Flying in the Rain

Wednesday, March 4th, 2009

Minsiu gets his yellow Slow Stick ready for a wet flight.

Minsiu gets his yellow Slow Stick ready for a wet flight.


This morning, I pulled up to Baylands just as the rain got serious.

The gathering clouds blotted out the sun and started spitting as I exited Highway 101 at Lawrence Expressway.

Driving the half mile to the park, I advanced the windshield wiper setting from intermittent to a slow steady pace.

When I arrived, Dave North was sitting in his black Honda Civic del Sol, waiting for the showers to clear.

He joined me in the front seat of my Prius and we watched as water splatted amoeba patterns on the windshield.

Amazingly, someone was flying a Stryker on the Great Meadow, ignoring the rain.

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BBOB 2008: More Photos!

Sunday, June 22nd, 2008

Slow Sticks compete in Last Down event.

Here are a hundred or so more pictures from Saturday’s spectacular Baylands Battle of the Bay event.

See Slow Sticks of every hue, dramatic crashes, focused competitors and exotic contraptions.

I’ve posted brief captions which you’ll see in slideshow mode.

Not sure what this is all about? Read Saturday’s BBOB report, and enjoy even more pictures.

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BBOB 2008: Slow Sticks in the Sky

Saturday, June 21st, 2008

Slow Sticks rise into the air like balloons.

The longest day of the year was also one of the hottest: 101° at Sunnyvale.

But the heat didn’t deter determined flyers, who packed the two proximate Pickleweed Place parking bays by 8 a.m.

After all, today was the BBOB: Baylands Battle of the Bay, Pete Lane’s annual celebration of the Slow Stick.

Last year in The Baylands Battle Bash, I wondered why the word “Bay” occurs twice in the title of the event. This year I learned the reason: so Pete Lane can call it “BeeBob,” as he did several times during the day. I had thought it was “BeeBeeOhBee,” which is much less cool.

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Photo Fun

Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008

Lady Pilot

[This post is obsolete. The new gallery software was too temperamental and I’ve taken it offline and restored the old, reliable, gallery.]

With the help of a robotic script and all too much fiddling, I’ve copied all 750 or so the Ups & Downs photos into the new Photos section.

Why bother with this upgrade?

Mainly because I now have more publishing flexibility, including the ability to publish albums within albums. So, for instance, I moved the Return of Pickleweed Red and Fast Boats albums into the 2007 Photos: December album.

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I Hate Slow Sticks

Sunday, October 14th, 2007

Dead Slow Stick

The other day, Al Alongi asks me to help him with his Slow Stick. We check and adjust the control surfaces. The right aileron is sloppy—it settles on a slightly different center point after each deflection.

That doesn’t seem like a big problem, since the error is small. We can adjust with a slight twitch of the transmitter stick.

Al is an old-time flyer just getting back into the air. He’s a little rusty and he’s looking for the perfect starter plane.

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