RCU Forums - What a Day to Fly!!!!

This is an Email I sent to the Members of my club PRCC http://www.geocities.com/prccinc/ after The club pres one other officer and I Got caught in a fast moving Kansas storm.

Hi all what a day to fly. Around 5:00 the wind died down and it started cooling off so Tom, Kevin and I all headed to the airfield. Besides it’s being 90 degrees 200% humidity and no breeze it was a pretty nice night. There was some slight cloud cover coming in but nothing to worry about. I flew one flight successfully, then we all just kind of stood there looking at the clouds and wondering if we shouldn't just go home since it was so nice. We just hated to waste such good weather flying when we could have been mowing our yards or painting our houses. You know doing something constructive, and no I don't mean putting a model together. The clouds grew darker and darker and long crooked beams of light started flashing all around us and thunder started to clap. This was kind of unnerving being we were standing under a tin roof complete with a lightening attracting steel spike that sticks 3-5 ft above it (wind sock). Sprinkles start hitting the ground and "Tom says, I think it's gonna rain" I say, "yep looks like about 100% chance", About this time Tom decides he should start putting things back in his truck. Good idea and not a second too soon I might add. Well tom gets the leer loaded and I start disassembling my planes when the drops the size of golf balls start coming down. I load a wing and then a fuselage then another wing and another fuselage and then it starts to hail. The three of us decide that the best place to wait out the storm is in a building with 2 1/2 open sides, and a tin roof with lightening attracting spike. How we came up with this brainstorm I have no idea. The wind starts to blow and raindrops the size of Jason’s 33% Edge begins to fall sideways from the south. We decide the best place to wait out the storm and avoid being drown is in the north west corner of the building. Kevin notices there is a slight leak in the roof and we all pause to gander at it for a few seconds. Then Tom and Kevin mention the cyclonic motion of the wind as it switches to the south east then the east and raindrops the size of Volks wagons start slamming into us. At this point we are all on our way to being drenched, and elect that the best place to wait out this storm, after all is in our vehicles and not in a building with 2 1/2 open sides, one of which tunnels rain like the ram air system on a 442 olds. Well we all got soaked and no one was injured and no planes were lost so I guess it was a pretty good day for flying.
I make the motion that we put a drop down cover on the East Side of the building and ground it for future bad weather flying.
Happy Landings,
Joe