Around the middle of the summer, the club decided that with small electric park-fly type planes becoming more popular and convenient, it may be a good time to get into it, flying away from the Chouet flying site. So, with Andy Best stocking a choice of planes such as the Mini-Piper, Funky Chicken and Terry, all from Graupner, we decided to have a go at Le Mare de Carteret Playing fields one Wednesday evening. It went really well. The wind was calm, it was sunny and warm, and we realised what great fun it could be flying such planes in a small space. We decided there and then that this would be worth doing on a weekly basis, and at different locations around the island. To make it even more of a social do we decided that going for a bar meal afterwards would also be a good plan.
During the couple of months that we held these events we flew at such places as Le Mare de Carteret (about 4 times in all, as it does make a good flying site), Portsoif common, Pleinmont, Fort le Marchant and Bordeaux where it used to be a landfill site. Other places mentioned but not tried (officially) were Delancy Park, Saumarez Park, Cambridge park and inside Vale Castle. Maybe some ideas for next summer?
There were other "out-of-the-norm" things tried to. Shane and I had previously carried out the first night-flying attempt early in the summer, then Thomas, Nick and I had go with Christophe Paysant le Roux in Jersey in July, but most others had not seen it before. when the opportunity arose on one of our nights out, after a meal at the Vazon Bay Hotel, Nick, Andy and I all fitted little fishing glow sticks onto our Mini-pipers and had a go from the Cobo sea wall. The problem was not that it was dark, it was that it was dark AND foggy. There can't have been more than about 25 yards visibility with the 3 of us buzzing around. Andy managed to crash into the ladder, I managed a touch and go on the roof of my car, and Nick landed smack bang in the middle of the road. Imagine the news headlines the next day if there had been no fog: "Rockmount goers see flashing lights in the night sky over Cobo!" On the pictures page, you will see three pipers lined up against a black sky then 2 black pictures with lots of green dots. These are mine, Nick's, Andy's Mini-Pipers lined up on Cobo wall in the fog at about half past ten. Our second and only other go at night flying this year was carried out at Le Mare de Carteret. A few of us flew our pipers, but Simon came up with the stupid idea of night flying a Funky Chicken! Suffice to say, it didn't last long. The little glow-sticks don't show up very well when further than about 50-60 yards away, and Funky Chickens are comparatively quick. It got away from him in no time, and so started a wild-goose chase with all of us running around like headless chickens looking for Simon's chicken. It ended up a fair way away, next to Le Riche, in bits of course. What a laugh we had...you can't take Simon anywhere!!
Once we got to the start of October, we decided to call it quits. We were only getting an hour of flying before the sun went down it was getting fairly cold too. But as the club regulars seemed to enjoy it, and we got quite a few new members from doing it, it may well be something we will pick up again once the spring arrives in 2004. During the coming months we will look into finding somewhere to do some indoor flying over the winter. We have a couple of places where we could possibly fly, so watch this space to find out where and when this will be. In the meantime, enjoy the pictures, re-live the laughs, and look forward to doing this again next year.
