Reports from El Mirage - Saturday

jdalexa

Gold Member
Joined
Mar 30, 2004
Messages
629
Location
Woodland, CA
Aircraft
Cessna 140
Total Flight Time
850
In the continuing coverage from El Mirage by the PRA Action News Team....

Again, it started clear and beautiful. Next to no wind and pretty chilly and a number of us were up and buzzing around the lake bed enjoying the calm, the flat, and the flying. By 11:00, the winds had returned with a vengance and other than a few intrepid types - lead by Scott Heger, most of us stayed on the ground again.

This time, I have my notebook. So.....

The first shots are air-to-air shots of Dave Dunn in his RAF-2000. It's a really beautiful ship and there will be more pix later.
 

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Next is another air-to-air photo-op that I did with Jarron Genzlinger in his Bandit Ultralight and Glan Patterson in his really, really nicely done yellow Gyrobee. It's 503 powered and he made all of the parts except for the bolts. Very excellent craftsmanship. More on that one later.
 

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The first is me taxiing back after the Ken Brock memorial fly-by. We had 6 participants and it all went perfectly.

The 2nd shot is of part of the fly-by as we approached the flightline.
 

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A partial shot along the flightline. front to rear

Tim Ehlert's white Sport Copter
John Alexander's green Dominator
Tom Carlisle's yellow Dominator
(Name missed) green benson
Dave Dunn's red RAF-2000
 

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Here I am with my experimental personal head mounted rotorcraft. The wind was whipping and I was having problems with blade flap. I later installed a bensen style overhead control bar for the rotor system and it worked a lot better. The crow hops were..... less than overwhelming.
 

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A really nice Robinson R-44 (4-place) that came to visit and play.
 

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This is Hirth powered helicopter. I didn't get the type of chopper it was. Hopefully someone will correct me.
 

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Scott Heger is tearing it up at dusk in his 582 powered SportCopter. On friday, he was able to hover his gyro 5 feet off the ground for around 3 minutes. The wind was ripping.

Scott gave a great show the whole weekend with what that ship will do. Scott was also the "Man and Machine" award recipient for this year.

Pictures 2 and 3 are the same one - I'm just going over them again and cropped #3 differently. Better effects I think.
 

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James Lee flying his very very clean, very minimalistic 503 powered GyroBee. It's got Brock blades, the 503 and not much else. The thing flys really nicely though.

He has an electric pre-rotator that plugs into a large battery on the ground via a regular 3-prong plug. Once pre-rotated, he drives off and the plug separates, leaving the battery behind. A unique solution to carrying a heavy battery.
 

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More great dusk shots. This is the green Benson. The owner lives out at the lake next to the Brock ranch.
 

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Lastly... some shots out across the lake bed at dusk. Man... this is just beautiful contry.
 

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John, Thanks so much for the report & pics! It's the next best thing to being there.

I am terribly sorry to hear about Mike's mishap, but happy to hear that he is OK!

I think the name of the little heli is The Helisport from Taiwan, did it fly much?

I see that you have had to resize your pics for posting & they get smaller. I must figure out the way to stop that from happening.

BTW, I personally knew the man who built your dominator from scratch, in his machine shop. His name was George Lenhart. He also made the cheek plates for my 2 place machine. I can't believe his baby now resides in California.

Keep the pics coming & thanks alot !
 
John
Nice meeting you at the Rotordyne display. ( I am the guy that asked if you were doing the pictures on the forum) I meant to thank you for the excellent coverage you have been giving us of El Mirage Freedom Flyin. Your efforts on the forum and PRA sites are greatly appreciated. I think most members will join me in a resounding THANK YOU.
 
Hey Alf

Hey Alf

Alf
Thank you also for the pictorial coverage. It was great to find your efforts as my cheesy Fugi only ended up with about 10 out of 50 or better pictures taken. :o
 
Actually...

Actually...

Actually... I took over 170 pictures on Saturday while out there. Those are just the 'best' of what I took. I almost wish I got more wide shots of everything rather than close ups.

Also, here I have to thank Rony Lidor for taking me for a ride in his R-44.
 
I'm using a Sony Cybershot camera. Since I don't have decent image processing tools, the trick is to take pics from far enough away that the subject is large enough to see and I can crop away the excess to get a picture of proper dimensions.

I've got some sunday pics of the diehards before I got on the road at 8:30 this morning and will post them in a little while.
 
Glen Patterson in his 503-powered gyrobee enjoying the evening air.
 

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