Well, the forecasters called it right. It's rained and rained and rained for the last few weeks, then the morning of the contest, the rain turned to snow. What can you do?
FLY COMBAT! that's what you can do.
So, 5 pilots (of questionable sanity) stuck it out, and flew 6 rounds of SSC combat. On a muddy, swampy field, in a snow storm.
http://hcrcm.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=19&page=1
This was the first contest hosted by Harford County Radio Control. A great bunch of guys who have been getting into flying combat in a big way. I've been up there for a couple of practice days, and several of them have shown up at some of our other local contests, and I have to say the quality of flying has been first rate. And these guys won't let anything as wimpy as a little mud and snow get in the way.
The mud. Anyone remember Nats the year Indiana was flooding? Like that, but worse. The only spots on the field where you didn't sink where the concrete shelter floor and the gravel parking lot.
Then throw in a pretty heavy snow storm. One thing about flying in the snow, it does keep the flying close and low, otherwise you can't see your plane at all. And this was the first time I'd ever had to deal with icing. Really, more than once I landed to find the stickum on the wing totally iced over and not sticking to anything. Air temps were actually just above freezing at ground level, so the ice would melt off the plane when it sat, but everyone was draping streamers.
The other big problem was that on landing, the horizontal prop would kick up a pile of slushy snow all over the engine, making re-starts the next round kind of interesting until all the water was blown out. It really helped to bring the plane back after a heat and immediately start the engine up to get all the water out. On the other hand, I didn't see anyone have problems with their transmitter or receiver/battery/servos due to the water. I was a little worried about my power connection, since it's on the side of the fuse, and was often getting covered in snow on landings, but nothing bad happened.
For streamers, we started with the forestry tape. But I'd read about guys scoring them. So after the first round, we took the pre-rolled streamers, and put a small slice on each side, 90degrees off. We were a little concerned that the streamers wouldn't unroll smoothly, but it wasn't an issue. This really fixes the problem of wet weather and SSC, and I think will drive scoring up even on dry days. Though everyone at the contest agreed that we still prefer the crepe for dry days. On the other hand, I've finally seen sky conditions where the orange colored forestry tape becomes really visible.
Melissa stayed home, but one of the HCRCM members braved the snow and mud to get the great pictures in the link above. They won't direct link, so I'll copy a few down and repost them later into the thread. But if you want to see combat in the snow, check out the link above.
Thanks to HCRCM for putting on a great event, bringing some great BBQ and everything to help warm up between rounds. It was a heck of a lot of fun, and I'm really glad we went ahead and flew.
Street Brawl 2009
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Ed Kettler
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I've flown in worse mud. I was on my way to a meet with HEAVY snow, 30 degree temps and 30 MPH WIND when I decided the driving conditions were too bad to get there. I couldn't keep the winsheild clean enough to see. They had about 4 or 5 people show up out of about 25 that had registered. A lot of pilots South of the river that had planned on the Cinci meet went to Bama for a meet the same day.
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Don Holmes
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