[madmax]

A Winter’s Weekend in SoCal..

Friday night, 10pm. Brett (Heydick) and I are throwing darts at Chez Bayless in Huntington Beach. In between charging Lipos and figuring out what to do with the re-kitted mess of an Extra, I mentioned “Dude, you gotta come with me to San Diego tomorrow and check out this new electric IMAC thing they got going!”. “Uh, sure!”. “Dude, let’s go to Trabuco and check out our friends over there on the way back”. “Uh, okay!”. So was the beginning of our one day roadtrip.

Saturday morning at 8:00am, we hit the road to San Diego. It’s a pretty quick shot down there from my parts, right down the coast on The 5 Freeway, off at Sea World Drive, and blammo! A killer electric field that overlooks Mission Bay with a killer backdrop of the classic California beach setting. The boys at Silent Electric Flyers club have started something pretty darn cool – Electric IMAC with a one day format. Pilots competed in one of two classes – Basic and Sportsman. The entire contest rotation lasted 4 hours, and was incredibly low maintenance, and most of all, fun!

Tim Attaway and Steve Dente have brought this concept to fruition through a lot of hard work, and have created a great event for IMAC newbies to take a shot at precision competition. That factor alone was very cool, and these guys deserve major props for all of their hard work.

At the end of the day, our buddy Pedro took first in Sportsman, rounded up by Bruce Brown, and Stephan Villard. Basic saw Steve Neu (yes, that Steve Neu) take the top slot, followed by Randy Marsden and Craig Hunter. From what I observed, the vibe was excellent, and pilots were totally stoked just to have a chance to actually fly and compete.

Great job guys, and a HUGE THANKS to The San Diego Crew for putting this on. We’ll be back in 5 weeks for the next competition – heck, I might even bring down the AJ and give it a whirl!

On the way back from San Diego, Brett and I drove through an area of Orange County called Trabuco Canyon to see our friends from The Trabuco Flyers. These guys have a great facility, and are great to hang out with. When we arrived, I was stoked to see a buddy who haven’t seen in sometime, and is well known on FlyingGiants – Ken Adams! Recently back from deployment, and newly appointed Captain to his own landing craft, Ken was hovering a big 40% Carden Edge owned by Eric, a local club member.

After reacquainting ourselves with some old friends, and making some new, not to be outdone by Ken, I took a pull on Eric’s Carden as well. Brett also got some stick time, and we wrapped up the day with beverages at the field’s killer clubhouse. Watching the sun set on a perfect 80 degree California winter’s day, Brett looked at me with a slow nodding head, and said, “Yup”.

Special thanks to all of our friends in San Diego and Trabuco for the killer time! These guys are Giants Style to the n’th degree, and we’re stoked to be a part of an incredible group of modelers in Southern California.