The mosquitos were indeed huge. However, they were not a problem if you just sprated a little repelent on your exposed skin. In fact the mosquitos were not even seen much on Sunday at all. Maybe they don't like the sunshine and prefer to stay in the damp forest areas when the sun comes out. There were still some puddles on the field on Sunday but they were smaller than Saturday. My strategy was to make a point of walking through a puddle or two early in the morning so that my feet became completely soaked. That way the puddles were no longer an obstacle when I was flying since my feet were already wet.

We did not have to cut the tree down to get Don's plane. John Jenks went home to collect the tree cutting tools. While he was gone I climbed a pine tree near the tree that Don's plane was in. Pine trees have branches all the way to the ground and are almost as easy to climb as a ladder. This pine tree had only stumps of branches left at the lower levels so it was an almost perfect ladder. I climbed up to where there was a nice, sturdy perch about two thirds of the way as high as Don's plane. The SJSF has one of those nice telescoping lineman's poles that is about 50' (15m) long. From up in the pine tree I directed the small hooked end of the pole while Don Vetter and Steve Young handled the fat end of the pole from the ground. Doing this we were able to first pull a couple small branches out of the way and then get a hold on the plane's flaperon linkage and pull the plane out of the tree. By the time John got back with the tree cutting tools, Don, Steve and I were on our way to the motel with the undamaged plane.

Phil, I want to nominate you for Humanitarian Modeler of the year. Not only did I see the pictures of you rescuing the airplanes from the trees, but you also timed for my dad and helped him greatly and then to top it all off, you helped me fix my airplane's mystery glitches. We opted to fix the split wing at home and to really reinforce it well. The fiberglass is down in the basement drying. Also, seeing you offer up to Steve the chance to fly your airplane was amazing. I used to fly sport kites and there were only a few competitors who would take the time to let someone else fly their equipment.

Also, to John, John, Steve, and all the others whose names escape me now for making me feel like I was learning something. You guys put on a top notch event. I can't wait for the next one.

To those who want a copy of the round by round results, I found a site that allowed access to data files. For some reason freeservers doesn't make it easy.

Saturday Scores

Sunday Scores

Sat when flying low behind the tree line I was looking for a low spot to fly through back to the field and flew my 3-4 year old scratch built SGII behind a larger tree to get to there. It wasn’t such a good idea because it didn’t appear on the other side as expected. Oh S**t! My timer Tom Davies and Shane Spickler saw it go down and we all heard the thwack when it hit the tree. My hanger of DLG’s had slowly been whittled down to 1 prior to the SJSF DLG contest. The loss of the plane ended my flying Sat due to the lack of a backup.

I spent the rest of the day Sat. making forays into the swamp looking for the trusty SG and timing for Alan Schwerin. None of the forays however produced any results. At some point I decided to see if I could figure out how to use my handheld GPS to follow the line to my plane. This provided a bit of a diversion to mask the pain of my loss but no results.

At the end of the day a search party was organized and the final search began. After maybe 20-30 minutes of searching Pete Barrell (I Believe) saw the tailfeathers glistening at the very tip top of what turned out to be a 50 foot tall tree. The stump was perhaps 10 inches in dia. And provided no footholds whatsoever for maybe 25-35 feet. Consideration was given to a number of ways to get to the top and the plane. Perhaps a ladder and spikes nailed into the tree for footholds. Perhaps a saw would do the trick. (Being a tree hugger this idea made me a bit ill but is was may spawn at the top of this tree) The SJSF own a 50 ft telescoping fiberglass pole that in combination with Phil’s daring climb of an adjacent pine tree allowed a precise extraction and a new life for my Super Gee.

Flying Sunday was SWEET knowing I was flying with plane that lived again.

For all who helped THANK YOU!

I’d also like to thank John Jenks, John Gallagher, Lunch crew and SJSF for a great contest!

Don,
Yeah, that was me that spotted your plane. I'm not so good at flying but I got lots of practice chasing planes into trees. All day Shane told me to head for the trees to find lift and I thought about your plane. As I drove home, I tried to figure out how a chain saw could lead to a happy ending and could not think of one.
I'm glad you got your plane back.
Vito (Pete)

The results and some photos are posted.

SJSF HLG contest results and photos

John, those photos are awesome. Even better, there's only 2 that I'm in (there is a reason I like to TAKE photos with large cameras). I especially like the one of Dad launching his XP-4 that is kind of cropped panoramic.