Sky Pilot

When I was a little kid, Walters friend Bill Gunther would come over to the house and bang out music on the piano. Bang was the word, he was 6'4" and would hunch over the upright in the playroom and really hammer the keys, rock the whole piano. He used to lift me over his head and sing "sky pilot". Thinking of the title for this post brought back that memory. He was a cool dude.

So now that I am getting married, instead of rock climbing, surfing, and driving german road cars, I can now partake of my true fantasy hobbies. First one = radio control planes! I have always wanted one, but the thoughts of spending all those hours building a piece of art, only to crash it learning how to fly did not appeal to me. I never had the patience to build something like that. Along with the building, fiddling with all that gas and oil and motors seemed the real part of rc, flying just the icing on the cake.

Flash forward to 6 months ago, Tam and I are biking around town, having a picnic at the bluffs at Discovery Park, right by the Daybreak Star. Here is this guy flying a glider there, and I talk him up, learn how cheap and easy it is now that technology has changed, and viola, 1 kit, 8 hours of build time, and I am crashing my plane over and over while figuring out how read the wind and fly the thing. Its made out of EPP foam, which is extremley durable, and flying it in grass fields takes the crunch out of the nose dives and back flops. Its a flying wing, like a stealth bomber. Flying wings are sensitive planes, especially pitch sensitive, as the 'flaps' run the whole length of the wing and there is no tail section out the back to offer resistance nosing up or down. I started by flying on low wind days on an easy slope (this type of rc is called slope soaring, the plane uses the updrafts coming up slopes to generate lift), and now have moved on to more committing spots, like on Lake Union.
I am not sure why the girls walk by in the park and dont say anything to me while I am flying my plane, but yesterday at Discovery two friendly guys, hand in hand and walking their dogs, came by me and said "I like your plane!", so I am reaping some action :)
Here is a vid of me flying the glider at Gasworks, during a spell of bright weather. -e