C_Watkins
Posts: 1069
Joined: 6/22/2002
From: Douglasville,
GA, USA
Status: offline
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Well... not bad enough to take pictures of, but it was hilarious, kinda.
It woulda' been funnier if it had happened to someone else, probably 
As usual, I ramble below. It's... well... it's just what I do. Sorry.
Worked late today, so I missed nearly all of our clubs funfly, except for the Limbo.
That's cool, Limbo's one of my favorite events anyhow 
I get in the queue, and we takes our turns. Everyone through on the first two rounds,
but you could have driven a small car under the ribbon, too.
It got dropped pretty low for the next round, and to about 24" for the next.
Now it got exciting... we had one guy rip a wing panel OFF a stick, and another ripped
the landing gear out from under an UltraStick, trying to force it under.(easy fix though)
There was a lot of ribbing about "watch the pole!", etc... going on, and we whittled
the number of contestants down in a hurry, with most letting the gear touch, or cutting the ribbon.
Seemed like every pass was either a "near miss" or a "near hit".
Wouldnt ya know it... on my next pass, which put me into the final three, I made it under just fine.
It looked pretty sweet, and I turned around and went for a nice high AOA landing like I'd
been doing after every run... you know, the tailskid-first ones with almost zero rollout
Anyhow, the breeze died out on me, as I was still about 7' high, and I saw that I was
gonna go long... which would've put the plane in my lap, or into the near pole... take yer pick.
I chose to goose it and go around. Whoa... watch the pole!
I swung it hard over to miss the near pole, going over the ribbon, and thought I had the
far pole cleared by a couple feet, so I killed the throttle to maintain a low altitude.
TWANG! Hmmm... that's what I get for thinking, I guess.
The top of the far pole caught the inside of my right aileron, near the hingeline, swung the
plane 180, and slammed it into the pavement almost nose first, from 8' high.
Thankfully, the prop and landing gear took the brunt of the fall, and after a tweak to the
gear, a new prop, and a small piece of packing tape over the gash in the aileron covering,
I was ready for the next round After none of us made it again, twice through, we called
it a draw, and totalled the scores for the day. I think the pressure finally got to all of us,
and my nerves were shot to hell after "the incident" anyhow... I probably couldn't have done 4', myself
(Longaly, who posts here occasionally, came in second overall... and was also in the final Limbo tie.)
Anyways... the Magic is dinged now.
Taking it apart, I noticed that the leading edge is scrunched a tiny bit at the saddle,
and it's definitely starting to show signs of being a "used plane" now, all around.
Time to start trying some stupid stuff... so watch this space for future pics of "The Big One"
If it ever looks like I'm gonna hit the top of the limbo pole again, I'll shoot for the
center of an inboard wing bay, just to watch it twirl to the ground, down the pole 
Or maybe I can just quit trying to showoff, and land like a normal person, next time.
Yathink?
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Weather vane impressions? - 
