LEARNING TO FLY

I need a thumbtack. The nose of my Air Hog (real name) needs just a touch more weight to keep it from porpoising.

Today we had a pretty calm morning and so I took the advantage to learn the R/C controls as I could actually fly for minutes at a time before hitting a tree, or crashing.

Turning downwind, even with a whisper of a breeze, speeds the plane up dramatically, and it's not yet intuitive to me how to get out of a turn cleanly (or even which way the stick moves the plane, since the tiny motors don't have much power, and in any wind, the turn is relatively unresponsive!)

My last flight was exciting... at full throttle it climbed and climbed and climbed. I kept it in tight circles over my field on our property. Then the wind turned it and as I 'corrected' I found it had passed the boundary of my R/C control. Leaving our property, passing over the barbed-wire-encircled very private community behind us.

When last seen, it was maybe 100 feet or more up and going away,as they say, "thataway."

I walked the fenceline but couldn't see it over in what's called The Preserve.

But I know of a place where the barbed wire is just stretched enough that you can crawl between two strands of it to access the forbidden zone. You can't miss it, it's almost behind the sign that says Stay Out You Lower Class Citizens. Carefully, thinking tetanus thoughts, I snuck.

Busted! One of the residents waved me an "I see you and we'll fix that gap right away" friendly wave. I hoped he'd see my R/C antenna and realize what I was doing.

So I trespassed. Forgive me my trespasses. As we forgive those who.... well, you know how that works out. I roamed the neighbor's field and there was no sign of flying machine. I searched the ground, the trees, but nothing. Then I tried turning on the motors by R/C as maybe I could hear them and locate it. No luck. More no luck (I was like the "Can You Hear Me Now" guy on TV, except the answer was NO. But then I did finally faintly hear a whine off in the distance. Somewhere over THERE and UP.

Another tree magnet. Happily I could shake the branches enough to free the Air Hog and beat feet, retrace my steps, my fence squeeze, and declare the day's flying over.

I could grow up to own Jet Blue.