Ep 184: The Good, the Bad, and the Muddy; From Joe Nall with Lee and Fitz!

[00:00:00] It will record as soon as you’re playing the microphone yeah I should have it did my bad.

[00:00:03] Born ready here we go hello everyone and welcome to the RC Plane Lab podcast I’m Ron I’m Tom.

[00:00:19] I’m lee I’m fitz hi guys what’s going on we’re at juneau final day of juneau 2025.

[00:00:27] Unfortunately, are you staying tonight? Yeah, nice, yeah, we originally were going to stay tonight, but we have been here over a week. Oh yeah, we’re hardcore. So, yeah, I’m ready to get home. So.

[00:00:39] If you can get home what is this home you speak of yeah I’m looking at your rv and the tracks in.

[00:00:45] Front of them I think if we make it off to the side and just get it’ll be fine it’ll be all right.

[00:00:51] It’ll be fine there’s enough tractors back there to big tractors here yep they’ve been doing that.

[00:00:55] All week yes I saw when we came in we saw people getting pulled out yeah so three solid days of.

[00:01:00] Rain to start off joan all for us so that was I already told the guys the title of this episode.

[00:01:05] Is called the good the bad and the muddy well I guess we’re gonna steal that one now you’re welcome.

[00:01:12] You’re gonna have to come up with another name now. No two, part two: yeah, but it has not deterred people from flying, because you can hear in the background: yeah, so we.

[00:01:23] Are actually sitting off the coast of the lake montana, lake montana- with actually a very nice breeze right now. I was afraid of that because it was getting pretty crappy this morning and what I

[00:01:35] Like: is that? The last time we did this, two years ago, we were at electrics and now we’re here. So I’m kind of wondering where we’ll be the next time. Yeah, next time we do this. Yeah, we rotate different locations. They’re away, the electric pro four, where there’s nobody here, it’s a bunch of helicopters. I.

[00:01:52] Meant oh yeah I shouldn’t say that there were helicopters flying there I saw one I saw them.

[00:01:58] Several times they have their own area and nobody there to enjoy it anyway yeah they are definitely.

[00:02:04] Out there in the sticks did you guys make it up to the helicopter line I kept driving by I did last.

[00:02:09] Time. But I didn’t do this time. Even though I brought a little helicopter, I didn’t get a chance go up there and say, yeah, if your guys are good, you can come join the rest of the people.

[00:02:18] I know they have them. They have them right at the beginning. So as everybody else drives in, they see people driving by them and just ignoring them and it’s like they’re shunned. It’s weird, but it looked.

[00:02:28] Like, at least when I drove by, but the couple times that I was up there looked like they were having a good time. Yeah, no waiting. If anything, you can try any time you need to. There was more people than last time we were here at the helicopter area, so really so hopefully they’re growing. Yeah, it.

[00:02:41] That way to me too. Yeah, I, I only saw it once as I left and came back of the week. We’ve been here. I’ve only been off site once and that’s been nice, and that’s one more than me, and it was weird, I’m going to be honest. It was weird getting back to normal life because, like here, everything is just it’s it’s, it’s on pace, it’s joan, all time. Well, there’s time, and there’s the way people dress, the way people- I mean people- honestly put the slobs in plastic bags. Yeah, some guys are barefoot, I know.

[00:03:14] Right. So I’ve got my dirty pants on because these I’ve worn them for a couple days and rain and stuff. I’ve got my socks on. I’m I’m wearing my sandals, which is fine for here. But then I went out in public and I was like, oh, I probably should have changed, like everybody’s looking at you like you’re a weirdo.

[00:03:29] Actually, I think in town you sort of fit right in. I mean, you look like a local. Maybe I don’t know, I didn’t make it off. We’ve lost a couple of south carolina. No kidding, that was rude. Well, nothing, I guess it’s just they’re comfortable. Yeah, casual, thank you, I’ve been comfortable. So yeah, there you go.

[00:03:51] So what do you guys think you missed last year? What? What’s your thoughts on this year? I heard it rained last year too, towards the end, towards the end. Yeah, and that’s why, actually, we left friday last year. We left the day early because it was coming. Yeah, it’s coming.

[00:04:09] It’s great. I mean, yeah, we had the very bad rain and mud. We can talk about that for a long time and it is muddy and my trailer is still in mud and it’s it’s yucky. But, that being said, we have been flying, yeah, and I had- I was telling fitz when we were golf carting up to your rv, the pond behind us has been- I think it’s one of my favorite places to be- yeah, because this morning I was flying several of my planes too, that I’ve never flown off water. I just like to do them on grass, just touch and go. So my pby and my dragonfly, which are both made for water, but I just didn’t want to, I guess I.

[00:04:40] Just enjoyed the way of flying but they flew great today and we’ve had a great time yeah that’s.

[00:04:45] Awesome the flow line is probably my favorite also talking to the you keep I’m pretty.

[00:04:52] Loud. I have a theater. People tell me I have a theater voice, so I’m pretty sure people are going. Lee needs to back off the way. I guess I can fix it later if I have. No, you don’t have to fix it. Terry’s usually turning my butt down. He’s like lee is so loud. But let’s, let’s talk about the real quiet one who’s sitting to my left. Hey, get off your phone and talk to us. Yeah, no kidding, he’s like on.

[00:05:12] Facebook he’s like posting stuff on I am referencing my list of items for this sure you are.

[00:05:21] Our favorite joke is during this show, because we record him on video. It’s his head’s down and he’s whittling away on some plastic model or something, making creakling noises and we’re like, hey, welcome back to the show fits, oh, we’re doing that now. So, yeah, how about you fits? What’s your favorite part of the journal? Journal, all of it, all of it, yeah, everything just wandering around.

[00:05:42] Talking to people buying stuff, selling stuff, whatever- not really selling anything but watching the models. I feel I’m perfectly fine, not really flying all that much- I did fly a bunch, but just helping out, just nearly neat event to be at, yeah, and I’m just all. It’s almost saturated with all the stuff that’s going on. So for me I’m just enjoying being here and looking, looking at all.

[00:06:04] The poorly dressed people flying really cool airplanes. I’m going to add something to what fitz said, because he said: help out people. And I think what we should mention is our buddy, mike liable, who came with us, drove to from texas. Yeah, he brought his large b24 don smith right. Yeah, 140 inch wingspan, yeah, and we wanted to bring him here. Like when I knew I was coming, I called mike, said: hey, I’m gonna join all you want to join us. And he was ecstatic. He’s recently retired and it’s like the biggest grin on his face. So I mean he’s happy to be here. So that’s something that fitz and I were working together on. It’s like let’s make sure mike gets to fly. So he brought his l4 grasshopper and he had he.

[00:06:39] Had a beautiful flight yesterday in the main line and that’s a good feeling, like, like he said, helping people doing that kind of stuff. That was a lot of fun. Yeah, yeah, that was cool to watch- I was.

[00:06:49] Glad we got to go up there and see that, yeah, that’s a very special project for him- him and another gentleman in our club who has passed away some years ago- herman. Herman burton was his name and they both. It was a collaborative project they worked on for several years and they would fly together and so mike really enjoys taking the plane around to different locations and flying it and marking it down. He has a whole log book. He can tell you exactly how many flights he’s had on that thing awesome- and so he was really ecstatic to bring it here to fly it at joan now, because I think this is

[00:07:20] The furthest he’s ever traveled with it, because that’s further than muncie, right, I think, or is it? Yeah, I think we’re further than muncie, so he’s flew in at muncie as well, and so it’s just, it’s one of his things. He’s just personally speaking, he just loves to do that and he just sent us a note. One of the wing panels is signatures from people either flew in or related to the b24s, or related to family. He just sent us a note that he found somebody at the main line who either him- was it him or his tail gunner or a relative was a tail gunner in the b24, that’s, and so he’s had it signed. So that is awesome, yeah.

[00:07:52] It flew up beautifully too. Like considering the, the condition is pretty windy, yeah, it’s windy, a little slushy yesterday still, the takeoff one was a little bit longer than we’ve normally seen, but I gotta tell you it warmed my heart that it was nitro powered. Yes, we should say it’s, it’s.

[00:08:06] Got four os 110s, I believe, four stroke nitro powered engines on it and they ran. All four of them ran beautifully. Yeah, he’s had to rebuild them several times. Yeah, he said one of them. He said it was a little bulky at first because it’s got a new bearings and stuff in it, but once he’s got up and running he’s got a glow igniter for when it’s that idle it’s all decked out. He’s got brakes working, bomb drops, some of the turrets removed. Yeah, it’s really a labor of love and a lot of special. It was a lot of fun to watch. I’m I’m glad he was able to bring it. I think he was the only four-engined.

[00:08:35] Plane to fly here right so far yeah I don’t remember seeing any other I’ve seen a bunch of twins.

[00:08:39] Internal combustion yeah but the oh yeah I did see a electric b24 so but only internal combustion.

[00:08:45] Four engines I’ve seen so far, right to show: yep, yeah, very well done, but there was a four-engine supercon constellation. Also there was electric -huh, oh yeah, talk about that, I forgot, I missed that, like I sadly didn’t get to see, I didn’t get to fly it. I saw a glimpse of it but so, yeah, that’s a.

[00:09:04] A scratch built, far as we know, lucky constellations, four engine early airliner designed in part by howard hughes right howard hughes’s lockheed twa trans world airlines. So that was our buddy. No, it wasn’t joe, that was. Was it john joe? I think that was joe, was joe, was joe? Yeah, just joe and john, and I can’t remember. So joe brought it from rhode island and he flew it. I saw it fly once. He flew it around and it looked really neat in the air. It’s a sexy looking plane.

[00:09:38] And he flew around and apparently he flew it again. I wasn’t around and he had. He lost radio contact with it and had a really hard landing with it and so he apparently decided that he wasn’t going to repair it and so he started offering us deals we couldn’t refuse, and so now it’s in my trailer. It’s going home with you going over me to get repaired. That’s awesome. It’s in my trailer. Yeah, a little bit more specific, it was a hundred inch wingspan or something like that at.

[00:10:08] Least. Yeah, I heard something that’s a good. Well, no hold on. It was because I remember he had it sitting on the ground. It was probably about a foot taller than he was, so probably seven-ish feet. Wingspan maybe. Oh, I would have thought it was bigger than that. I thought it was bigger than that. But one piece wing, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, one piece. Yeah, that’s fun. But the tail comes on. It looks like, though, if it doesn’t, it can what? Right? Yeah, it’s really needs electric power. It runs off a couple of.

[00:10:33] Big battery packs and it just looked neat in the air I was like I said oh this is going to be.

[00:10:38] Cool yeah so and you’re going home with it who would have thought going home with it I would not.

[00:10:42] Have thought that and the challenge for fitz now is that we told him he had to have it ready for best.

[00:10:47] In october I was going to say so if you saw him fly and you liked it so what did you do to sabotage.

[00:10:52] It, then I really don’t talk about that. I know nothing. Is this fishing line tied to the gear? Fyi, best the best, electric in south texas is a big electric event. That lee and I always go to waverly texas first weekend in october, just north of houston. Yeah, it’s close for you guys. Yeah, it’s very close for us. Yeah, it’s close, but we camp out, we go there, we just stay the night. They’ve got nice facilities there and we just spend a long three or four day.

[00:11:20] Weekend. I’m not sure if it was, I was talking to you, Ron, but it’s like when we were sitting at the electric line here at joe knall, someone was asking: what’s best like? Is that best is like this? It’s like the electric flight line here: 60, 70 pilots, that kind of camaraderie, people just sitting in chairs watching the show, having a good time, very relaxed. Yeah, yes, no contests, just having fun.

[00:11:41] They do give out some awards but it’s real low-key yeah big plane all electric it’s all electric.

[00:11:47] Yep that’s the we should make a road trip down there for that oh texas I’ve never been that.

[00:11:52] Far. Well, there you go. Kill two birds with one stone, come to texas, come to best electric. You’ll have a good time. It’s really nice you see space center houston. That’s further, that’s right way. Further space stuff and what else stuff we have? Ron would like that space stuff. I do. You’re into that.

[00:12:09] Space are you why don’t you fly rockets by the way random why don’t I yeah you’re into space stuff.

[00:12:16] Flooring. It’s just small things that go up and down. You don’t control it. It makes some rockets. Some planes have gone up and down here too. Yeah, we’ve seen a ton of that, not necessarily under control too. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there have been several accidents that I’ve heard of and seen a few. Yeah, I kind of had one. Oh, you did. Oh, yeah, I saw. Did you see it? Oh, I saw the aftermath. Did you see the yellow habu 32? I had beautiful airplane. No, I don’t know. Oh, so I have a yellow habu 32x. This is the.

[00:12:45] Old one was the fiberglass fuselage with the wood wings. These are the ones that guys put 12 cells in to make them do 200 an hour and that kind of stuff. Yeah, mine was semi hopped up. I wasn’t a stock system, it was an eight cell with a jet fan. I never clocked it. I should have clocked it, but it was. It was, oh, it was. It was the fastest turbine jet out there and, oh, definitely the fastest edf out there. Yeah, that’s the edf. Yeah, determine, but you press edf in the electric line. Yeah, I actually came up with somebody. I didn’t realize how fast I was going. I was about to run into somebody: another jet that’s flying. I was like, whoa, baby, that’s a good feeling. So I flew it once, had a great flight.

[00:13:21] With it. A couple of people’s like, oh, that’s just the hobby, is that the new one? It’s like, no, no, this thing’s like old, old dirt, yeah. And I was running the smc batteries in it. And so there’s a couple of smc guys or representatives of smc, they’re really curious about it. I said well, okay, well, I just bought a- no, a new, bigger pack of smc batteries, because the first pack was I thought I didn’t have enough room, and it turns out I had more room than I thought. I did poor big job of measuring and so I was only good for maybe two and a half minutes with the old pack. So I got much higher capacity packs. Let me throw those in for the first time and give those a shot. And smc guys like, yeah, okay, is it eight cell set up eight.

[00:13:53] Cells. Okay, four s packs in series, and so I take off and I’m doing some high street passes. The guy is recording some stuff, we’re having a good old time, and I did the same thing I did early with the. The other pack, a smaller packet, did a down line upwind really fast, pulled knife edge, did a kind of a pulled pretty tight yep, and at that point one of the wings decided to, no longer wanted to be part of the airframe and so it just. I saw this flick of yellow just pop off. It’s like that looks.

[00:14:22] Like my wing it happened in an instant I couldn’t believe how quickly it was fast yeah just corkscrewed.

[00:14:28] It was going so fast that after the wing left it was still flying. Oh yeah, 500, yeah, yeah, all I could do is throttle back and oh well, good, knowing you salute. I couldn’t see the degree field from where I was sitting, but like, how long was the degree? It wasn’t too bad, it was. It shed a few parts, yeah, but it hit hard and injected the battery and motor. We, I think we found all pieces. We had to search for the batteries. Note to smc: you need bright yellow batteries so we can find those. That’s a good idea. The batteries are kind of obliterated but we didn’t find them. I didn’t want them to sit there.

[00:15:00] Or get run over or something. Right, yeah and so, and it looks like we could confirm, I bought the plane used. It has a story. I don’t want to get too long in this, no, it’s fine. So, lee and terry, if I remember correctly, we went up to the joise to the ama expo and it was sitting there for sale. They had a bunch of planes for sale and it was the habu 32 and I said, oh, that’s, that’s the fiberglass one. I know those things are kind of speedy. I love to stick a nice power setup in there and we were there early. So when I finally got, found somebody to ask how much I wanted.

[00:15:32] And they told me and it’s like shut up take my money.

[00:15:37] I don’t think it’s ever been flown and so we had to ship it back as check-in luggage in a bag and part of a box and that kind of stuff it was. It was. It was interesting getting it back and so anyway, to get back home and I set it up with for 8s and the jet fan, 80 fan and that kind of stuff and I flew it several times. It looked like it would be a handful of a plane to fly, but it actually flies really nice. It’s really locked in. It does look like a handful, it does. It can be. I mean, no one’s you tune it down, but it’s fairly locked in and the land fairly slow for what it is, even though it’s a little chunky, yeah, and so I’ve flown it maybe half a dozen times or so and it’s just been hanging.

[00:16:12] Up in my workshop for quite a while. I’ve had some minor instances where I had a gear fail to re-extend one time and I belly landed it and broke one of the tail pieces off and I guess I was able to fix that, but anyways, I lost my look, oh sorry, where I was going with this. Sorry, I got squirrel just like the wing. So anyways, what I was getting to is I didn’t build it right, somebody else built it. I just bought it used and so- and I didn’t think I pulled that hard, snapped the wing off and

[00:16:47] So, inspecting it I realized where the carbon spar goes into the wing. I really didn’t see any glue and lee can confirm. I told him. On both wings it’s like: where’s the glue? There should be a whole bunch of glue in the channel that this thing slides in. Yeah, there’s a little bit of epoxy kind of near the wing root and that was it. Oh yeah, so this was. Whoever built it was really chintzy on the glue and

[00:17:11] Mr step mr spot yeah so yeah well they were trying to keep it light see they didn’t want to put a lot.

[00:17:17] Of glue and epoxy on it to make it heavy, honestly surprised it didn’t fail, maybe because the past few times was pretty easy with it. But here, well, you had a heavier battery in it too. I had a heavier battery, so I think they’re just enough to get over. Yet, yes, the, the, the gyroscopic fort, not gyroscopic, what do you call it? The g-forces, the g-forces as a duna, duna turn was just enough with the heavier battery pack. So, anyways, it was a nice flying plane salute. Anyways, I’ll go on to, and now we’ve got a spot in the

[00:17:45] Hangar for something else all right cool put some of those parts in the connie yeah oh man yeah apu.

[00:17:55] Oh that’s funny probably big enough to house one of those that’s a big airplane the connie I mean.

[00:17:59] Yeah, it’s really long. It’s like having a f-104 starfighter: where you get the fuselage it’s 10 000 feet long and the wings are two feet wide. Yeah, right, so at this table, that’s not.

[00:18:09] The only edf we lost I would say it wasn’t lost by the way oh there’s plot thickens I don’t know.

[00:18:16] Which one are we talking about? I, you, this morning, oh, mine, oh, what happened? Oh, you didn’t hear about that. No, so this is just one of those sucky situations like there is no. So Ron and I decided, I guess this morning, really we decided- that we were going to go ahead and leave today and I had four charged six s 5000s ready to go, and it’s more fun to fly them down to storage charge than it is to

[00:18:42] Re-typing or what is that? Oh, than it is to put them on a discharger, right, right, right, use that energy. Well, Ron’s doing whatever Ron thinks he was doing in the camper. I thought, oh, I no, I went down. I know you went down, but it sounded more fun the way I said it. Yeah, I didn’t.

[00:18:59] Like it? Oh okay, yeah, quick shout out to our road on guys. Thanks for dinner. Yes, oh yeah, those guys have been awesome. Thanks for the chats and fun conversations. We’ll hopefully talk more about them later, but those guys are fantastic hosts. They’re nice people, I mean good people. Yeah, can’t wait to see.

[00:19:12] Them again and we just- yeah, we just say goodbye to them an hour, a couple hours ago. Yeah, I miss them already anyway. So yeah, four batteries ready to go. I thought I’ll just take the viper 90 down to the e-line, run these batteries off. That way I don’t have to put them on a discharger and wait for them to discharge to the storage, all that kind of stuff, because they’re not smart batteries.

[00:19:34] So, yeah, I take the viper 90 down there and Ron goes to say goodbye to the rhode island guys and I thought, well, I’ll just find a spotter here. I’ll ask see if somebody else spot for me. Lee wasn’t around so he couldn’t spot for me. And the best spotter, the best spotter ever.

[00:19:50] So yeah, one of the guys down there said: I give good call outs. It’s true you do. I feel like I would have gotten a much better warning anyway. One of the guys was nice enough down there. I didn’t catch his name before I left. I left in kind of a hurry. I took about a minute off my timer so I figured well that should give me about 40 percent if I land around the timer left on the

[00:20:23] Battery. So I took me, I went up, flew around the viper of 90s- they fly great. Well, I say landed. So I told my spotter. I said hey, I’m gonna do a gear pass and then I’m gonna land. Okay, gotcha. So I did my gear pass, three, three gear down, no problem, and said okay, I’m gonna land. My spotter called out, hey, landing on whatever number we were on, held the stick up like because that’s how, in case anyone doesn’t understand how this works: at joan all there are two sticks.

[00:20:55] At every flight station, every pilot station, they’re color-coded. I think green is landing, red blue, I think, is taking off, something like that: green is ground, green to the sky. Yeah, there you.

[00:21:04] Go they also serve as self-defense mechanisms they do actually they’re really long or jousting.

[00:21:10] If you guys can do a fight you’re not beating the person Tom’s about to they’re not very sharp.

[00:21:16] Though. So, like it doesn’t matter, you can bludgeon it would. Probably it’s more fun to bludgeon. Yeah, that’s true. So I called out the landing. My spotter called out the landing. He held up the green stick saying hey landing. And so I heard something going on to my left, which was one of the pilot stations to the left I. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I was counting on my spotter to let me know what they were saying if they were going to be a factor on the landing. So I’m lined up for the landing, everything’s fine. I told my spotter, hey, I’m gonna land it in the grass. It’s, it’s a viper 90. They have a textile geotextile runway out on the e-line and edfs. Unless you have

[00:21:52] Thrust reversing they eat up a lot of that runway on land plus it’s kind of going downhill.

[00:21:58] The way we were going. Yeah, because of the wind. Well, on the very end of it is kind of a bump too, so if you’re going a little bit too fast it’ll throw you right back in the air. Yep, so I told my spotter.

[00:22:06] Hey, I’m gonna put it, put it in the grass out here in front of us so it slows down. He’s like, yep, no problem. So I’m on final and I’m about to touch down and I’m thinking back and I think my spotter said, hey, go around. But he said it really quiet and I so I thought he had turned his head to talk to the people next to me. I’m just thinking you may kind of want it. It’s like the guy.

[00:22:28] From office space if you kind of went around it’d be good.

[00:22:34] It’d be great if you walked around okay so the main gear touched down and then I hear him.

[00:22:41] Say again the louder this time: hey, go around. I’m like: oh well, I’m committed. Yeah, it takes a little, especially these viper nights, takes a little time to build up air speedy, especially if you’re already on the ground. So I land on, I land all three gear down and about the time I push the stick forward, wham, crash, white foam pieces like everywhere. Yeah, some guy had taxied out onto the green space where there’s. So there’s a line painted on the green right between the pilot station.

[00:23:12] And the white line is like you can taxi your airplanes out and hold short. That’s what I would call a hold short line, yeah, and then on the other side of that white line is more green and then the geotextile runway. So you have options: you can land on the grass or the geotextile runway and still be out of the way of the pilot, the whole short line. Well, this guy was past the whole short line. He was, he was actually kind of just on the runway side of the white line, but still on the active runway and so, yeah, the I’m not sure why he was there. I don’t know if he was taxing out to

[00:23:44] To take off or what he was doing. But yeah, the two airplanes at high speed. Well, his was stationary, mine was relatively high speed because it had just touched down. It’s a viper 90, did I mention, that probably lands at a 40-ish, 35, 40 because I don’t do the high alpha landings. So there’s a lot of momentum as you’re coming in and broke the nose off and I really hadn’t looked really close. Large chunks it’ll be easy to repair. But yeah, it’s not a basket case so it’s repairable. It is and I’ll fix it. It just won’t be beautiful. But the other guys obliterated. To be honest, I don’t know.

[00:24:19] His tail was broken, was it? Yeah, good, good, did it serve as a? I walked, I walked up as soon as his wheels hit, so I noticed it was Tom, and so I saw the plane t-bone. Yeah, it was exactly a t-bone, because he was nose towards the runway and I- I- I can’t vouch or confirm this, but I thought he was rolling out. I actually thought he was moving. That’s what I got. That’s why I was mad, because I felt like he was

[00:24:44] Going out while you called landing there’s a lot of people that take off cross runway especially if.

[00:24:49] They have slower airplanes that don’t require a long run out. But here’s I to defend Tom. I saw the guy standing between the pilot stations, okay, so he wasn’t like ready to go taxi out. I saw the pole up in the ear, your spotter, so it. It felt like miscommunication. Can’t blame it on Tom. Tom was committed, he was focused on his airplane. So and great, I mentioned earlier I love to scream when fitz has me out there. I love to be very loud and repeat everything that’s happening. So people don’t have that mistake. Yeah, I didn’t hear anything, so he was very quiet. So the other guy.

[00:25:22] Should have had a spot or two. Right, did he? He did. And here’s another thing: there may have been- and I hate to blame it on ethnicities, whatever- but there may have been a language barrier as well, because the two- I don’t know what language it was, but they were speaking between the two of them, okay. And then, after the impact, he was trying to say something about I was on the runway or I was taxing out or whatever, but it was. I couldn’t understand what he was saying because of the difference in community language. Yeah, so there may have been a language barrier there as well. I don’t.

[00:25:57] I don’t know, but I didn’t. Yeah, it was unfortunate. I didn’t think his aircraft should have been where it was as an observer. From where I was standing, I wasn’t on the flight line, but it looked like his plane was.

[00:26:06] Way out there further yeah so a couple things my spotter could have been a little more what’s.

[00:26:10] The word for us is full oh you mean use the pbc pipe as a weapon.

[00:26:23] So anyway, yeah, the viper, it’ll live and it’ll fly again. But just let this be a lesson: if you’re going to be a spotter, make it known what you want your pilot to hear, like make it loud, I mean, I just

[00:26:35] I’m holding that stick up and out yes I mean if they’re making you use them here I’m going to.

[00:26:40] Use it. I’m going to make sure everybody sees that the main line. They had a pilot’s briefing the other day. One thing the guy said was a good point. He says if you’re a spotter and you’re only looking at the plane you’re spotting for you’re doing it wrong. Exactly right. He said I don’t want to see spotters looking at the plane that they’re standing next to flying, you want to see spotters looking everywhere.

[00:26:57] Else right? Yeah, spotters should have a general understanding of where your pilot’s airplane is. Yeah, but should be focused on other things that are happening. Yeah, I agree. So, fitz, there was a gentleman we.

[00:27:08] Were on the electric flight line. He had the silver. Was it a warhawk? What did he? Oh, the p40, yeah, the kitty hawk, the early version of people. Okay, but he had painted it. Yeah, well, he just asked if I would spot for him. So I was spotting for him and I was giving him alerts like atc. I was like: okay, you got a plane here, you can make this two, three, one, you’re clear for it. And I’m looking around and I looked at him and said, hey, am I just am I telling you too much? He goes? Oh, no, this is great. I said like I really want to know where these other guys are flying. Keep that up, and I think that’s where I like to be as like, and when fitz was flying, I was like: okay, you’re very fast.

[00:27:42] You’re coming up on this guy really quick. I mean, you may want to stay high, stay high, stay high. I would not give him the runway for a low pass until all the planes were over the trees, right? Yeah, well, that’s what I.

[00:27:53] Try to do too, like when, when I’m spotting for Ron, I try to, I try to tell him where everyone’s at, and especially like, if they’re in the opposite end of the pattern than you, then you can do whatever you want and that’s where I like to position myself when I’m flying. But anyway, well, that’s our psa for.

[00:28:08] Everybody listening. Please be a good spotter. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And if there is a, a pattern, stay in that pattern. Oh my god, yesterday that we ended up not even taking off until they were done. Yeah, they, just they own the place. Even though there was five other airplanes up there, didn’t matter. Yeah, wherever they.

[00:28:30] Wanted to go. They were going, they were turning short and then counter, counter pattern turns coming the opposite way, and I’m not sure if he was doing it intentionally, because it didn’t look like he was in full control of the airplane. If what I’m saying, no, I think he was. I think the

[00:28:43] Airplane was flying him, because I saw him fly other ones and it was the same thing. He didn’t have any issues landing, taking off, anything like that. It was. You’re talking about the, the older guy that I was gonna. I was gonna go say, yeah, I wasn’t gonna get too much into it, but yes, I worry about the guys.

[00:28:58] At the float pond that start their engine at full throttle to take off. That’s what I’m like. I don’t want to watch this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you don’t need to do. No, not, you have plenty of room. Yeah, and it’s all.

[00:29:13] Flat yeah, level yeah. And besides that, that sort of takes the joy out of float flying. I think just launching off the water, like let it get on step and see the water spray and then let it lift off and see the water dripping off the flow, that’s beautiful. But he was taking off like he was scared. I was like

[00:29:28] That’s when you don’t want to be flying. But speaking of pond, since it’s behind us and we had a great day, fitz, tell him your fun story, our fun project today. Oh, okay, I need the context for a second. Yeah, there’s lots of fun stories. I told you not to tell anybody, not that story, okay. So where do I start with this? The plane you have, the plane I have, I have a plane. Start with the plane. I’ll fall back, do I want?

[00:29:54] To go into the history now just you have a plane okay I have a plane that has it on it has a glider.

[00:29:59] Launch cradle on top. So where’d you get this plane? He is shaking his head right now. He is so mad right now. I know he wants to reach across the table and smack you here. I’ll do it. Luckily it’s the long.

[00:30:11] Table. And yes, so this is a, a twin timber, the, the e-flight twin timber, which is once you reprogram the speed controller. It’s a really fun plane and this is the first time I had it on floats. I’ve always followed on landing gear and I had a set of floats from my turbo timber and I was thinking, yeah, I was gonna bring that and this, so I have a float plane. I realized, hey, wait a minute, these are the same set of floats, so I’ll just bring one plane and snap the floats onto the twin timber. So the twin timber has a, a laser cut cradle of my own design that’s designed to handle the launch.

[00:30:44] This little discus launch glider called an elf. It’s not very big, maybe 36 inch, one span of that much, I think about 24.. Maybe 24, okay, and they’re awesome. They’re awesome, awesome little hand launch. If you don’t have one, you need one. They weigh nothing- what I call fly flatulence, as much as they weigh.

[00:31:05] It’s a little two channel, there’s no ailerons, just rudder elevator. But they’re beautiful, beautifully made, beautifully flying, and but I’m terrible at finding thermals with this thing as far as flicking it up in the air. Yeah, and so I said, well, maybe a little cradle. It’s got a little servo in it, held it’s held on my rubber bands. The servo pulls these two pins that pop the rubber bands off and it pops.

[00:31:22] Off the cradle. Okay, I’m gonna interject here, and this is what happens when fits: when, oh, I got a laser cutter. What can I build next? Oh yeah, that’s how it should be. It was great. It’s a great laser cut.

[00:31:31] And I got a cad program that’s rock so. So I’ve used it before on wheels, but I’ve never flown off of floats, and I’ve never flown off of floats with the glider on top. And so lee ray here is saying, well, why don’t we go try to fly it over the pond? No, this is how it happened. Let me help you out.

[00:31:47] Here I’m at his house really late at night. We’re loading the trailer to leave the next morning and he pulls out the float, says, oh, I’m going to put this on the twin timber. And then I’m looking at it because he left the harness. I was like, well, we’re going to fly this off the pond, aren’t we? And he was like I guess so, and so you weren’t bringing, you weren’t planning to bring the glider? I didn’t think so. No, I was not off the phone, out of the floats, okay. But then I, then I then I used to say we need to do this, I hadn’t thought about that. And then his eyes glazed over. I was like we’re on a mission.

[00:32:16] Oops, sorry, you have my interest. It was awesome. So, yeah, so, so we, we did that earlier today. I shoved the transmitter in lee’s hand for the glider and we took off first time off the floats, even though the rudders were like this because they weren’t hooked to the water. It’s got differential thrust within water runners, so- and it took off and it we got it up there, popped the thing and the glider popped off and lee had a couple of good flights. Yeah, the thing was is like so many people.

[00:32:43] Were nervous like how’s he going to land that like I don’t know why people were nervous it’s like I’m.

[00:32:47] Gonna just land right here and yeah you could catch them really slow it’s it’s not that hard.

[00:32:51] And then fitz the son of a gun I took before you get that I’m sorry it’s a minor drama.

[00:32:57] The second launch the second release remember kind of hung up yeah one side hung up so I was sitting.

[00:33:02] There. Oh, just a little bit. Yeah, it didn’t. It wasn’t serious. No, yeah, I wasn’t. It came off. I. I will just tell you of many, many, many years ago I had a friend flying his glider off of a harness like that, and we made a turn and his wing disappeared, oh, and so I came down with his glider straight halfway on my plane, in an angle just draggy as hell, and he found his wing and we- I don’t know if we repaired it or not, but I mean, that’s, that’s something- is trying to land with a glider that’s not quite forward facing, but no, that was, that was a fun flight, but I’m going to give.

[00:33:34] Kudos to fitz because he hadn’t flown the glider yet. So I launched and I’m just going to interject here. I needed so much elevator and fitz did not explain well enough how much elevator I had to give that timber. But we got up there, we flew and that was six minute flight. Yeah, six minute flight. Hey started catching thermals and actually I’m going to point here, but no one in the listening audience is listening. But you see the ambulance there. Yeah, there’s a huge drop down to electric. He was riding the ridge because the wind was coming in that direction, so that’s sort of a gun right there. We’re just sitting there. I’m just sitting there. I’m like: come on, man, what are we going to do?

[00:34:07] Next I think that’s the longest flight I’ve ever had with that elf it was pretty it was pretty and.

[00:34:11] Then you. I mean it was a long, oh my gosh, even better, he was setting up to land. He gets over the people. He gets right over here- sorry, no, it’s okay. He gets right over these people and he starts getting finding more lift, like he’s 30 feet above their heads and the plane’s just floating. It will not come.

[00:34:25] Down he does like what two turns yeah two turns over their heads yeah wow that was a lot of fun yeah.

[00:34:33] Good suggestion, leo. Yeah, that’s cool. And then nobody else there had. Everyone was laughing. They’re like you’ve never seen this at, jonah, I promise you this is something new. Float glider release- yeah.

[00:34:44] You’re gonna see two people doing it next year. Yeah, probably six minutes is actually pretty good. I think the longest flight I have on mine is like 42 seconds, so way to go. Yeah, well, that’s just from.

[00:34:56] The ground. Yeah, you gotta right. Yeah, you can buy plans for a little release mechanism and he’ll sell you. Yeah, yeah, there you go. Any of the cad files you can print your own. I’ve got laser, I think I’ve.

[00:35:04] Gotten up to two minutes from a hand launch with it on a really good day like I said I’m terrible with.

[00:35:10] Yeah, I don’t know enough about it, like I need to spend some time and actually kind of figure out what you’re looking for. What watch the birds? That’s what I hear. That’s true, yeah, watch.

[00:35:19] The birds know really well. Yeah, I have a. I didn’t build it. I mean I built it but it was a pre-sheeted kit, fiberglass dlg- and I was, I was- I mean I think that’s probably how I threw out my shoulder too fits. Oh yeah, I’ve had shoulder surgery, but at best I, I had flown the dlg and if it’s, do you remember when I first built it I didn’t have enough dihedral. No, I don’t remember it, it was just flat, it was like pancaking out, it was like just like. So I had to take it home and work on it, but I did a 10 minute flight out at best, nice. So that’s fine if you guys haven’t done dlg.

[00:35:53] And you’re and you like gliders and stuff like that is fun it’s very simple and as long as.

[00:35:59] You’re decent enough you don’t have to walk very far to pick it up you can catch it and just spin.

[00:36:03] Around and go again or find someone to put a plane harness on top and attack taxi that way yeah who.

[00:36:09] Needs a glider toe. You’re just a glider taxi. Almost. That was not the only weird glider rickshaw. That’s kind of what that is rickshaw, isn’t that with the dude carrying yeah, yeah, that’s, I’m trying glider on top. Oh, okay, I was trying to the context of that. There’s a stretch. Sorry, I was gonna say that’s not the only weird thing on floats that the pond saw this week. I bet no one else. Oh my gosh.

[00:36:33] I got to see I got to see it in the air but I didn’t see it on the water so I’m waiting for this.

[00:36:38] Story the water was pretty hairy so before we came here I crashed a viper and viper 90.

[00:36:46] Yep I think this episode is sponsored by the viper yeah how many of you all have well actually this.

[00:36:52] One. This one is completely my fault, but I kind of was following tommy’s lead, not realizing he had a bigger battery, like I always. Fly like three minutes and land he’s out there. I’m like, oh, I can, I can stay up with him a little bit. And so it gets to like three minutes and 30 seconds. I’m like, all right, I got to come in. Long story short, get like 30 feet off the ground, battery low voltage cutoff just comes and it just stalls and comes down. Turns out he was flying at what? 5800 Or 6800, 6800, and I was flying at 5 000.. So no wonder somehow this always ends up my fault. I know I. I said it wasn’t your.

[00:37:25] Fault, but it was because I was following your lead, okay, but anyway. So that gave me a viper that I had nothing really to do with, fixed it, but it wasn’t pretty, so I bought a new one because I like him to look decent and this one was just something to play around with, so I decided to put floats on it. They said he had floats. We’ve talked about it on the show. I don’t know if these guys know anything about oh, that’s true. So anyway, wait, you’ll have a show. Yeah, no, we just travel around every couple years and set this up for you guys. No, but so long story short, with the floats on it and stuff, and I admit I chickened out. Tommy flew it first time, not successful. I saw that video. It was ugly.

[00:38:03] Second time very successful go ahead and spin your yarn oh yeah so there’s no water rudders.

[00:38:11] The builder did not give me the option of controlling the thing on the water that’s not.

[00:38:16] Okay, so secondary, it does have thrust vectoring for control right. So real quick, can you describe how the float configuration? Is it one big float in the middle, two little hot ones or just two regular? I?

[00:38:29] Don’t know it’s regular floats for I don’t remember what dave said they came super cub was it are they.

[00:38:34] Super cub floats could have been maybe it’s one of their larger cub style yeah so pontoons yeah exactly.

[00:38:39] Exactly. But like, like he said, no water rudder and I didn’t want to go through that hassle so I did the quick thrust, vectoring for steering. So yeah, we Ron, and I talked about it before the first.

[00:38:51] Takeoff. We said, okay, here’s what we’ll do. We’ll turn the thrust vectoring on, get it pointed in the wind, turn the thrust vectoring off and take off. Also had thrust reverse enabled and Ron flies with an ix20 which has like a few more switches than my ix14. So I kind of run down the mental checklist: okay, this switch, does this, this switch to the? Okay, got it. Cool, you ready, Ron, you’re recording. Yeah, I’m recording. Okay, off we go. So thrust vectoring. I get appointed in the wind and I forget to turn the thrust vectoring off. Which what? Thinking back, we should have just turned the elevator thrust.

[00:39:26] Vector portion just off or to zero rate, then we would have just had better anyway, hindsight’s always 20: 20.. So, yeah, we, we do the takeoff rollout. That’s how elon works. Yeah, right, the mistakes and.

[00:39:40] Then he fixes it let’s stronger bolt here right exactly I don’t have his money though so it takes.

[00:39:44] It takes a lot of up elevator to get it to break that, whatever you want to suction off the water. So I’m holding almost full up elevator to get it off the water. And it finally gets off the water. And well, thrust vectoring is still on, so the thing does an immediate 90 degree. Like you see the thrust vector jets do, they point the nose up and that’s what it did, like about eight inches off the water, not gonna lie, that did look pretty cool. So now I’m panicking. Oh darn, that’s not really what was going through my head, but oh darn, I forgot to turn the thrust vector. So then I’m fumbling, trying.

[00:40:17] To find a thrust vectoring switch, meanwhile trying to level the thing off. Well, I get it leveled off. It’s like skims the water. Looking back, lots of mistakes were made. I should have just cut the power, let it settle in, and attempt it again, but I was already at airspeed. I’m like, no, I’m gonna wrestle this thing into the air and it skims the water. I get it leveled off and I’m starting to kind of climb out and in the panic of trying to find the thrust vector switch, I hit- I’m pretty sure I hit- the thrust.

[00:40:49] Reverse switch, lost all my forward momentum and then it’s already at a pretty good rate of speed, kind of dives down, goes nose down and catches the tips of the floats and they explode into well, three large. Yeah, one explode, the other one was perfectly fine, yeah. And then it pulled all four mounts out of the two floats. So that was the first takeoff. I mean I’m gonna call.

[00:41:12] That a takeoff? Because it did take off and it did fly. It covered for a couple seconds. It did a tenth of a second. It looks cool like looking back on it’s a cool crash. Yeah, absolutely no harm, no foul.

[00:41:22] Yeah, so anyway, brought back, repaired it and the this second attempt was successful and actually flies really nice. I mean it’s really not like fast, like I mean you’re pretty quick, they’re flying wide.

[00:41:36] Open almost the whole time. Another fuselage, a lot of drag, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I was at electric flight line and I saw this jet with floats. That’s Tom you were booking. Yeah, it didn’t feel like it’s maybe.

[00:41:48] It’s because it’s a visual thing, but it didn’t feel like I felt like I was. I had to have the throttle peg to maintain and you might have, but you were still faster than any other aircraft. Well, yeah, that was the fastest one on the float line that day, for sure, and the landing was really a non-event. I just set it up in a nice gentle glide and got close to the water and flared and it was like a non-event for the landing. Yeah, but yeah, viper 90 on floats- success. That was crazy guys. RC Plane Lab and rc round table.

[00:42:16] Out there in the float pond, right god, someone’s gonna kick them out. That’s the point of this, though, isn’t it? Oh, absolutely just to have fun and enjoy a week of nothing, but for sure. So yeah, Ron’s gonna post.

[00:42:27] The video of that hopefully on our facebook page right yes send me a reminder or a youtube our youtube.

[00:42:32] Channel I don’t know somewhere yeah I’ll have to do that it’ll be fun to watch good I was surprised.

[00:42:37] That it worked honestly I wasn’t surprised that it worked I was surprised that it worked with.

[00:42:42] The thrust vectoring. I was more concerned about power to get off the ground, off the water, but it worked out okay. Or just how long you’d be on step, yeah, yeah, like, just not exactly sure because I mean it wasn’t even one where I really had a lot of adjustability on where I put it. To make it. I was gonna say

[00:43:01] Did you do any calculations or measurements for the absolutely not no I can’t get a.

[00:43:06] Critical series not here like checking the balance and everything the step is almost right where the.

[00:43:11] CG is right which is I figured that was pretty I think that’s right though it’s supposed to be.

[00:43:15] Offset from the CG yeah I think it’s supposed to be forward I think I’m trying to remember well.

[00:43:20] That would have something to do with it then yeah it’s not supposed to be on the CG but it’s.

[00:43:23] Close to it but not it’s really close but either way it was it was it worked okay it was a success.

[00:43:29] And Ron did not fly it. No, I didn’t. I’m gonna admit I did kind of wimp out on that once it got windy and that probably would have helped, though honestly that probably would have actually- and.

[00:43:41] The chop would help it break the surface tension or surface whatever suction whatever that is oh.

[00:43:46] Well, that ship has sailed. Yeah, surface tension: no biggie, it worked, it’s all it did. Yeah, good times to joan. All speaking of good times, the other thing that happened I got to feel what it’s like to be lee. I’m sorry. No, so you tell. So I’m standing there talking to fitz. Oh, I know where this is going.

[00:44:09] And all of a sudden I get pulled into this. Well, all of a sudden- and this does happen to us too from time to time- people know you, people come up and say hi and stuff, and this guy comes up and just kind of butts right in and he’s like I know you, but you don’t know me. And so I’m kind of looking at him and I’m like okay, where are we going? I’m not sure what one this is going to be. And then he said I watch you guys all the time. So I was like all right, I’m going to go ahead and take a step back. So I was like homer simpson going into the hedges, like just slowly. That’s exactly how I feel, Ron.

[00:44:43] You do know. And fish just took off and I mean, I think the guy might have given him a kiss or a hug or something like that, I don’t know, kissed his ring, something like that, yeah. And as soon as that happened I was like: oh, I just got lead. Yeah, what do we say? Over 50 so far? I’ve lost count. I have no.

[00:45:05] Idea well that happens a lot a lot well this is sorry this time has happened the most normally I can.

[00:45:10] Have a rough idea. This, I’ve lost count. We were. We were at a cracker barrel before parry. We haven’t gotten to parry yet, and some people from california recognized you. Oh yeah, that was like last time, wasn’t it when we went to parry this year? Yeah, yeah, but it’s just great. We’re just sitting in line. We’re about. I think we’re waiting to get seated and some guys are turning: hey, you’re the youtube guy. Yeah, I started laughing so hard. That’s funny. But yeah, he’s been with you. Yeah, no, they never ask about me. But the funniest thing happened before we went to float. Fitz was there. We were in the golf.

[00:45:42] Cart, one of the employees who’s working on the water tank by the float pond. He goes, hey, and we stop and he goes. I mean lee, not the other guy. Yes, so I’ve been lead too. So nice, that’s awesome. Would that be fitz, then? That’s awesome. No, I’m happy for fitz. He does good work and- and speaking of being recognized- and I just I’m throwing the name out here- pat hartness, who helped create this wonderful place- he came down and sat with us for dinner last night. Oh, that’s awesome. Lunch, lunch, lunch excuse.

[00:46:16] Me and I’m what 20, 30 minutes. Yeah, he was really nice. He’s a good dude, what a great. I mean he just saw us talking and he’s like these look like fun chaps and chaps and he sat down with us and we had just a great conversation. So that’s. That’s like what fitz does. He just brings people want to talk to him and that’s neat. But pat got to talk to you and talked about his plans here and at this. I don’t know if you guys were privy to one of our meetings or if y’all were at the meeting last night. No, I missed that. I completely forgot. So interjection here: amy’s here and so.

[00:46:48] Tyler dobbs is our new chief executive director and he’s here and he was meeting people and we had a meeting up by the hangar and they first were introducing some people from triple tree. But pat hartness had this declaration that this land was never going to be built on, it was never going to be retail stuff like that, and that’s great. He’s like it’s always going to be a flying facility for thousands of years hopefully. So that’s a year 35, 35, there’s still be fine.

[00:47:15] Yeah I hope so just robots will be flying them behind control by my control with somebody in.

[00:47:21] Another state or another planet and the runway will still be there. But, yeah, we had a good time and it’s hope- those of you who are listening who are here or have or were here whenever you’re listening- that you also had a great time and you got to see the ama booth at the main flight line and some of the cool planes, and maybe you even saw the b24 that mike had and maybe you even saw

[00:47:43] Fitz walker amongst us yeah he walkers amongst us nice no that was good though it was a it was a good.

[00:47:55] Week I’m happy we got to make it me too so have you been spending any money no really none no yes.

[00:48:05] I have. Oh okay, we did you liar? Yeah, no, actually it was kind of nice. This year. Our buddy from toledo rc swap meet was here. Hank, you had a bunch of neat stuff for sale. That’s not early in the week, yeah, so I sold three planes here and went home with three new planes. That’s how it’s supposed to work, so it’s.

[00:48:24] An exchange zero, right, yeah, exactly. Yeah, it’s kind of interesting. B29 earlier in the week over there that actually went. I think was that wednesday when he sold that one. I think it doesn’t matter but yeah, yeah, he sold it. Just a neat project. It needed some work, but it was still neat to see one there.

[00:48:39] Yeah I don’t remember that one was that what it do you remember saying that at toledo or not.

[00:48:44] Yeah, it was the guy right across the street. Oh, that’s right. Yeah, I saw him here too. I’ve got all about that. Yep, it’s been a long week, so you were you’re net zero. Yeah, for the nice how.

[00:48:56] About you guys I think it’s unfortunately spent more on food than aircraft I don’t know if that.

[00:49:01] Means you ate too much or bought too many or too few planes some stuff is expensive yeah I mean some of.

[00:49:08] The drinks and foods are expensive here, but the good news, I mean I’m not spending a lot. I’m just saying most of my money is going towards that, versus any aircraft. I’ve bought a few connectors and stuff down on vendor row, but sorry, I was leaning back. Ron was giving me an evil eye. Yeah, I know, I told you.

[00:49:23] He would yell I’m sitting there thinking how’s this going to turn out I have disappointed him.

[00:49:27] But I do. I have a, I have a loud voice. People are not complaining about how close I’m in, like just you. Oh, this is a different setup. No, it’s not, it’s fine, it’s fine. No, just you mean, there’s great stuff at vendor row, but I didn’t bring the 950 this guy wants for a b25 down there. You should have. No, no, I’m not. Oh, is that the hangar 9 one down there? Yeah, yeah, never flown. But I was like god, I’m looking in the 400 range if I’m gonna spend cash in my wallet. Right, yeah, it’ll be four or five hundred dollar range if I. You’re like, I really want it, but I didn’t come to jonell.

[00:49:59] To buy 950 small. Well, it’s interesting you say that because earlier in the in the recording here, fitz said something about he doesn’t necessarily come here to fly, so much as just like the whole experience, enjoy it. Yeah, yeah, I think everybody’s expectation of, of when they come here is different. Right, like I know Ron and I’s our expectations and desires, wishes, whatever things that makes us feel complete. Yeah, like I, I want to do more flying, I think, than Ron does, and Ron wants to do more like exploring and watching and just kind of taking it all in. So, all right, Ron.

[00:50:33] You’re with me. Yeah, it’s interesting like I. Yeah, I mean I, I enjoy the flying aspect of it because I mean, like I don’t get a lot of time at home to fly as much as I want to like, even though I don’t have stuff lined up to do this summer, stuff has a habit of popping in work trips or whatever, so I don’t get the opportunity to fly as much as I have for a week at jonell right. So- and I’m the

[00:51:00] Opposite, because I can go fly whenever. Granted, it doesn’t happen as often as I want, but there I mean there’s days I’ll go over the field and get 30 flights in, and it’s just back to back to back to.

[00:51:10] Back yeah right outside your back door no the field well I mean but you can fly right there yes I can.

[00:51:18] You say homestead? Yeah, wow, anyway. So like getting flights and stuff here is not all that important to me, because there is so much else to see that you don’t see at home that you don’t get to explore the setups, the planes that are here. Yeah, that was I’m gonna go walk in this stuff, I think the first four days, five days, whatever. It was boots, which I’m glad I bought or brought those this year because that made a huge difference, yeah, so, yeah, I mean flying all day doesn’t really?

[00:51:50] Do much for me here I’m team Tom I want to fly yeah we still haven’t flown control line fits.

[00:51:56] No I was just thinking that we haven’t been over there at all speaking of controlling.

[00:52:01] Combat. Those guys are maniacs. That’s wild, isn’t it? They’re nuts. These guys are insane. It’s like watching two flies fight. Yeah, it sounds like it was very entertaining to watch. So let me ask you guys, you probably know how this works. So, control line combat, how? How does the scoring work? Like they carry streamers, you get a streamer cut. I’m assuming that you get scored. I don’t know any more than that. I think a cut is the score. What about a direct hit, like when the airplanes actually hit and continue? I don’t know. That’s a good question. I have no idea, because that happens a lot. Yeah, yeah, but if you go,

[00:52:32] Down there you’ll see in their little cases they have 20 or 30 these planes ready to go and if there’s.

[00:52:37] Still time on the clock at four minute heats it looks like you get. They start the clock at 4: 30, you fire them up and then when it counts down to four minutes, they launch. Yeah, and if there’s still time on the clock when your airplane goes down, if your pit guy is handy and fast and can get another one running and going on your line, you can keep going. Yeah, I saw them do that and I was like yeah.

[00:52:57] That’s awesome. I mean, yeah, and you call them planes. They’re not really planes. They’re like, I mean they’re wings, a wing with a motor and then an elevator and a lot of right rudders or an engine offset or something. Yeah, I mean, I don’t know, it’s a weird looking, but if you like anybody who might be,

[00:53:17] Listening all four of our listeners and 8 000, however many, you guys have. A bunch, god. If you ever get a chance to watch control line combat, do it. It’s really entertaining. Yeah, I don’t know how they.

[00:53:29] Don’t get tangled or if they don’t get tangled there’s a thing called youtube you can go look.

[00:53:34] Up and see some radios it’s not the same I mean it’s just being there it’s like the sound and then.

[00:53:39] Like when they make contact with it. I think he means for the how it works. All right for us, yeah, if no one knows what it is, gotcha. But yes, being in there in person, yeah, sweet, but anyway, go watch it’s.

[00:53:51] It’s really entertaining. Also. One last thing is neat is a lot of them, I think, maybe required to have a centrifugal fuel cutoff system. So if you’re in combat you, you cut the wires and it goes flying off. It’ll shut off the engine so it doesn’t go flying off. Oh, that’s a great idea. Yeah, it’s this.

[00:54:11] Mechanical system, yeah, the more. Yeah, see, I did not, I didn’t even think of that, I mean, because I figured the lines are pretty high tensile strength, tough, but yeah, I mean I suppose, yeah, if

[00:54:21] You’re doing combat there’s a good chance you’re gonna cut somebody’s lines yeah how do they keep my.

[00:54:26] Anyway yeah youtube exactly anything else guys are we good are we done I don’t know check your.

[00:54:34] List. I mean, yeah, I have, I do have a list. I mean, we could go on forever, we can. Are we cutting it short? No, keep talking. We talked, we’re gonna talk about food. Just a shout out to my buddy, phil tallman, who, who didn’t bring anything to fly because he just flew from washington, big deal, yeah, right, but I let him fly my twin otter and then he just gave me grief the entire time. Really, he just wait a minute. You let him fly your airplane and he gave you grief, yeah, and then he complained about my, my rates, my expo settings and I was like the plane flew pretty well for me, too low too.

[00:55:05] Mushy. What’s the oh I, I’m an anti, I’m an opposite expo setting guy. You didn’t listen to the episode where people harass me, but yeah, both terry and fitz are. When I explained to them how I set my rates they were like that’s completely wrong, it’s like opposite. But I explained to them that I like my settings very, very soft on, mainly because of gliders. So when I’m flying his glider I didn’t have any hesitation of playing it. But I like when I got my very, very low rates on, I mean very little movement, very anyway, whatever I set to, they don’t like phil. Remember the episode? He

[00:55:40] Makes fun of me. So thank you, phil, this is for you, because I know you’re gonna be listening to this either on your flight home or your drive home. And yeah, I’m sorry about your problems getting here, because I’m going to egg him on that, because he was like sleeping in his car because, yeah, I heard about that. Oh dear anyway, but I do love phil. He’s a great guy. Thank you, phil, for all that you do for ama and the hobby. You’re a fun guy. He was on our podcasts several episodes ago, yeah, talking about

[00:56:06] His p-47. But yeah, so we’ve talked about food. I did want to ask you something too, so last time you guys were here, you camped. This time you guys chickened out and got a hotel, okay, so now you’re making fun of my list. What do you think? What do you think of the differences? What do you prefer?

[00:56:28] Boy, I loved going back to the hotel and taking a shower and having lots of pillows around me and having a bathroom all to myself there. I said it. I can understand that there we go, but you mentioned in the beginning of the show that you, you’re here, you’re staying here, you’re comfortable here. That’s fine when you camp here. That’s part of your life. But we got to enjoy a great dinner last night in the town of woodruff, so we got to do that. I have friends who live in spartanburg so they came to see me, so that was another. I didn’t really it’s not part of the whole.

[00:57:02] Joe and all but the dear friends of mine and, and we used to work together, so they live in spartanburg so we went to dinner, so I had that opportunity to go out there. So there are reasons our options out there, yeah, but camping is fun. I’ve completely. I will say this: when we recorded we didn’t do any night. I haven’t seen any night flying. Yeah, we’ve left right before it got dark. So have you guys enjoyed any of the night shows? Did you go to 3d? Yeah, oh yeah, we’ve been.

[00:57:28] 3D a couple times because we didn’t. Yeah, I heard a 3d night show was really nice, it was pretty cool. And what sucks- I shouldn’t say sucks- what makes me feel even worse as a pilot is the- the main people you’re watching down there flying these night demonstrations. Three of them were like 11..

[00:57:46] We hate them. I know, right, that is just so unfair. But it’s very impressive. Like I don’t know how they do it, yeah, I can’t talent. Yeah, supernatural, almost. Yeah, it’s a young kid at the main line for demo did.

[00:57:59] You see him playing no we didn’t catch any of the new demos it might have been the same kid.

[00:58:04] Because there’s, there’s a few of them here, but the one that was, I say 11, but I think he might have even been younger than that. One of them was just stop. But yeah, I mean, they’re out there next to these 120 cc planes and they’re barely taller than the rudder. Yeah, I mean, it’s like, are you kidding me and you’re gonna fly this more power? No, no, we weren’t.

[00:58:24] More used in the hobby, right? No, that’s right that makes me feel bad because I can’t do that, right. We need more parent. Rich parents, yeah, to buy the planes that these kids are for daddy were, because my dad never would have bought me that plane. Oh yeah, here’s some. Here’s some wood and glue go. When I was a

[00:58:42] Kid, I did have one of the, the control line cocks whatever, yeah. But so my dad, he bought it for me but he knew nothing about it. I knew nothing about it. I didn’t know you had to have anything to start it other than just fill it with gas and turn it. We never had glow plug igniters or anything like that, so never got it to run and I still have no idea where that went. But I had the.

[00:59:06] Option. I just didn’t have the knowledge at that point, which sucks, but that’s okay. Well, there’s a big difference between a cox powered control line thing and these airplanes that these.

[00:59:18] Kids are flying yeah but back then these airplanes didn’t even exist but still these.

[00:59:22] These young ones. They’re not starting with these airplanes. Hopefully they probably started with an apprentice or, oh yeah, aeroscout or whatever and took to it very yeah. Well, yeah, it’s, yeah, there’s there. There’s some natural talent. Yeah, that they cultivate, but we did.

[00:59:39] Some night flying too. I don’t know if you guys had seen I put lights on my slow ultra stick and that is very nice, beautiful, yeah that. I like that so much that one of the planes I brought to fly that I ended up selling was the night radian. Like I just have no interest in flying that one now after the slow ultra stick. It flies so good. I love that plane. I’m never going to sell our night radian.

[01:00:01] See I’ve got one and I don’t like it I’ll take it I think there’s something right here is it here.

[01:00:05] No, it’s not left at home. The only complaints I really heard about the night range is because of the lights are a little bit heavier. It is not great for thermaling, but if you just want to sort of a glider to put around in and right at night and stuff, I think it’s my specific night.

[01:00:17] Because I’ve flown yours and yet yours flies great. I think there’s something wrong with mine. Is it in good shape? Well, I got it used, so I mean: so, no it’s in. No, it’s in. Okay, make sure the wings are glued in.

[01:00:28] Those don’t do it. I got you. No, I got it. There’s a callback. I didn’t quite catch it. Yeah, got it, abu. Ah, there you go. Now you think about selling it. Put my name on a list. Okay, I wish I had known that. I was just giving you mine now. I’ve told you getting p38s. No, I did see one, by the way, not yours here. You didn’t see one other than yours. Yes, I saw his as I was coming back. Well, tommy was crashing.

[01:00:59] This morning, when I was coming back from saying goodbye to the rhode island guys, there was. There was one sans wings but like a pretty good size one sitting outside one of the campers down at the

[01:01:10] 3D line oh no I’m getting yelled at sorry but yeah that’s good to hear because I was really kind of.

[01:01:17] Sad. I mean that’s the only other one I’ve heard. I don’t know sizing, I don’t know manufacturers or anything like that, but it looked like the minus the wing, so just the base part. It was probably three feet wide. Maybe I think it was a good size. Well, that least was the only one I saw.

[01:01:34] All week. Yeah, my goal is the next time I come to juvenile is to have my 90 inch, my vq slash nexus one flying- so cool- and go to the main line. It’s the thing. It’s not a big deal, but I’d like to bring that bucket list and then someday when I’m, when I have the time and fitz harasses me enough and I get on it, finish my yellow aircraft p38 and then do it and then tell fitz, you have to bring your own trailer because I’m. My trailer is just for my p38. Can we have a trailer pulling a trailer? Yeah, we’ll just put no convoy there. You go, you’ve got a trailer, I do. Yeah, the yellow, that’s a big one, it is, it’s.

[01:02:11] Currently in my son’s room. He’s back from college. It’s sitting up against the wall. Can you do you mind if I leave it there, son? He’s like it doesn’t bother me, like all right, that’s cool. Any top airplanes you’ve seen that you’ve liked. Well, I, I did like the connie and it was nice to see at the electric flatline. So something different. And that’s going home and that’s going home with us and I get to admire it and hopefully, if fits will, let me fly it when he puts it back together. So that’s been nice. There’s five riley’s flying. Yeah, those are awesome. Those are beautiful. Beautiful planes go.

[01:02:43] Look them up, guys. You can find them on youtube again. Yeah, right, yeah, beautiful aircraft. I like mike’s b24. Of course, the guys from car for here. They’ve got their incredible planes. The f4 fandom is just gorgeous. Oh yeah, and then I don’t know chris’s last name, but he flew the.

[01:03:01] Y12 oh yeah the sr71 because I was being harassed by philton yes again or andy.

[01:03:09] Griffin was also a12. A12, see, I knew I was gonna get it wrong, as I’m still gonna call it sr71. We what I’m talking about. I knew what you meant. The seat, sr71. Holy smoke, that was awesome yesterday.

[01:03:19] Yeah that he was low hey that was low 120 turbines I asked him what was in it what about.

[01:03:28] The b2 that was up there did you what did that fly yeah I saw it I saw it I saw it from the e-line.

[01:03:34] Oh it was fly it did fly yeah it was last night I think it was yeah also the one I missed I.

[01:03:39] Like was the I think it’s half scale bd5 that some guy has yeah that was pretty cool I just missed it.

[01:03:45] Flying yeah I didn’t see a fly but I saw it sitting on the ground that’s a neat looking one.

[01:03:50] Okay, it just. This crossed my mind because I wanted to tell fitz earlier about the bd5. There’s a guy here who’s taking videos and photos of the flights where I’m going with it. Oh yeah, so I may not have been recognized as myself, but twice I was recognized as this gentleman who is short glasses- kind of poorly. Thank you, Ron. His name is saul. Yep, and he, this guy, came up to me- and I don’t think you’re with me, fits, but this guy came up to me at the vendor roads and hey, so how?

[01:04:22] You doing? I’m like hi, it’s like he was like give me the stare, are you? He goes: you’re not saul, are you? He’s like I don’t know who you’re talking about. And then I got recognized further down and then I ran into the guy at the restaurant and he’s a very happy uppity guy. More power to him. He’s very excited about aviation and he’s documenting everything, but he’s just, he’s got caffeine flowing in his veins. So you ever think I’m hyper folks? There’s lee to the power of 10 out there. His thing is he brings a ladder with him because he likes to get these higher angles, yeah, and as he.

[01:04:54] Says- because again, he’s like me, he’s short, he goes. I don’t want to be behind people, I want to be on top, and after some of the flights of demos he was very good about like he’s almost like a wedding photographer, I mean. The funny thing is he is me and it’s like that’s what I would do at a wedding. I’d bring a ladder, I’d have my camera, I’d talk to people, get them together. Hey, I’m going to get you a photo and he would do that. You can find him on youtube and I don’t have his card on me, so I will probably just put it in our description. On our thing, but he videotaped one of my planes, my dragonfly, and so I’m in there, I’m up there and I was at the flight line by myself- the electric flight.

[01:05:26] Line. That’s such a great plane, by the way, the little delta, and but that’s the orange one, right? Yeah, it’s the orange one. It’s like one of the first versions and anyway. So I got recognized as somebody else. But do look at his videos, because now that we’ve gone through this, he’s got a one of the bd5. He got a lot of the flight line yesterday. So, guys, if you want to see more of this content, I mean, they’re not bad. Have bad videos. So, yeah, it’s just plain fun, right, is that? Oh, is that?

[01:05:51] Playing crazy just playing crazy okay thank you I think so just play fun or just playing crazy one of.

[01:05:56] It too, yeah, and enjoy it. He. He does a voiceover too. Yeah, and what was he? What do you call my amphibious butter? Because I landed it like he does this kind of stuff. He’s like a dj, really, if you think about it. Yeah, so anyway, I was gonna, yeah, pass that on. You guys go watch his videos and subscribe to check that out. Yeah, he’s got a lot of stuff from the. I mean, he was busy, yeah, busy, busy, yeah, all day, that’s what he does. So, and everywhere. I mean, just look for the guy in the ladder.

[01:06:24] It’s not lee. Yeah, no, I haven’t made much effort to stay at the main line this year too often I think we went and saw the demos, part of them on wednesday, or no. I did, you didn’t. Yeah, you were volunteering. So I stopped there, watched a few of the demos and stuff, but other than that, I’ve really not been up there too often. There’s too much else going on. There is I’m going to mention my rage.

[01:06:47] The lee rage. I videotaped and took lots of pictures in the main line, but I have no internet at the hotel. It is awful- and my laptop kept locking up when I was trying to render videos, to the point where I was enraged and so I just couldn’t do it. So I don’t have anything ready right now, and it makes me sad, because I really wanted to put up this huge collection of reels that I made from the main flight line yesterday- some great stuff. Yeah, it’d be excellent to view and I’m gonna wait till I get home. So I’m sad, but hopefully, guys, by the time this audio comes out, you guys can be.

[01:07:18] Looking at some of that contact. Look on ama’s facebook page and instagram and I’ll put some of my stuff on radiation because I have a facebook page there and then we posted some photos on.

[01:07:28] Facebook for rc roundtable. Have you all been posting on? I am so bad, it’s not even funny- like I have just been enjoying it and taking time in, as you should, and this is my vacation. This is not my work trip where I’m trying to take pictures and post- I know I should and I probably will when I get home some of the ones I took, but it’s nothing. There’s. There’s so many other people here posting pictures and all that stuff that you can see. I, I would rather just enjoy it.

[01:07:52] Duplication of effort. Yep, yeah, if you’re listening here and you’re on facebook, there’s a joe noll facebook group. Yeah, so, and I encourage you to go. Lots of pictures. Yeah, they’re doing a really good.

[01:08:02] Job. I shared a whole bunch from the lake. That’s really. Yeah, I saw that. That was pretty cool. Deal very good. And there’s a sailboat out there now. Well, I mean, it is kind of windy. Yeah, I saw somebody.

[01:08:12] The other day a guy had a couple of really nice sailboats on the line, some really big stuff. I saw one on the water the other day was I’ve driven by. It’s like wow, that’s a snazzy sailboats.

[01:08:22] Yeah I have my first sailboat but I haven’t finished putting it together yet oh they’re neat.

[01:08:26] They’re a lot of fun. They’re kind of one of the things that’s easy to do but hard to master, kind of, yeah, a lot of fun. They’re more fun than I ever thought they would be. Yeah, yeah, first time I did it.

[01:08:37] Was up at terry’s house and it was I sunk it almost oh but it’s not good it’s okay so we’ll see how it.

[01:08:44] Goes with my own. I almost brought one, but I decided to. But you brought a speedboat, I brought a speedboat, so I’ve running. I was running that around earlier today. That reminds me last night.

[01:08:53] I was we I don’t remember what time it was but they were running had to have been a nitro speedboat.

[01:08:59] Or something oh yeah I saw that yeah big gas the fuel the noise converter no not the one over.

[01:09:06] Here. I know which one you’re talking about. There was one that actually seemed like it was tuned well, was really fast. Oh okay, yeah, definitely I didn’t see. Yeah, so the one the guy had over here they were having issues with, but anyway. So he was all the way down there on that berm and so I was watching it. I mean it was going pretty quick, throwing up the big rooster tails and stuff, and turned around and started to walk into the camper and as soon as I did that, I heard bam and then the, the motor, just like.

[01:09:30] How’d that go? I’m not doing that again. You can rewind if you want, but anyway, they ran into whatever. This thing is out here in the water, that big squared thing over there. Do you see it all the way across? That’s on the side, though, isn’t it? Yeah, oh good. So they text, yeah, they hit that somehow, did whatever, and I mean that boat was just like stuck right there, it wasn’t moving, wasn’t doing anything.

[01:09:54] I saw the guy walking over to it’s like oh my god that had to hurt a tunnel vision but like it.

[01:10:00] Sounded like a. Obviously like when a plane hits the ground or something, it always you hear that noise. You can turn really quick see what it was and yeah, sure enough, he ran right into them. I mean how?

[01:10:10] Yeah how do you like that I don’t know that’s a large object in the middle of the water yeah how do.

[01:10:15] You not even in the middle. Right, it’s on the side. Yeah, I mean it jets out a little bit, but not a ton. Yeah, okay, better him than me, yeah, yeah.

[01:10:30] Okay that’s the next time we’re bringing a submarine maybe you could go down and search for.

[01:10:36] All the batteries and all the airplanes sunk in there yeah can you imagine yeah motors batteries yeah.

[01:10:43] But there’s all kinds of stuff at the bottom of this lake right over in that area. Yeah, kind of over there. Anything else, nope, I guess that’s all I got. Fits, fits. You got anything? No, I guess that’s it.

[01:10:54] This is a great event. Despite the rain, I had a great time. No regrets. Same wonderful stuff to see, talk to people, do things. A little bit of buying selling. Yeah, got some goodies you mentioned. I think lee mentioned he had a friend. I also have a friend that lives in the state. I was able to see him- really good friend, so I got a chance. He came out here. Can’t spend a day with him- cool as well. So great to see you guys too as well. Yeah, do another. The collaborative podcast. That’s great.

[01:11:27] It’s fun, it’s great. Yeah, this is a great. If you’ve never been to joe now, you should put it on your bucket list at least once. It’s a great place, no matter what you want. If you want to fly a lot, if you want to look a lot, talk a lot- yeah, you eat a lot. Whatever camp a lot, there’s a great camping.

[01:11:40] Grounds as well. So if you’re into rc airplanes, there’s something here for everybody. Yes, absolutely. We call this the- I mean the adventure of model airplanes, oshkosh, yeah, that’s a really good.

[01:11:49] Analogy- my other psa- is when you cook a steak dinner next to your rv, make sure you monitor it. You don’t leave it standing and it catches fire. And then your friend lee ray goes wrapping on your rv telling you your grill’s on fire. Yeah, yesterday, oh no, missed that one. Flames just coming out the sky. Yeah, well, we didn’t catch the rv on fire, but we just. Thank goodness, he’s gonna need a new grill. He’s gonna need a new grill. Ow, I mean, but did they save the steaks? No,

[01:12:22] Just keep monitoring your food, folks. Just if you come out here to camp, please do lots of psa’s in this, this episode. Yes, oh, and I’m looking at one right now, fitz, and I will tell you because that thing right there has saved our butt. No, the golf cart, bring a golf cart. Yes, or some more transportation golf cart. It is worth every penny, I promise you. If you’re coming to joan off for the first time, check in early register, excuse me, reserve one. You will need it and it has saved our butt all day today. We brought equipment over here for you, yeah, because ours is.

[01:12:55] Packed up already we are actually after this we’re putting stuff in the case and heading out.

[01:13:00] Blowing his tacos down I’m sure I said that in the last podcast the one before that but yes.

[01:13:03] Golf carts are awesome. Yeah, golf cart, you have to have something, because driving a car up and down not fine, there’s no room for cars. I mean, if you have a golf cart, you can park wherever you want.

[01:13:15] And people do, or four-wheeler, or four-wheeler and two-wheeler. When we went to the 3d line, I guess tuesday, after the heavy rains, we actually got through that water with that golf cart. Yeah, and a lot of people probably couldn’t, yeah, but we did so anyway. A little hairy, but just trying to help out those of you who are listening, it is definitely worth it. It is an absolute bucket list item. So please, please, come out here, recognize me and Ron first. Please do before Tom, and yeah, one last thing I have to make.

[01:13:46] A tradition I’ve got to press the button oh you pick one which one can I press it’s time for rc plane.

[01:13:54] Labs tool of the week so that’s what that button does oh that’s a long one I didn’t realize that was a.

[01:14:16] Video that I turned that down. Sorry, they got a control panel here with all these juicy buttons. I gotta press the button. We have to wait now for that part to be over before we can do the outro. Okay, so it doesn’t. And that was. I think that was just. Which one was that? Which one did he press? Lori three? Oh, still going. That was so when we did our end of the year wrap-up. That was the button for.

[01:14:40] Our goals for this year for you should just take that off of there so you don’t I haven’t hit it.

[01:14:44] Again I don’t act I didn’t accidentally oh well that’s true he’s been too busy not flying.

[01:14:52] Tom, you’re, you and I are going to go fly after this. Right, all my stuff’s packed away. Oh okay, you can fly some of my stuff. I’ll just pretend one up. Yeah, I’m gonna do four.

[01:15:02] So how y’all doing now you can’t stop it no that’s what I said I can’t stop it I love this live.

[01:15:09] Stuff for us oh it’s over oh it’s done cool okay all right okay well now we can say goodbye to.

[01:15:14] Everybody. Goodbye everybody. Goodbye everybody. Goodbye everybody. Thanks for listening, until next time. I’m Ron, I’m Tom, I’m leo fits. Let’s sleep, goodbye. Hope you enjoyed this episode of the rc.

[01:15:27] Plane lab podcast for topic suggestions, to ask questions or to give anything back, 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.