I hope you all had a pleasant Patriots' Day, especially you Red Sox fans.
The forsythia is in bloom, and so are the Dogwood trees, so springtime is officially here. Hooray! I went to Bill Martin Field on Palm Sunday, and found that the Charles River responded to all of the recent rain by covering the access road in about 9 inches of water. My Chevy trailblazer has 10 inches of clearance, so I went in slowly enough that they harbor master would not yell at me for creating a wake. Several other of my flying buddies were also brave enough to ford the waters, and we had a reasonably good day of flying, despite some very gusty winds.
I returned to Bill Martin Field on Easter Sunday, and noticed that the water had completely retreated. The occasional water on the far side of the field had also evaporated. Unfortunately the winds were even worse, and we all had some very challenging flying, especially when landing the planes. The wind was so unpredictable that one of our most experienced pilots wound up having a plane get caught in the top of a tree during his approach from right to left. Hopefully wind conditions will be kind and help the plane to return safely to the ground.
In other related news, I have been in touch with the president of the Charles River Radio Controllers and informed him of our scheduled events for the upcoming year. As always, I invited all members of CRRC to join in our activities or at least come and watch and enjoy. I also discussed their plans for float plane activities, and I was dismayed to learn that CRRC is not going to attempt to have an event in May at Wayland Town Beach, due to complications from an unreasonable home owner in the area that have continued to complain about our airplane activities. This is a disappointment to all of the float plane enthusiasts such as myself. As you probably know, I am a regular patron of RC Buyers Warehouse in Nashua, New Hampshire. One of the salespeople there is a member of a flying club that holds their annual float plane fly in in one of the New Hampshire lakes. This is an annual event that takes place in September. I will be sure to announce the date, time and location of this event, as soon as it is posted at RC Buyers Warehouse.
We had the last session of our indoor flying at the Milford youth center on Friday, April 7. While it was not as heavily attended as other months, it was still a good showing nonetheless. I have attended all of these events so far this indoor flying season, and I want to congratulate everybody who came and participated or just showed up and watched for a while. I want to thank Scott Annis for his efforts in obtaining permission to use the youth center for this purpose, and I strongly urge that our club make this a regular part of our flying season.
I am still working on my Winter Project Night entry, and I hope that you will do the same. Even if your plane is not ready for its maiden voyage, you can still bring it as a show-and-tell item. We will also have regular raffle at the end of the regular meeting business.
Respectfully, John Holcomb, Vice President MMAC.
