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The administrators at the Firley YMCA, namely, George Hartsfield
& Craig Lammers, have been great to work with and they agreed to allow us to
use their facility at a very reasonable rate. They have been very
hospitable and open to our request to use their facility as an indoor
flying venue. On a cold Saturday evening in November, a few JCRC members
gathered at the YMCA for some test flights. The indoor tennis courts at
the "Y" offer a perfect place for indoor flying with one bad
exception and we wanted to find out how it would work before opening
this event up to several pilots. Inside the large area that forms four
indoor tennis courts, it turns out that there are large nets that hang
from support wires strung across the width of the room to separate one tennis
court from another. Unfortunately these support wires are not currently retractable. They could easily be set up with a winch,
but there may be a significant cost (that is, in terms of the Club's
budget) involved to make the cables
removable or to at least get them down out of the way during the flying
sessions. (UPDATE! The YMCA has made it feasible for the wires to
come down during our indoor flying events! Our first one will be held on
Saturday, February 19th at 6:30 P.M.)
Stacy Gilmore brought his brand new GWS Slow Stick to
the "Y," as well as another Cox EZ foamie trainer that he has converted over
to electric to try flying indoors. Shaun Zimmerman brought three of his
electric planes to try as well. Also there to lend a hand was Kent
Imhoff, Jim Branson, Roger Geller, Chris & Andrew Byrd. Zimmerman
was first up with a GWS Cub designed for indoor flying. We found that
the planes generally flew well inside the facility, there seemed to be
some of the same issues that were experienced at the Ice Arena, in that,
at certain locations inside the facility it appeared that the plane
would bobble unexpectedly, but nothing that caused any crashes, just a
higher level of 'pucker.'
We really wanted this to work out, but as you can see
from the pictures (below), the support wires were preventing us from being able
to fly comfortably and made it nearly impossible to do anything other
than straight & level flight (with non-3D type airplanes). While Zimmerman's Cub was passing over
the top of one of the wires, the antenna that dangles down below the
plane caught a hold of the wire as if it were an arresting hook on an
aircraft carrier. It's a wonder that the antenna wasn't ripped out of
the receiver, but it didn't do any damage and the plane flew again
moments after it was retrieved and it was also a good laugh for
everyone. In fact, there was lots of laughing, so in that regard the
event was a success, but in the end we had to admit that the wires just
made it very difficult to comfortably fly without tearing up equipment.
Below are some photos taken the night of the test
flights. Click on the thumbnail photos to view larger versions.
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