Hardware!

I lucked out and won the Arch Enemy Fun Fly that was CD'd by Joe.  Lots of fun, but lots of carnage to many planes today.  Luckily my SNAFU was not one to bite the dust.  There were ELEVEN pilots to start with, and I think FIVE crashed today.  Some were due to planes snagging balloons or crepe paper, but others were due to pilot errors, and one due to a dead battery in the plane.  It was very close and I just beat out Brandon and Rudy.  I actually thought Brandon had won, but their guess for the wingspan of a plane was off by 4" while my guess on another plane was off by 3".  If not for that, Brandon would have won by virtue of hitting one more balloon (a good thing) in the Cluster Bust flight...he got 7 while I hit 6.

Regarding planes lost to the balloons or crepe paper, I saw Bob B's go in when a balloon with crepe paper stuck on his plane and caused uneven drag.  He could not ditch the balloon, and ended up crashing.  Dick snagged lots of crepe paper a couple times on his flight, and the whole electric motor ended up breaking free of the plane, with a resultant dethermalizer effect on the plane...end of flight.  I actually snagged a balloon with crepe paper attached, it hung onto the SNAFU for a few seconds, then fell off to my relief.  I landed with a crepe paper streamer still attached, and to my surprise the dead weight was still on the streamer too!  While it was attached, it fortunately for me did not make the plane uncontrollable.  Brandon snagged two balloons with one pass, shook them off, then snagged another that stayed on a long time while he sped up and gained altitude.  He then spun it off in a dive and landed unscathed.

The last event was the arch enemy task and EVERYONE miraculously drew the task as flying UNDER/UNDER both arches.  The other option was to fly UNDER/OVER.  By vote we eliminated the OVER/UNDER option...bunch of weenies, lol.  The most wild flight in this task was taken by Quang who decided to do his inverted at high speed.  He missed the first attempt when he went UNDER/OVER, and with time on his side he decided to try again.  This time he went UNDER/BLUNDER!  By that I mean he ended up going under the first arch fine, then was too low for the 2nd arch and slid his plane onto the runway, breaking both sides of the prop, but not anything else by some miracle!  We can only presume he hit at such a slight angle on the grass runway that no damage was caused to the canopy, nor the fin and rudder, which are super thick on this plane (GP Cap 21).  It was entertaining to say the least!

Lots of fun.  While I feel sad for the guys that lost planes that they liked, it's part of the challenge and part of the territory.  I took my SNAFU because I considered it my most dispensible, but lucked out with it coming home with just a dinged APC prop, caused by the dead weight on one of the balloons I popped in the Minefield flight.   Joe made the Funfly a lot of fun, definitely funny, and also challenging.  He ran it well.  Folks said they don't want him to run another though, due to the carnage, almost 50% of the planes entered, crashed!  I think some of them were serious, but I thought (as biased winner) it was all in good fun and good taste!  My SNAFU has done well for me this season...winning the Valley Challenge a month ago, and now the Fall Funfly.  It has not met its expiration date, YET!  :)

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