Final pics....enjoy.

Mike W

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Strong East wind was the prescription for the day. I had to thread my way up to the Powerline Road (East facing) side of the landfill with the rental Prius. It was a tough go without the clearance of my CX-7 (sniff, still in the body shop). Once up, I found a large turnout and lots of good toys in the air already. With a good wind, 10-15mph, and lots of strong thermals everything you could think of was up....hotliners, foamies, 3M TD planes, and slopers.

Enjoy the pics.....

Mike W

My wife and I went to naples Tuesday night to have dinner with my brother and family since they are here on vacation for a few days - on the way home a panther hit us while we were doing 70 mph on a dark stretch of highway on way to alligator alley (I-75). The airbags even came out - it was very exciting in a bad way. Since it was too late that night to get a rental car, the tow truck driver dropped at us a nice new LaQuinta for the night. Luckily we are fine!!! Not so much for the car as you can see. We both had red eyes from the airbag smoke - the engine was smoking too - the result of the oil and transmission coolers bursting. Because an an angry/hurt panther could be off in the weeds, the first troopers arriving, warned us to stay in the vehicle and searched with guns drawn. Luckily for us (not the panther), he was found dead about 100 ft from the road with his GPS collar still attached. The wildlife officers said he was a male, about 4 years old, 150+ lbs. They had been tracking him in this area, but he had never crossed I-75 here before (until tonight). It's a shame, because there's only
about 100 Florida panthers in the wild.

Naples news article:
http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2010/.../panther-kill/

Always fun in South Florida

Mike W

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Enjoy.

Lots more good stuff.....

More pics.

Saturday was a solid West wind all day long. Winds were in the 10-15mph range but quickly esculated to 20mph with gusts well over 30mph. With many members getting last minute emails about Saturday's 8 hour LSF flight attempt we had quite a crowd. Parking was at a premium. Air traffic was pretty intense, I counted 12 planes up at one point. We kept most flyer's on the left side of the slope and Gordon and his Ava on the right. Whenever Gordon's plane came low because of "bad air" we cleared the slope so that he could "scratch" out some lift on the slope. There was one close call with some radio interference, but once we sorted that out it was smooth sailing with Gordon reaching 8 hours just past 4:40pm.
Thanks to much last minute work by our VP Paul Mittendorff and Waste Management everything came off without a hitch. Thank you Paul and all our Waste Management hosts!

Mike W

Gordon Buckland acheived his 8 hour slope flight requirement on our hill today. It was an impressive feat. Less than 150 people have ever achieved that in the world and it has never been done in Florida (that I'm aware of).
Pictures and discussions are located here:
https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/show...1209264&page=3

Congrats Gordon!
Mike W

PS I'll post my regular Saturday slope comments and pictures later.

Final pictures.

Mike W

More to follow.

More....

More pics.....

More pics for your viewing pleasure.