OK As Arnold said, I'am back For this first takeoff although the weather was perfect it was a bit chilly and this boat had no protection from the 31 mph it was capable of indicated by the Sat nav. So I did not know if I should wear a jacket under the life preserver or not so we went with shirt sleeves. There would be no opportunity to peel or add coats once we were airborn and underway.

Ok to the first takeoff (yup there turned out to be two for the day). This boat is rather slow to climb onto the step and during this period the bow presents a massive visual block that is very difficult to avoid if attempting to take off with the airplane. On the first attempt the bow momentarily blocked the airplane so I bailed out of the takeoff and we stopped to try agine. This time we went back down river about a 1/4 mile from the airplane and started the bow out so it was on step before we reach the airplane at which time I started the takeoff run and this worked very well with a beautiful takeoff with all the beautiful full fuel glistening in those tanks up top. What a pretty site.

Were on our way. The very first thing to note was it was a bad choice to not ware our jackets it got downright cold as we worked up to the the 31mph. We could only resolve to just tough it out. The next thing that became almost as uncomfortable was the choice I made in sunglasses. They were large but not quite full wrap around at that 31 eye watering became a real problem and I could only track the airplane with my head in certain directions and it became neccessary to keep the airplane only in one segment of my visual horizon or the watering would have become a big problem. This was a mistake and and I was kicking myself for not obtaining a good set of goggles to wear over my glasses.

Finally I asked to slow the boat and we ending up cruzing at 23mph. Now the airplane expecially with this load needs to fly at around 40 to 45 mph and so this trip made a lot of circling mandatory and reduced the airplanes range to an unknown degree. Well we settled down to the various problems and on we flew. Now the boat driver had plenty of his own problems with sandbars in areas we never expected them and this was at its worst north of Needles not further south below the canyon cliffs where it is well known and charted. He had to do a lot of dodging and at times we were in just inchs of water which made us very happy we were in a jet boat. Robby (my teammate) said at one point he glanced back and he could see sand spitting out the jet.

having worked our way through this sand bar area the next challange which was totally unexpected, it was a road bridge which we did not expect here since it was not on our chart[X(]. I have flow over bridges, powerlines and underpasses on land RC cross countrys before which entails stabilizing at a fairly high altitude on the same course as the vehicle and roughly directly above the follow vehicle. If the airplane is faster than the follow vehicle then its neccessary to time a stabile run in so both vehicles cross at about the same time and with the airplane roughly directly over head. Ok for this bridge it should be no problem and since I could not look at the bridge coming to time my circles for the run in Robby called distances in hundreds of feet as we approached and this allows everything to go great with a perfect over/under crossing.

Passing south of Needles now things had reached an equalibrium and Ya still cold but we both managed and the rivers direction had changed enough to improve the suns angle for me especially since I was limited in my visual hemishere by the eye watering.

We both were begining to enjoy things and as we neared the I-40 highway bridge which was a mile or so ahead when rather suddenly it happened the boat ran dry of fuel so the decision was made to go ahead and land the airplane for the the changeover of tanks which required physically shifting hoses. This landing was a lot of fun and real pretty we switched the boat fuel tanks but decided to go ahead and put in to a place called pirates cove to also refuel the boat since a landing had already been made. This beautiful port was fortunately just hundreds of yard away so we motored on in with a lot curios looks with this airplane perched on its holder in front of the driver.

I unfortunately have about typed myself out agine and will have to take another break to continue the adventure later, Sorry.

John[8D]