Aftermath
My everyday combat wing took one hit too many.
The first had orange fins & feathers. The next had blue plumage. Then came red, then green.
A smarter person would’ve stuck to one scheme. Then I’d always know which color to hunt for in the scrum and my competition would always know which wing to atttack.
But I liked the Lifesaver Look, a cheerful spray of color in the box I use to transport them.
Early on, the orange wing was my regular steed. But orange and red are the two most popular colors for flying wings. To aid recognition, I settled on the blue wing as my everyday vehicle.
Chewed Up. Inevitably over months of flying, the blue wing has become frayed, tattered, gouged, pitted, shredded, ripped and broken.
I’ve come to like the scars, dings, cracks, holes and gouges. Marks of character, proof of bravery, I think.
Long seams of dried Uhu Creativ glue (my current favorite adhesive for wings) mark past rents and dislocations.
Wing ripped in two, vertical fins torn apart: This poor thing needs TLC!
Kasra’s wing t-boned it, separating the last bits of connective foam holding it together.
The wing went from flat to V-shaped in an instant and spiraled to the ground.
I think that Kasra’s wing crashed too, so mine died fighting, heroic to the end.
The battery still had some life left, so I slipped it into the red wing and continued fighting.
More Damage. A minute or two later, someone knocked the red wing out of the sky. I retrieved it and walked back to the flight line.
But as I was about to launch it I realized that the right-hand control horn and control rod had disappeared, along with the servo arm to which they were attached. Ripped off in the crash, lost in the grass of the Great Meadow.
Resting wings show a spectrum of color.
Stuff happens.
Our Wild Wing combat sessions have attracted a regular group of flyers at Baylands.
The core of combat ranges from four to six pilots. These folks show up almost every weekday.
Lunch Hour. Peak time for fighting is from noon to 1 p.m. That’s when the working people sneak out for a quick bout of tension relief, joining the regulars.
One of these days the stars will align in a special way and we’ll exceed our local record of nine simultaneous contestants.
Frequent fighters include:
- Dave North
- Mike Nadler
- Me
- Larry Smith
- Akkana Peck
- Frank D
- Rick Carmichael
- Gary Morgan
- Kasra
- Mike Bowns
- Mike “Mikey” Cohen
- Joe J.
- Kevin Chin
- Bill Smith
Infrequent participants include Bruce Crawford, Paul Panell, Tom Parks, Al Alongi and Brian Chan.
Related links: How to Build a Wild Wing, Mike Bowns’ Construction Article, Donnybrook in Dublin.
Tags: Baylands, Combat, Crashes, Flying, Wings.
The casual visitor — should there be one — might actually think that cyanotic mess is dead, dead, dead. But of course us regulars know perfectly well it’s a fairly straightforward repair.
The Blue Boy will fly again.
I have found, though, it takes about a week due to laziness. It’s so messed up you have to cut out some new fins and ailerons, remove the old and mount the new, all after gluing the main body back together. Then getting all the electronics set up, etc.
My Tiger Shark just had a week off for the same reason. And we’ll be trying out some new technology this time. I ran out of 6mm depron and so glued two 3mm sheets together with the grain complementary. Suckers are flat as Kansas! Also stuck in a couple of Pico+F BBs I had lying around just to see if a good servo makes any difference. Naros would be more appropriate, but none of those at hand right now.
If you want to stand out, go back to black. The Bat is now the easiest plane to spot other than the remaining Boomer variants. Kevin’s Boomer held together very nicely on Friday, by the way, and he was way in the thick of everything.