Practice Day 2

Welcome to day 2.  Practice got a little more intense today.  Wow.  Everyone is going fast.  I am excited to be racing with this crew.  The practice line up was hours long today.  I think I got in three flights - maybe four.  There are great looking birds in the line up.  57 pilots have registered for the race starting tomorrow. We had a pilots' meeting today.  The Valley Flyers club is doing a great job organizing this race and is bringing top notch help so we can have fun.  Travis Flynn and Doug Kilibrew have done a great job getting everything organized.  

It was another great day in the California sun.  About 18C or 65F today.  Light winds and sunshine.  As the intensity turned up today, some birds were lost.  Casualties today were Gabriel Tahan and John McDermott due to bad air around pylon #3, Barry Lever from the UK lost his model likely due to a power plug coming loose from the receiver at pylon #1 and near the end of the day, Mike Tallman lost his racer seemingly due to an aileron servo lock out coming around pylon #3.

The Valley Flyers field is a great place to fly.  An excellent facility all around.  it is a perfect setup for pylon with a takeoff pad and landing strip straight down the runway towards pylon #1.

The Canadian crew finished tuning today. We are ready to race tomorrow!  I'm tired and not much more to say at this point.  Somehow my thinking is blurred a bit by the 36" pizza and beer that showed up in the hotel tonight for dinner.  <Burrrp>   It seems that the Russells, Batch, Grunk and Scott ended up in the Canadian pit again tonight.  There seems to be a pattern here.  We will blame any cuts we get tomorrow on them.

More tomorrow when there will be some real racing and results to report.  Thanks for reading. 

Stay thirsty my friend!

Kevin Umbach launches for brother Al during practice

Condolences to Mike Tallman and ALL the pieces of his Vendetta