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.

Very funny, I can see it now!! Brings to mind the old WKRP in Cincinnati episode, where the Weather Guy, (Les Nesman) dropped live turkeys at Thanksgiving!

Thanks Saito, I love the comparison. One thing we did learn early on in the competition was that in the event the donut dropped, to watch the plane and not the donut. Exciting things would happen.

LOL!

Nothing worse than losing your plane then coming home....

"Well what happened to your plane?.......... Lost it looking at a donut."

I have posted this story else where but here it is again...

About 10 years ago or so, I was at the beach (far away from any field or the usual gathering places of the sun worshipers) A nice on-shore breeze brought the plane in when I flew it until it ran out of fuel, cross wind takeoffs and landings were a bit tricky but greatly improved my flying skills. The packed sand from cars driving by made a nice runway.

I was practicing doing 2 rolls in a roll (not the corkscrew kind, the straight line kind) I was about 50 feet up and probally that far out over the water. I happened to notice a string bikini jumping up and down clapping her hands, watching my plane. I must have been inverted during the second roll when I was captivated by the bouncing beauty. I my attention went back to my plane when I realized I couldnt hear the engine any more. Searching the sky, my plane was no where to be found. As a wave crested, I saw it floating in the water. I had to wade out about waist deep to get it back on-shore.

The string bikini never spoke a word to me and continued walking down the beach.

After flushing the engine, repairing and drying the plane and installing a complete new radio system, I had another mishap. A lady and her kids stopped in the tracks on the beach that I used as a runway. I caught it in the corner of my eye while on a landing approach, just in time to power up and fly what seemed like, right up the windshield of the van. I stopped flying at the beach after that.

Bikinis beat donuts any day of the week. Ah, Distractions!

We had a guy years ago in our club get a glider way up high ..he sat down in a lawn chair and watched it slowly circle above.. Another guy sits down next to him and they talk as he flies..He would look at the glider ,look at the friend and talk ..After awhile he gets up goes to get a drink or something and another person at the field says "I thought you were flying your glider?" His jaw drops..he runs back to his radio..nobody ever spotted it..maybe its still up there...

Years ago, I flew at a field not far from a bay. There were a lot of gulls flying over the field. One day, a guy had an old timer way way up there, floating along at near idle. A little while later, he yelled out. It seems that he thought his plane had rolled over into a steap dive and he had no control! As the "plane" got lower, he realized that he''d been "flying" a seagull for who knows how long, and his plane was long gone.

I know what you mean. I was spotting for a friend as he was flying a 2 meter glider. We saw it enter a low cloud and never saw it come out. He liked flying underneath clouds as he said that was where the lift was. I think it was a House-of-Balsa plane. I put a new radio into my Bird of Time and launched it on a high start. When it came off the high start, I realized the controls were backwards. It dove to the ground, went inverted, crossed the field and disappeared in an area the park had just cut down with very high brush piles. We never found the plane, neither did the park as they would return anything they found to us. One of the huge piles had bones at the bottom and a distinct growling sound coming from inside.