Pull on your boots: the Great Meadow is squishy. Rain has saturated the ground. Water pools in the lower sections of the field.

My wet-weather footgear is a pair of calf-high rubber boots which I bought at Orchard Supply Hardware a couple of years ago for about $20.

They’ve enabled me to wade into the wetlands slough to retrieve errant planes. And now they let me navigate the spongy turf and slicks of mud with comfortably dry feet.

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When the weather forecast suggests a 50% chance of rain tomorrow, it means this:

In the past when conditions were similar to today, it rained tomorrow 50% of the time.

What this doesn’t tell you is how often it will rain tomorrow: will you have periods of an hour or two with no showers?

But just as you’re thinking about this you notice that the wind is forecast for 10, 20, 30mph during various parts of the day.

So even though the sun is shining for a moment right now I won’t try to fly today.

Instead, I’ve returned to assembling my T-Rex 450 kit.

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A few days of crummy weather coupled with an itch to improve the Ups & Downs photo gallery gobbled up my attention span this past week.

I flew Thursday and Friday, hammering out a number of small wing combat sessions with Dave and Bruce. We had some satisfying collisions and are gradually sculpting a set of Combat Rules, none of which is retroactive.

The rules so far:

The goal is to hit an opponent’s wing and cause it to cease flying while you stay in the air.

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Whenever it rains, as it did last night and early this morning, a puddle of slimy mud bars the entrance to the Great Meadow. Compounded from a mixture of clay, goose droppings and water, it’s worse than simple dirt-based mud. One of these days, I’m going to turn a not-on-purpose somersault as I negotiate this hazard.

Wild Combat. In the wake of the storm, Thursday’s north wind was quite frisky, gusting up to about 15mph. Dave and I waged wing warfare for three flights, alternately whacked around, stalled and accelerated by unpredictable blasts of air. We didn’t make much contact—I think we hit each other only once—but agreed that this is the best kind of combat flying.

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After flying combat sessions for about three months, Dave North and I are gradually figuring out Small-Wing Combat.

Mike Nadler liked to say about streamer combat: “The only rule is there are no rules!”

We’ve adopted Mike’s no-rules-rule as a starting point, but you gotta have some definition.

So far, these are the rules:

• In order to qualify for combat, your wing must be 24-30 inches in span.
• If you hit another wing, good! If your hit smacks the other wing to the ground, you score a kill unless you also immediately crash, in which case it’s a no-credit event.
• If your plane lands prematurely it’s a kill, but no one gets credit.
• Flying sessions are 9 minutes in duration. If you’re still able to fly after a premature landing, launch your plane!

Obviously, the rules are in flux as we gain experience. I suspect that as we refine the guidelines we’ll probably add limits on motor size and over-all weight.

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