 Martin, Bob, Nick, and Richard, flying at the Berkeley Marina |
 Nick DS’ing his crunchy plane |
 Brian DS’ing with his Gulp SR |
 Brian and Nick Nick’s plane is a Bat |
 Sometimes you get the plane pretty low to the ground when you DS. (we have people looking out for walkers) |
 Jon DS’ing with his crunchy plane. |
Today I was up in Berkeley, CA for a business trip. I come up here for about 4 days every 5 weeks or so. When I come here, I usually work a 4:00 AM to 12:00 noon shift. This leaves my afternoons free. To fill that time, I fly model airplanes. Today was my first time since returning from my trip to fly with my model airplane club, Soarheads. I had a great time! The group fly’s every Tuesday evening at the Berkeley Marina, and then we go to Brennan’s for dinner. I mostly flew my Zagi, but I also tried flying my Hawk. It is a little speed 400 plane. It had trouble with the motors. Both of the motors I have for it have bent motor shafts. I’ll have to replace that. The Zagi flew well, and there was so much wind, I just flew it as a motor glider. I used the electric motor to aid in launch and gain lift, but then shut it off at altitude and cruised around floating on the wind. The spot where we fly here has slope lift, but also air masses coming from two different directions collide here and produce a lot of lift.
There are also some dead spots of air behind the bushes and the little hill, so some people were DS’ing there (DS = Dynamic Soaring). I’m not at the DS’ing level yet, but I will someday. I really liked the looks and flying characteristics of Brian’s Gulp SR. I think that will be my next plane, with the plug in wings for travel option of course!