The Never-Ending Battle
Tuesday, November 25th, 2008
Burt Rosensweig photographs a lively battle at Baylands. See the video on the Movies page.
Every weekday a cloud of wings zips up from the Baylands flight line right around lunchtime.
On Monday, seven Wild Wings tore after each other, spinning, circling, near-missing and, very occasionally, smacking each other.
Bruce Crawford, who often flies at Foster City, brought his friend Burt Rosensweig to see the mayhem. Burt fired up his little video camera to document the action.
As far as I can remember, Monday’s hooligans were Bruce, Dave North, Rick Carmichael, Frank D, Larry Smith, Mike Nadler, Bill Smith and me.
It’s very difficult to shoot good video of combat. The wings look like gnats veering unpredictably all around a small patch of sky. Collisions—the dramatic moments you want to capture—are nearly as rare as baby pandas.
But Burt’s a lucky guy. He shot a minute’s worth of video and managed to catch one of those rare events.
It might’ve been the blow that folded Rick Carmichael’s wing in half. Or perhaps it was a less dramatic pileup. It’s hard to tell. You can clearly hear the smack, but the combatants still look like gnats.
Thanks for the video, Burt.
