Even with a week of some turmoil leading up to it, we had a beautiful day for a launch. Due to an agreement between the city and the farmer, the haying of the Amesbury field wasn’t started until after the 20th of July. With some weather in the middle of the week, the area we use for our launches hadn’t been touched by Thursday and wouldn’t be ready for our use on Saturday. The prospect of postponing the launch one week didn’t seem to be the best option so we looked at swapping the Acton launch scheduled for the 9th of August with the Amesbury launch. A few phone calls to the various city and town agencies involved and the swap was made. While prepping for his trip to Colorado for NARAM, Bill was still able to keep the webpage updated with the latest in this fluid situation. Most of our members seemed to pick up on the change through the website or the email that was sent out. One did only read the headline as far as the “A” in the launch site name and went to Amesbury first; he finally made it to Acton to join in the fun.
Alan got started earlier than anyone by driving from New Hampshire down to Saugus to pick up Bill's truck and the club trailer (and get a little coaching from Bill along with assurance the truck's brakes had been repaired) and he was off to Acton. He may have raised a few hackles on the drive out there but the trailer made it without any issues. Alan even did a great job of backing it into place. At the end of the day, he reversed it all to get back to Bill's and eventually back home with his own vehicle. Alan will no doubt thank all the volunteers who worked at the field for LCO, RSO and food service but we should all thank him for stepping in so Bill could go enjoy NARAM.
Of our 223 launches, we had some very nice flights for a windy day with only a few finding their way to the trees. Cub Scout Pack 615 joined us for the day and, along with some usual drag races, we had a 5-way drag that was a crowd pleaser. There were a couple of catos that caught everybody’s attention. Jim Flis flew some of his future kits and Jason even took some time away from his table to fly his smaller Patriot a few times. There were some battery issues with the sound system but there are plans to improve the whole thing this winter (or sooner, maybe).
When some photos get posted in the Gallery, I’ll tie one to this article to give it a little more appeal. We’ll see you in Amesbury on 09 August.
