat. Yeah.

[01:58:09] Yeah.

[01:58:10] Cool.

[01:58:11] Did everybody else do the highlight? I think so.

[01:58:17] Okay. So, we're wrapping this up? I was going to say, anything else you want to talk about? I've got to say something real quick. Okay. It's not Darcy related. I just want to thank my wife. Today is our anniversary, our 33rd year. Oh, happy anniversary. Happy anniversary. So, thank you to my beautiful, wonderful wife for putting up with us for 33 years.

[01:58:33] 33 years. Man. I was… Don't. Just don't. Sorry. Young. Happy anniversary. Happy anniversary. Thanks. Cool. And you came out here to do this? Yeah. That's awesome. That is nice.

[01:58:46] Yeah. Cool. Anybody else?

[01:58:49] All right. That's all I got. Closing thoughts? Anybody?

[01:58:51] Anybody? Anybody? I'll apologize in advance for the next few episodes because I'm sure there will be stuff that I forgot to mention on this episode that I will try to… So, I'll just…

[01:59:02] That's fine.

[01:59:03] Apologize for Joe Nall talk in the future.

[01:59:05] I will apologize for the cicadas. I don't know if anybody can hear me in the background. I'm hoping it's not coming through on this, but they are loud. I'm not hearing. They are loud. Oh, I hear. They were loud when we…

[01:59:14] I hear them through here in my earphones. So, yeah. Let's explain that real quick. We have a double batch.

[01:59:18] Oh, yeah. This is the worst I have ever seen cicadas out here, which is weird because we have thousands of them, and like I was talking to the guys at work the other day, they don't have anything at their house. I hear you guys don't have anything in Springfield.

[01:59:34] Nothing so far. Yeah.

[01:59:35] In our house.

[01:59:37] So, it makes sense that you would say this is the worst you've ever heard them because it is.

[01:59:42] Yeah.

[01:59:42] So, this is the… It only happens every so many years. So, they emerge, right, from their underground layers, and different broods have different timelines, right?

[01:59:55] Like 13 and 17 years?

[01:59:57] 13 and 17.

[01:59:58] Those are holding bugs.

[01:59:58] So, the 13-year brood and the 17-year brood are all emerging this year. Their timelines synced up to where they're… So, it's a double batch.

[02:00:07] It's maybe like another 250 years or something before it happens again. Right.

[02:00:10] Is it 13 and 17 or is it 13 and 7?

[02:00:13] No, it's like… Is it? It's big numbers. Oh, okay.

[02:00:16] Whatever it is.

[02:00:18] It's annoying is what it is.

[02:00:19] It just happens to be, yeah, that they've synced up this year, and it's like this crazy occurrence that… Yeah, they're really thick this year.

[02:00:27] It has driven me inside? I have seen that they are over 100 decibels. Oh, that's…

[02:00:32] No kidding. Yeah.

[02:00:33] That is loud.

[02:00:34] Well, like, we usually don't hear things from outside inside our house, and you can hear them inside. The only good thing is they do quiet down about 8, 8.30 at night. Well, that's good. So, you can sleep. So, I can still sleep. Yeah.

[02:00:49] Okay. Anyway. Cicadas. There you go.

[02:00:51] Thank you.

[02:00:51] Anything else?

[02:00:52] We good?

[02:00:52] Good? Good?

[02:00:53] That's all I got. All right. Well, until next time, thank you, everybody, for listening. I'm Ron. I'm Tom. I'm Reggie. I'm Daniel. And I'm Dave. Good night. Good night.

[02:01:01] We hope you enjoyed this episode of the RC Plane Lab Podcast. For topic suggestions, to ask questions, or to give any feedback, connect with us at rcplanelab.com, or email us direct at either ron at rcplanelab.com or tom at rcplanelab.com. You can also text us or leave us a voicemail at 818-351-9846. Please subscribe, rate, and review us on your favorite podcast app. Until next time, may your landings be gentle.