The Contagious R/C and Pattern Bug???

[Keith Black]

Better watch out, you may have another Shirley Muldowney on your hands (winner of three NHRA Winston Top Fuel championships and 18 NHRA national events). After he husband Jack let her behind the wheel he was kicked out of the driver's seat and became her full-time mechanic. 

And with six kids flying too, you may be spending a lot of time in the pits with tools in your hand :-)

Just kidding of course, hopefully it'll be something that all of you can enjoy together for a long time to come.

Keith


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Larry Diamond 
  To: NSRCA 
  Sent: Monday, October 13, 2003 12:12 AM
  Subject: The Contagious R/C and Pattern Bug???


  For some in D4 this will be an update...<vbg>

  I finally made it out to the flying field today, not having flown since the D4 Championship.

  Got one flight in on the Focus and trying some of the Intermediate stuff out for next year. This trip to the field was for the girl-friend and kids. We have six between us and have moved to the serious dating stage...lol.

  Aside from the kids flying, I've been a bit on the skeptical side of Lisa's desire to fly R/C Planes. She has stated that her goal is to progress to the same class as me, then out fly me in every contest...

  I've been looking for subtle signs of the R/C & Pattern Bug...Lisa was very supportive with me going to contest and went with me for the last two. She was willing to learn and help where she could. Today, we tried to manage stick time for the kids and stick time for Lisa. The last flight of the day she was really focused and started to see some of the things clicking in her mind about how to control the plane. During the last flight she wanted to fly a bit longer when I mentioned something about landing. So, what the heck. We are at good altitude, weather is great...Dead-stick from anywhere would be fine. Sure enough the plane stopped making nose on the downwind side of the runway. She asked, "what happened?"...I calmly replied, "It's out of fuel now, so we have to land". With an uneventful landing, her mind was put at ease from the guilt of running the plan out of gas...Hmmm...good sign.

  Once we got home and dinner out of the way. Lisa wanted to test out the GP-G2 Flight Simulator. This is where things really started to click and she was soon taking off with out too much difficulty. About this time the kids wanted to try. Lisa said, "No...Mom's Flyin'...Need to wait till I'm done!!!"...Ha...She appears to be hooked. After learning to control the aircraft a bit better, she wanted to try and land. So with objects off at the full scale airport we started the landing practice. Lisa was determined to get this down. We set the field up so she could land in any direction, just focused on wings level and the pitch attitude. After a few attempts she finally got it...I made it a bit more challenging from the start by simulating dead-stick on every landing attempt. During this time, she would not let the kids fly until she got 5 landings down. 

  With all that said, she even likes helping me build plane.

  Larry
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