The Altoona R/C Club Funfly was held on September 18, 2003.  The link to the flyer for the event is: 2003 Funfly Flyer.

The Event was a great success.  A FunFly in itself is a great event, but is made even better by out of town guests. "Many Thanks" to all our members and to all visiting guests for stopping by.  Besides great flying from our members, Ben Phillippi put on an awesome helicopter demonstration.  Very Impressive!  Troy Dermota visited from the State College R/C Club and flew two models that were very fast.  Bob Whittington made it up from West Virginia with his impressive squadron of planes.  My brother Steve and I made several drops with a Radio Controlled Parachutist. ( He only ended up in the trees once.)  I also learned an important lesson: If you let an R/C Parachutist drop a couple of hundred feet before you open his chute, he'll end up with the equivalent of two torn rotator cuff type injuries (stripped servo gears for each arm).  Although the length of freefall was very impressive.  Nursing his injuries, the R/C Parachutist made it back to the field.  There was also a balloon run that several members competed in to win a gallon of fuel.  Tom Weyandt's self imposed inverted dives at the balloon put the competition on more of a level playing field.  

Chic Wallack won the raffle for the donated airplane kit.  You could say that Chic had it coming after losing his awesome Spitfire due to a mechanical failure.  Great food was cooked by Master Chef Steve Dalansky.  Thanks Steve.  There are 4 pages in the picture Gallery which can be seen by clicking the gallery link above.  I know that images of some planes were left out, my apologies to those pilots.  We'll catch you in 2004.

Thanks go out to our Sponsors: Unkel Joe's Woodshed for their donations and W.S. Lee for the use of their truck and canopy. And a "Special Thanks" to all the members who brought food and supplies to help out.  And a Big Thanks to Arlene Bush and Will Haggans' Wife for running the radio impound and selling the raffle tickets.  And I would like to send out an additional "Thanks" to Joe and Arlene Bush, Steve Dalansky, Chris Beglin and Ken Frye in helping to identify the pilots and the planes from the photos from the 2003 Altoona R/C FunFly. Next year's FunFly will be even bigger and better.

If you have any additional FunFly comments or photos  please send them to me, 

Paul Dalansky ( email: rutanman@adelphia.net )

 

 

Web Page By Paul Dalansky, 2004