I HAVE to tell you this story...

Last Saturday my club had a well advertised event for the local town festival. There were going to be demonstration flights, a trainer cord hook-up so people could try it etc.

One of the events was going to be "Hit the plane with a paintball" for 25 cents a shot, where we were going to let people shoot at a Duraplane with paintball guns.

Well, the event was a bust It was just too windy. No one wanted to risk flying in the stiff breeze that was blowing. Not to dissapoint the crowd, I did manage one good flight on my Ultra Sport 40, omly to get hit by a gust on landing and tearing out a retract in the grass.

But the crowd were really dissapointed to miss out on the paintball event. The guy with the DuraPlane didn't even show up due to the winds.

So I decided to try something. I cranked up my old Seamaster. This particular one I had built with a foam wing, and instead of knocking out the holes in the plywood sides, I had glued them in and painted it. So I figured it was sturdy enough to "take a hit or two".

After making several flights, no one was able to hit it. So on the final flight, I slowed it down. THIS THING WAS AMAZING! It crawled through the wind at speeds so slow that I thought surely it was going to stall, but it just kept flying. It was all I could do to keep it from being blown all over the place, but it responded to all of my inputs like a well trained dog. And yes... it got PLASTERED! All in all, it probably took over 30 hits. Total damage: One of the knock-out holes got knocked out, and one paintball went clean through the vertical fin. Results: The crowd was happy, The Club was happy, and I was delighted with this little airplanes performance!