Hey dudes and dudettes! What a fantastic weekend for flying rockets at Bong! Thank you so much to Frank, Dan, Bob, Peg, Carol, Randy, Preston, and any other TWA compadres for putting on a fanstastic launch once again! Thank you to Tim and Jackie for putting on a fantastic meal for the hungry Wildman customers...and thanks for all the awesome custom stuff!!! Hey Tim, I did eat: corn, steak, chips, cookie, and several bottles of water...it just took me several hours to do so!
Before getting started, I want to mention that I missed photographing a lot of really good flights, and I missed visiting with many friends while there....got to see many of you, but missed several as well. Rex, I will catch up with you at MWP! Anyway, the family was on a bit of a long weekend vacation, so I was late to the field, was missing the infamous rocket shirt, and the day just ended up being a tremendous flurry of activity. I had several motors that *needed* to be burned, plus the late start, plus the rockets the kids *had to fly*, it just ended up crazy! Thanks to all for understanding, helping, and for a great day of flying.
Okay, so I could only sell one day of flying to the wife on her birthday weekend, so the following is from Saturday only. I continue to fight with the camera, sometimes it's stellar and other times not so much. I'm relearning what I thought I already knew:eyepop:. Enough babble.
Several months back, a gentleman approached me at Bong and asked me if I recognized him...why yes I did. It was Dr. Paul Yarnold, one of the original Bonglings that had moved south for warmer climates and deep sea fishing! Well, Paul is back in town, and this month he even flew rockets! As we unpacked the truck, he flew this Lil Nuke-esque rocket.
At apogee, the nose barely popped and we thought she was headed for a hard landing on the gravel. To our surprise, it was a dual deploy flight and a main blossomed a few hundred feet up!
Before the Minie Magg drag race at noon, Tom C (my Dad) flew his 2.6" IQSY Tomahawk on a new CTI 29-5G H53 Mellow. I really like these Mellow motors. Not much in the way of a flame, but a nice hissing sound and really long burns. Made for a majestic flight of the IQSY!
...and then the Malfunction Junction Madman placed the Madcow Frenzy XL on the far pad with the famous AMW M2200 Skidmark. Gus's pretty bird roared to great heights with onboard video that he shared with eager onlookers onsite!
Then on to the annual Great Midwest Minie Magg Race. Folks have been drag racing Maggs at the Bong since the beginning of time, well at least since the early 90's. This year, the contest was land closest to the pads without hitting the water, or something like that. There were also prizes for some splash downs, but not all, but I'm not sure how that all worked. Anyway, prizes went to 1st, 2nd, and 3rd places. Thank you to the prize donors and congrats to the winners!!!!
First salvo: there they are, and there are 6...really there are.
and there they go! CTI motors lit first:
Aerotech White Lightnings lit later:
Al Casper on the right had a good line off the pad; pretty sure he won first place! The Magg on the left took a left hand turn off the rail which caused a long walk, landing just shy of the corn.
Salvo #2: Cayemberg, Pauling, Griffin, Cayemberg. (and little Nobile too).
FrankenMagg takes the early lead.
TomC's Red Magg leaves alongside Braden's Red Fat Boy...kind of a funny looking Magg!
One of the Maggs came in hot, I thought it was FrankenMagg until Grif announced it was his. Only then did I find Frank in the air under yellar chute! Hey Jason, if you have a scrap of the ta ta Magg, I'll find a way to add it to the FrankenMagg...that would be 7 or 8 crashed Maggs.
...to be continued...
*Duh!*....I KNOW i'll get everything back very soon....Hard to concentrate when your pushing food in my direction CONSTANTLY!)
