Potstickers and pilot lessons
An interesting day! It started out with a wedding party for friends of ours who tied the knot in a civil ceremony a couple of weeks ago. (There will be not one, but two, massive wedding ceremonies in China in a couple of months.) Today they invited some friends to their home to celebrate, and brought in two Chinese chefs to prepare an incredible spread for us. It was a really fun time and we got to try some new foods ("prawns on a snowy mountain" was very impressive).
It was all the nicer because the happy couple are just the sweetest, nicest people you'd ever want to meet. They're perfectly matched temperamentally - both sunny kids who are just genuinely happy to be experiencing life. It was exactly what a wedding party should be - a joyful celebration of two good people starting off on what gives every indication of being a wonderful life together.
That wrapped up late afternoon, and it was such a beautiful day that Husband decided he wanted to try out an RC plane he bought a while back.This is the Sky Fly, and consistent with my knowledge of RC aircraft, that's all I'm going to say about that.
Husband has never done this before. He was fully prepared for the thing not to fly at all, and completely prepared to crash the thing dramatically if it did.
He hand-launched it, and...
...it flew! Oh boy, did it flew!
Husband was astonished as he really didn't think the thing would fly at all the first time he tried it.
Here's another launch (the landings were... um... sudden and occasionally unanticipated, but the plane was always game for another go).
Except after several flights it started to respond wonkily...
...leading to the final landing, which wasn't so much a "landing" as an uncontrolled, spectacular, cartwheeling crash across the grass.
The crash didn't bother Husband in the slightest. The wings and tails on these things are meant to be replaceable to the point of being disposible. He was just thrilled that the thing flew at all.
It's a lot more fun than you'd think, actually!
Replacement parts on order, Captain.
ronnie
posted by ronnie at
9:05 p.m.
5 Comments:
What fun! I like the "play with it til it breaks" attitude. Looks like a great locale, too.
I have a friend who flies radio control models of a more substantial nature, made of wood and designed to land without breaking. In fact he was (and is) so in to this hobby that he made it his business. He has a store selling hobby supplies including plastic model kits, radio control cars and airplanes, and model railroad equipment. His biggest model (in many ways) is a remote controlled blimp that he used to fly - and indeed may still fly - at various indoor sporting events. At one where I was volunteering as an usher, he used the blimp to drop ping pong balls on the crowd for use in a draw. I think he had more fun flying his blimp than the fans of the team had watching the game.
re Brent McKee's friend with the blimp: what a FINE idea, dropping ping pong balls on the crowd. that must have been great fun for all concerned.
where did you find such a groovy field to fly your plane? i thought newfoundland was mostly rocks and quaint hamlets.
oh, no...you live in new brunswick. i knew that. hmph.
Tks for the comments, everyone. Brent, I love the ping-pong ball idea. When we had the Habs' NHL farm team in Fredericton, they had a blimp in Hab colours that used to come out and fly around the arena. No ping-pong balls though.
Brian and M.E., we were flying at the provincial Experimental Farm, just outside Fredericton. It's a combination of working science centre and public facility. Just chock-full of wide-open fields, only a fraction of which are cultivated with anything experimental at any given time. It's very popular with rc flyers and model rocketeers (we've launched model rockets there, too, in years past).
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