Men With Hats
After looking at this website, my friend Rand writes in an email:
So is it me or do all all RC planes come with hats for the pilots to wear
Though I’ve never found a hat in an airplane kit, looking at the Faces pictures (which total 61 people as of today—I added 13 pictures this weekend), I count 34 people wearing hats and 27 without. That’s 55%.
Favorite kinds? The Tilley Hat is one of the most popular. I’ve owned one ever since I read about a Canadian zookeeper’s Tilley Hat which was eaten by an elephant. Three times. (”Michael later would find and pick up his Hat, wash it thoroughly, and wear it.”)
The baseball cap, of course, also ranks high, many with high-tech logos, a few representing actual baseball teams.
Then there are the creative hats. Doug Traub’s double-wide sombrero. Harry’s beret. Tim’s stocking cap. Ted Cooper’s white neck-protecting number.
Lots of hats and lots of sunglasses. They shield us from the sun, reduce glare and enhance visibility.
They also make for a Faces picture gallery where you have to recognize many people by the shapes of their mouth and chin.
Back in the early 1980s, a Montreal, Quebec, band called Men Without Hats achieved fleeting popularity. I always loved the name, because it seemed to say nothing: who wears hats, anyway?
Men Without Hats scored one big, amusing hit: “The Safety Dance,” a title almost as silly as the band’s name.
Well, many of us wear hats now, and at flying fields the Men With Hats mix peaceably with the Men Without Hats.
We do our own version of the safety dance, too, handling possibly-incendiary LiPo batteries and fiendishly powerful motors spinning sharp-edged props.
But we survive to fly another day, and the day after that, many of us wearing hats and some of us humming softly to ourselves:
Tags: Airplanes, Baylands, Flying, Music, People, Radio Control.We can go when we want to, the night is young and so am I.
And we can dress real neat from our hats to our feet
And surprise them with the victory cry.
January 8th, 2007 at 5:30 pm
I must admit that I have used at least 4 different type of sombreros, my best still in use is a jungle green hat with clips on the sides to use it as down under type. Most of us use it to avoid the sun on our faces or as a weekend custom that separate us from others.
Latinflyer.
January 8th, 2007 at 5:31 pm
I use a hat for all but one type of flying. In DLG flying, if your hat stays on your head, you are not throwing hard enough!
January 8th, 2007 at 5:32 pm
I use my Lawrence of Arabia hat for ALL TYPES OF FLYING. In DLG it is very important because lift always follows the sun. So I spin fast, dump my hat almost half the time, bend down to pick it up, and watch my plane auger into one of the Stryker pilots on the flight line. Its all part of the Darwinian Theory of Distributed Evolution: The more planes you distribute on the flight line, the longer will be your evolution. LOL.
Hats separate the Men from the Boys. The Boys have enough hair so that they don’t need hats. The Men tolerate hats better than sunburn. It’s that simple and that painful.
January 9th, 2007 at 1:33 pm
I agree with Ted, boys do not need hats because they are showing off the hair style. I will say most of us use one or two different hats. Sun protection is a mast when DLG or you’re blind and end up on some else’s path.
January 9th, 2007 at 5:33 pm
Oops, excuse my spanglish or I should say it is a typo when I say mast it means must
January 9th, 2007 at 5:34 pm
Hats… I never wore a hat until I started R/C flying. Now a hat is a tool to help me fly. We are lucky at Baylands that we don’t face the sun when flying like at some fields. A hat does protect my eyes and balding head. When the sun is in my line of flight I tilt my head so that the bill of the hat blocks the sun. Also, closing one eye when flying “through” the sun will let you return to near normal vision when you open the closed eye after you are beyond the sun. I also used to use my hat as no fly indicator. When my hat blows off, it’s too windy. I’ve broken that rule a few times and I was sorry I did.
Mike
January 10th, 2007 at 5:35 pm
I have never been comfortable in hats. Eventually I hope to be at home in a Sherlock Holmes number or maybe a fireman’s helmet - both of which do not fit my mental image of self - standing on the flight line…
I have it - a Glengarry with shades - perfect!
Cheers!
GLM
January 10th, 2007 at 5:36 pm
My hat might be the biggest at Baylands but I have a good excuse. Twenty years ago I had a little skin cancer on my forehead. It made me paranoid of the sun.. Recently, two of my freinds almost died of melanoma. That was fuel on the fire. Now I always wear sunblock and a hat and I am usually home by 1pm.