thanks for the laugh - great story

...About a forever and a half ago I had a Phoenix 7 with a HOT Rossi on a pipe, retracts etc.... it would SCREAM !!! and being young and brave I had the nerves to handle it (for those that dont know, these were 8-9 pound ballistic rocket pattern planes flown FAST and chewing up GOBS of sky every second ....).

One of my favorite maneuvers to show off my thumbs was to blast off to about 1000' roll inverted and pull through a HUGE split-S leaving me straight and level at about 10' off the runway doing about 120-130 and proceed to do a S.....L....O.....W roll across the length of our huge field

Well, this one time I come screaming out of the split-S almost supersonic right on the deck and proceed to roll but as I got to the 90* point straight in front of me the radio glitched and threw the plane into a very violent Snap flipping and whipping it around a full 360* where I regained control in exactly the same attitude and altitude that I entered

... and I just flew it out to the ROAR's of about 30-40 guys at the field

I tried to keep my knees from knocking too much, flew it out a few more minutes and landed hoping to have the adrenaline drain from my kidneys sometime later in the month, but, was instantly swarmed by the crowd who were ready to sing songs about me and name their first born "Alan" after the daring skill they just witnessed.

... So I went along with it Hey, when you're a kid being made into a legend you dont argue, right ??

About 2 hours later when the buzz quieted down, the old gent who trained me on my Falcon 56 a few years earlier came over and said in a low voice " So ... you got hit ??" (radio intereference...)

I looked at him wide-eyed questioning how he could think such a thing, ready to argue my case ... and we both burst out laughing hysterically !!

I asked, "How'd you know ??"

He said "If you had ball bearings that large you wouldn't be able to walk !!! Now, lets go figure out why you got hit..."

________________________________

That was about 25 years ago - Im not nearly as good as I used to be, and dont fly at that field anymore but I do occasionally stop back in there and every time I do someone remembers me and that flight and the whole story gets told and perpetuated anew for another generation