Airplanes are NOT Skeet, and I Stepped On A Dead Thing!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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My husband has dragged me into the strange world of remoted control aircraft. This Saturday, we spent most of the day with his fly buddies at the little airplane field, which, by some weird coincidence, is near the big airplane field I normally fly the one-to-one scale planes out of.

Oh, the title - catchy, huh?

Well, there’s this RC field (not ours) near I-65 just north of Rte 30 were one of the neighbors has taken to shooting RC planes out of the sky. This does not do anything for the flight performance of said model airplane. In fact, the guys are getting a little peeved.

More to the point, the FBI and the FAA are getting peeved about it, because they take a very dim view of people shooting at airplanes of any size (yes, the FAA - like I tell people, those things are real airplanes - they’re real small airplanes but yes, they ARE “real planes”)

There is a $3,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the gentleman who got bored with shooting clay pigeons. There’s also some concern that he might either mistake a small general aviation airplane for a model, or maybe just “move up” in targets. So if any of ya’ll have info, let me know… or let the FBI/FAA/whoever know.

Since I also fly my “real big planes” over that area I sort of have a personal interest in the matter, too.

Anyhoo… on to the second part of the title…

I stepped on a dead thing

Yes, really!

I’m sooo proud of myself - no girly scream, just an *>urk< * of disgust.

I was out in the woods looking for a lost Aerobird Extreme, wandering about the weeds and prarie grass when it happened. I Stepped on Something

Sort of a soft hairy hump o’ stuff, with the delicate sound of cracking/crunching bones.

:eek: Ewwwwwwwwwwww!

Fortunately, it had been dead long enough not to reek really horribly, but it was so gross! About the size of a large raccoon. Heck, it might have been a raccoon at one point. I don’t know - it was pretty far gone.

Yes, yes, little episodes like this are, in fact, why I prefer to wear my hiking boots when tromping through weeds bigger than I am. I won’t bring up the time I stepped - barefoot - on a live mouse in the bathroom one pre-dawn morning. :eek: :eek: (Yes, there was a lot of screaming on that one).

Oh, and about that prarie grass… yes, real tallgrass prarie grass… this ain’t the stuff you grow on your lawn. Right now it’s standing six to seven feet tall (two meters for those of you outside the US) and it’s abrasive and it has sharp edges that will slice open bare skin. This is wild grass. It’s thick, too - two people can stand 10 feet apart and simply not see each other at all. And last year’s growth is all tangled on the ground about knee-deep, so when you walk you can’t see your feet. And the ground is uneven and soft - like walking on nerf balls. Through knee-deep snarls of wire.

I’m buying a machete. No joke. Anyone got suggestions for what to look for in a machete, and how to use one? It’s either that or a flamethrower, and since there’s at least two underground gas pipelines in the vicinity I should probably keep my pyro tendencies under control.

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Those are like the ultimate skeet though. A regular skeet just goes sching hooooo out of that thrower a pow pow you can just pop them off. Not them human controlled things though. They go waaaaaaaa zzzzzzzzz loop de loop roll spin all straight up and down like. It is a real sport to hit one of them and it took me a few tries before I can bag them consistently. Now, they are mighty poor eating but it is more fun bagging a couple of them things than a few ducks any day.

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Some kids in Fort Hope, Ontario, have used one-to-one scale planes on take-off for skeet shooting.

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Ya know, somehow I think the guys with the lovingly crafted 1/4 scale warbird replicas that came down in many pieces don’t think it’s quite so funny.

And I’m kinda glad I don’t live in Fort Hope.

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Now, if this shotgunning knucklehead were to take his own RC airplane and attempt to ram the other ones, that would be kind of cool. . .

Can you imagine a little dogfight with RC airplanes?

I hear you though Broomstick. I used to go shooting in Arizona in a popular, yet remote little gulch about 10 miles outside of town. Some local yahoos about two miles up the road would follow people to this gulch, set up a pigeon thrower a hundred yards or so away up on a hill, and start shooting clays. The problem was, they would intentionally shoot so the shot would fall on top of you (it would sound like it was raining). I got pissed off at them one day, and sent a few rounds over their heads. I didn’t get ‘lead rain’ anymore after that.

Tripler
I still think a little dogfight would be cool.

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Wow, I think that skeet shooter is going to hell for that. Not only are some of those planes pricey, they’re a pain in the ass to build.

My dad got into RC flying recently (he even practices on a rc flight sim these days) and is building his own plane. He’d probably take his own life if someone shot down his plane…

Actually, some people do sort of dogfight their RC’s. My parents saw a sort of flag-jousting competition some time ago. Evidently, it was quite cool.

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Yeah, there are guys heavily into “combat” RC - usually trailing streamers off their models which they try to chew up in each other’s props. There are also “laser-tag” attachments, too - but even then some care is usually taken to avoid actual destruction.

Some of the locals have spent $6,000-$8,000 on their 1/3 and 1/4 scale planes, some even have retractable landing gear or trail smoke on command while doing aerobatics.

Then there are the RC helicoptors - which, like their full-size counterparts, are about 3 to 4 times the cost of a comparable fixed wing.

And finally - the minijets. Actual minature jet-powered aircraft, run on standard jet fuel, and the engines *alone * have prices up around $10k, 15K, or even 20k.

These are not $3 balsa wood gliders being shot to smithereens. OK, some of them are el cheapo’s - hardware special “sturdy birdies” and low-end foamies, but Mr. Skeet is not discriminating in his targets. And even the cheap styrofoam RC’s still require time and effort to build and adjust for flight.

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[rideofthevalkyries]Micro cameras mounted on observation planes, then in come the heavies . . .[/rideofthevalkyries]