The Fun Fly
About 30 years ago when my club was first getting started, we decided to have a fun fly. Our club started with about 25 beginners and about 4 qualified pilots. It was an interesting time. After a few more people became qualified we invited another club to show us the ropes for a fun fly. They were great and a big help. To get our feet wet in contesting we decided to have a club-only fun fly. Our President was contest director in charge of selecting the events and one he chose was a donut drop using real donuts. On the day of the contest he showed up with a few dozen of Dunkin's finest. We had plywood plates with a piece of broomstick sticking up to hold the donuts on the plane. We rubber-banded the plates to the plane. Then the fun began. The best way to drop a donut is to roll inverted over the target and hold it till the donut drops. Most of the time the donut didn't drop. Glazed donuts can be incredibly sticky. For us three channel operators, I had a Junior Box-Fly with a Veco .19, we had to loop over the target and hold it at the top for the donut to drop. It usually didn't. Glazed donuts are also heavy. My poor Box-Fly would stagger into the air and land hot as I couldn't drop the donut. Anyway, at the end of the contest, no one had hit the target and there were a few donuts scattered around the field. There was even one on the roof of a house behind us and no one would claim it. That was the last donut drop in our club. Anyway, the leftovers didn't go to waste.