Thanks Mike,
I've been flying since '85 and have been very involved in R/C in the past. I've been duped into being President of flying clubs even
Maybe everyone should do that once in their lives, maybe not...
I fly because I totally enjoy it and have ALWAYS pushed the hobby. My first instructor of note was Tony Frackowiak, pattern guru, who was visiting our base flying field from AZ. The best advice anyone has ever given me as a noob, 'Don't listen to ANY of these idiots in this club, just fly and learn from flying, burn fuel!'... that was my motivation! Even though I didn't think the club was filled with idiots, he did have somewhat of a point. There was NEVER any agreement about equipment back then, anything BUT Futaba was a dirty word and fear ruled the day in terms of trying less expensive equipment. I was flying glow and gas and was super tired of the mess.
In around 89 or 90 I bought a Futaba Flight sim and learned to do knife edge loops. Most of the guys in the club were very old school and 'tricked' by going back and forth the length of the runway, nobody flew close and nobody pushed the envelope at all. The first day on the field trying my 'new' outside knife edge loop in front of the guys yielded 10 people screaming, 'He's gonna crash, check it out!' But, I had been at the field all week and on the sim all month and my near perfect outside knife edge loop 15' off the ground and wide as Canada was as perfected as it was gonna be and I executed it well amid the screams and commotion. After people shut up and got back off the ground from ducking as it passed the pits under total control I got a ton of, 'Where in the world did you learn that(s)'... I told everyone about the simulator and all I got was a bunch of crap for using 'a computer' lol... I'm an IT guy by the way and back then I had a commercial program I had written and was employed to support so I wasn't afraid of computers
The rush from the reaction of the Pits hooked me on aerobatics. I got very into 'Profile Planes' because I wanted a plane that 'acted' like the simulator. I can't even remember the names of the planes I used to build but they resembled 'The Kantana or The Electric Shock' from precision aerobatics of today. I still have a profile Ultimate Bipe (my all time fav) hanging up.
The guys in the club back in the 90's finally gave in and bought a sim when they realized I could also fly heli's and now I was doing inverted flat spins all the way to the ground and recovering in hovers from inverted harriers... this was in 1992ish. The guy who sold me the profile had a video of his flyer harrier landing on picnic tables so I had to learn that, of course... and he taught me how to inverted flat spin over the phone
So I've been in the 3d universe when A. it wasn't cool, B. nobody believed the sim was worthy, and C. people considered it both hazardous and showing off
In 2001 I stopped flying for a pretty long time, probably up until recently. 911 was a big reason at first because I flew on base and after 911 the security went through the roof. Having my car searched each time I got to the field got old VERY FAST. Life also got in the way of the hobby with two kids and college funding required.
Fast forward to recently, I fly on farm fields by myself and practice my 3d antics... I have a few BNF's I got to quickly get back into the hobby, a lil Pits Bipe, that AS3X little auto hoverer... and most recently I just finished the '17' version of the Crack Laser as recommended by someone I flew with on the Phoenix Simulator in an online flying simulation. The Crack Laser does exactly what I want, when I want... I can walk to the flying field with it flying slowly over my head or in front of me the whole way to the field. It can go a million feet high in 2 seconds and rifle roll like a pattern ship on steriods OR fly 2' from my face and has the responsiveness of a 18 year old jet fighter pilot even though I'm WAY older than that
I found this forum because I was looking at the 'new' aerobatics over the last decade and needed to see how folks were doing stuff
For me, someone who has been out of the hobby for a while after being in it heavily, the MOST impressive 'newer' move is rolling harriers and rolling loops... Not that I wasn't doing low rolling circles decades ago, but NEVER at the roll rate I see today or as close to the ground! The sport has come a long way into accepting MY type of old school flying and maybe after getting better at the new maneuvers I might even go see what's happening at the local club(s)... nah...
I think I'll keep with my original advisers advice. 'Just learn from flying and burn fuel' In this case burn energy! Oh, one last thing, THANK GOODNESS FOR ELECTRIC!
