Flying Indoors
A Vapor shows its 3D capabilities, hovering just above the floor.
But we didn’t care. We went flying indoors.
Pete Lane, the man behind the Baylands Battle of the Bay, organized a flying event at MVP, a San Jose indoor sports facility.
Dave Morris originally suggested the venue. When Pete investigated, he found that MVP was willing to rent a huge room to us for two hours before they opened at 9:30 a.m. Saturday.
Perry Lee, owner of AeroMicro, offered to pay half the rental fee of $240. That left a $10 fee for the dozen pilots who showed up.
Arrival time was 7 a.m., a bit brutal, but why sleep when you can fly?
Pilots included old friends and some people new to me.
It was a hoot.
Most popular airframes:
There were also a couple of IFOs, a miniature Slow Stick, a Moth, a T-Rex 450, an Air Hogs biplane, a Carbon Butterfly and a bunch of other small aircraft.
In addition to off-the-shelf aircraft, pilots brought lots of scratch builds.
We flew in a room the size of a hockey or soccer field with a nice high net-draped ceiling.
With the abundance of super-lightweight aircraft, collisions were generally harmless.
There were, however, a few mishaps. A Blade CX2 helicopter shredded a Vapor. One Vapor got tangled in the ceiling netting, but the pilot freed it by wiggling his transmitter sticks. And a few planes hit the walls of the room hard enough to suffer damage.
During a battery change, I managed to smoke the electronics in my Vapor by connecting the battery backwards. Don Cohn, who joined me in photographing the event, remarked that that should be impossible, but I assured him that stupidity and determination could foil the polarized connector.
Midway through the morning, Pete Lane cleared the air so Chris Hansen could pilot his T-Rex 450. Chris put on a show of hair-raising acrobatics and low-level inverted flying, tightly focused, never missing a beat. At the end of the flight everyone applauded his performance.
Pilots focus on their Vapors during streamer combat.
The streamers were short ribbons of colored crepe paper, handy for identifying the Vapors, which are covered at the factory in identical printed film.
Only one Vapor looked different: With Q-tips and alcohol, Allen Strahm had cleaned the printed paint job off the tail of his Vapor. Then he drew hot-rod flames with a colored marker.
Vapor combat is a lot like Wild Wing combat, but slower and less destructive. Gary Morgan borrowed a Vapor from Pete Lane and went at it with glee.
The Vapor flies very well. It’s acrobatic, predictable and has enough power to accelerate for effective strikes.
During breaks from combat, Pete Lane launched his Vapor off the back of a crouching Gary Morgan, Chris Rygaard Maneuvered his Vapor to his face and kissed it in mid-air and Marcin Hirny landed his Vapor atop his head.
Combat was the gentlest form of mayhem.
During hour 2 of the event, Pete Lane held a pilot’s meeting to discuss the future of indoor flying events. We agreed to rent the MVP facility again Saturday, Dec. 6. Pete will also investigate other possible flying venues with more flexible hours.
Want more? Don Cohn has written an excellent article about this event with more great photos.
If you’re interested in joining the fun, the BayRC Indoor Forum has the latest news.
Awesome writeup, great photos … but none of my 450?! Outrageous!
Pete thanks for the great write up and pictures. It was a blast, Greg got me exited about gluing some balsa togeather again, You guys do know what balsawood is???
Allen
Thanks for the time and effort, Pete !.
Great article.
By the way…all of you etomic flyers need to remember that the batterys decal, always faces outward, on the plane/heli and on the charger. Also key, is to use a red sharpy and make one side of the
connector red, while plugged in…works great.
Pete Lane
Pete… another bang up job as usual. I always enjoy reading your musings. I took 415 pictures that day and about 411 of them were not worth publishing. I haven’t used my “good” camera in so long I forgot about setting the ISO… and my LCD is so small that without my glasses on I couldn’t really tell that I was getting bad motion blur and camera shake. I’m sure glad that you were there to cover things.
Cheers,
Don
No Blade combat? I’m disappointed. Sounds like fun though…
Dave
It was early – I was suffering from the previous evenings red red wine ;} but still had a blast.
Pete Lane was kind enough to loan me the use of his Vapor – I’m afraid he won’t do that again after what happened to it in streamer combat…:)
Sorry Pete!
I think the talent of repairing with heated saran wrap will need to be perfected.
Cheers!
Gary
Vapor combat is the wave of the future!
But, I must admit I was very interested in the 2oz wild wing shown on another page of your blog. Any chance of getting the specs and some construction details Pete?
Dave Morris
Dave — The Wild Wings we’re flying typically end up around 6 ounces AUW. Here’s my How to Build article.
Don — I remembered to set my ISO to 400, but my on-camera flash sucks, so I wasn’t very pleased with my photos. I took about 260, and what you see here is what I thought were the best shots.
Chris — Sorry, but I didn’t get a great shot of your spectacular T-Rex flying.
Pete Lane — Thanks for the battery tips!
Dave and all,
Here’s another credible build of a WildWing from Pete’s original – with pictures.
http://bowns.net/Projects/2008-10-26%20RC%20Wild%20Wing%20Build/WildWingBuild.htm
Gary
Pete & Gary,
In Pete’s article about WildWing/Boomer Combat in Dublin he wrote
“Butch showed off a 2.5-ounce scratch-built Micro Boomer, which flew well but was pretty twitchy.”
My thought was, here is the makings of perfect indoor Combat plane. As much as I enjoyed Vapor Combat, I would be very disappointed if I had damaged my Vapor. If we can come up with a small light EPP flying wing, wouldn’t that be the ultimate indoor combat plane? I think that it is worth investigating.
Dave Morris
Pete:
Great Pics! For some reason, just now checked them out. Quite an assemblage of ner-do-wells (excepting a couple!). Thanks for the great job of “shooting” the first event. Hopefully many more to come, Dec 6 and beyond!!! Next time, a roll of TP will make a whole bunch of Vapor combat streamers!!
Ed W.
Ah no problem Pete(J), Don’s single picture of my inverted hovering inside was good enough for me. Betcha couldn’t catch my heli anyways
So i look mildly retarded in that photo of me holding the blue/white foamie
This is why you don’t take a picture of someone while they’re talking.
I’m glad Pete got the photo of me landing the mCX on my head, before it tumbled off. Spherical objects don’t make good landing pads