This years picnic was held on Sunday, September 12th, 2004 under blue skies and gentle breezes. As most readers are aware it takes a lot of effort to put together an event such as this. Special thanks to John Kukon and John Gallagher for their efforts. John Gallagher procured the food, assisted in setup and during the picnic. John Kukon orchestrated most of the food activities and spent a long day behind the grill serving us all. Special thanks to those two and all the others who pitched in to help out in some way!!
I have photo's both from myself and Jon Radway and since Jon's photo's are a difficult act to follow, I'll present mine first.
Here's a shot of the crowd under the canopy and some of the early "open flying. It's just not a WCRC event without regulars Les Karsan and Pete Swasay shown in the center photo. The right photo shows Dave Vale and his son James flying with Kevin Eaton and daughter observing.
These photo's show Don Borgese's as he completes a sortie with his very nice P-51 Mustang. The first photo shows Don B., Wayne Artfitch and John Kukon starting and tuning the engine. This plane had been in storage for some time (since 1995... I think!) so the engine setup was critical. Center shot shows the Mustang lining up just before touchdown and finally a happy Don Borgese returning to the pits!
One of the highlights of the afternoon was a demo flight of Wayne Berens C-47 twin. It was piloted by the very capable Dean Pappas. In the photo is Matt Ciccone, Wayne Berens and John Gallagher preparing the plane for flight. This photo is just a "teaser" as you will want to see some beautiful shots by Jon Radway later in the report.
Ed Berchtold organized some "fun-fly" events. We had the 3-Bee, where the pilot takes off, does 3 loop, rolls or 360 turns and then lands. Pilot with the shortest time from takeoff to landing is the winner. The middle event was a climb & glide for gas planes only. This consisted of a 30 second climb under power and then glide for a long as possible before landing. The final event was to complete as many loops as possible in 60 seconds. The picture on the left shows some of the action with Dave Schoen doing the timing, Ed Berchtold judging and Jon Radway flying the event. I think this was the climb & glide event where Jon had a very nice glide on his sport plane. (We suspect helium in the fuselage). Right photo shows Tom Haake preparing his zagi for an event.
We also had some zagi events consisting of Spot Landing and some improvised Limbo. These appeared to be well received by the pilots and spectators.
We had a raffle to give away some prizes at the conclusion of the picnic. A Gallon of glow fuel, donated by Action Hobbies was won by Willie Rittling. There was also a Zagi XS donated by Trick R/C. This was initially won by Ed Berchtold who felt he didn't really need it (was he hoping for the glow fuel?), and immediately decided to gather the kids around and raffle it off to them. "Ed's Raffle" was won by Larry Muhlstein. This photo shows the winners and nicely done Ed!
In the waning hours (minutes?) of the day, Chuck Taylor brought out his StuenbenFluege (don't trust my spelling on that!) It's German for "Fly". This was an incredibly lightweight aircraft composed of carbon fiber and light film covering. It is design primarily for indoor flying, but the light breezes of the day had calmed to virtually nothing, so we had perfect conditions for flying this beauty. The first photo shows the plane out of it's carrying box. Note the motor and flight battery just below it. Under the center of the wing is the receiver and aft of there are the 2 servo's to control the "V" tail. The photo on the left shows Chuck just before takeoff. Be sure to see Jon Radway's "in-flight" shot's of this aircraft on the next page.