Start with mounds of tender trip tip perfectly seasoned and cooked, add chicken tenders with a taste to die for add orzo side dish and Caesars salad with baquettes and top that off with piles of cookies of all sorts. We had to go back for seconds, there were still piles of delicious food and chefs said if we didn’t eat it they were throwing it away. You can figure out what happened we sacrificed ourselves and cleaned it up. Larry…….WE LOVED IT AND WE THANK YOU!!!
Going back to the Jet Stuff we started with a pilot’s meeting covering the rules etc. The main fun was going to be the THROWDOWN consisting of one judged flight for each aircraft/pilot.
Jared flew his Cougar first and set a high standard for the 5 tasks to complete which were
1. Flight realism
2. Slow dirty flyby
3. Full throttle high speed downwind pass
4. Pilots choice of one maneuver
5. Quality landing
Each task was worth one to five points…..five being what you wanted. Total possible then…25
Up next came a Habu flown by Bob, Jim Bonnardel with his F-18, Rays F-18, Steve Dente’s Habu, and F-86 with Jeff on the radio, then Bob Stinson with a C-17, Bob Mosely with his F-16, and L-39 flown by Frank Gagliardi. Up right after was Steve Neu pulling out another Habu and Scott G had one too and soon after Carl Cox brought out his F-4 Phantom. Some good flying occurred, and some not quite as good. Carl had a little mishap and had to hit the weeds but all others recovered their aircraft on the runway. The twelve pilots completed their run and we had some dead time and so I prepped my Blackbird with what I thought was my best battery. It barely got airborne and struggled to make a downwind turn and it eventually sank slowly into some friendly weeds unharmed. Everyone was laughing sympathetically so later I tried a different battery and I performed the 5 tasks…..for a perfect 25. Well, as the one and only judge I should get some sort of compensation doncha think? The real results of the pseudo contest were quite close:
Bob Stinson’s C-17 was outstanding in appearance and performance….bomb drop was great and he won with 22 points…..(don’t forget my SR 71 got a 25)
In second place with 21 points we find the Habu’s of Steve Neu and Bob and Jared’s Cougar.
In third place Steve Dente’s Habu with 20 points. BTW I saw Larry the next day and he rushed to Discount and bought a Habu and had it half finished that night.
The People spoke on their choice and the Cougar by Jared and the C-17 by Bob were tied so I gave the plaque to Jared (it flew really well in his hands) it looked good too. My SR 71 got no votes…..damn.
The BEST FLIGHT OF THE DAY PLAQUE was to be my most difficult bit of judging but the SR 71 adventure was at the top of the list until Jim Bonnardel went up with his F-18 and went zooming around the sky, twisting and turning and rolling every which way and the crowd was entertained especially when in a 3 second gyration he narrowly dodged the ground/weeds while completely out of control and won the plaque for best flight. A close second was the very smooth aerobatics done by Steve Dente with his Habu.
I TOLD YOU TO BE SAD IF YOU MISSED IT…….. IT WAS OUTSTANDING!!!
Tim….chairman for fun, sefsd 2011
