Last season when I got deeply into our local electric pylon racing, I thought it was going to be something radically different than what it turned out to be. My mistake.

I thought that most of the club that I joined would be participating. It turned out that just a few from the club raced. Most of the racers were from other clubs and even from 100 miles away.

I thought that my current flying buddies would be interested in the racing, and we could do some practice at our weekday lunch time flys at the arsenal parade grounds. None of my current buddies wanted to build a particular plane with particular gear, much less to race across town with another club. I thought about building two racers and letting a buddy or two race with me, but I hardly managed to keep one pylon plane flying, much less two or three!

I thought we might have several racing "teams", groups that practiced together, perhaps had some sort of uniform or other identifyier. etc. No Way!

I thought we'd talk about the racers and the racing in the club meetings, in our on-line discussions, and in person. Nope.

I realized last season that pylon racing is a very unique sport of interest to only a few people. And it's not something we ever talked about.

All of this may well seem very far off-topic, and it may be. It's hard enough to accomplish the technical stuff involved in developing a new class of racer and organizing some races, much less to do something socially.

Jim