[RobertV]

Every weekend, the RDRC Travelling Circus has a bunch of stories to tell so this thread is a great place to do it!

Dave posted a pic above but didn't mention the hilarious circumstances behind it. Everyone has an "old" plane that they fly with abandon and to get the most "crowd response", if you know what I mean. Larry Lewis repaired an old H9 Ultra Stik that he rescued from the trash can and rebuilt a while back and it has become known as the "Death Diver" around these parts. He takes it up to a high altitude and does full-power, vertical dives at the ground as the crowd yells "hold it, hold it, hold it" on the way down. Then he puls a hard corner as close to the ground as possible (he doesn't listen to us) and has dragged the grass on more than one occasion as the crowd bursts into cheers. It's amazing that the wings don't fold!

Well, not to be outdone, Dave Hockaday (Tweek) made what was called the "Hefty Bag Challenge" to Larry at a recent event in Vanceboro, NC. Dave has an old Andrews H-Ray (!) with a disctictive Green/Yellow covering job that we have dubbed the "John Deer". He decided to "out-death-dive" Larry or bring the plane home in a trash bag. On his very first dive, the wing popped off and the fuselage buried itself in the wheat field. The rest of us laughed so hard that we fell on the ground and thrashed around for a while. The funniest part is that the 'ole Deer survived pretty well. As you can see in the pic below, the glue joint on the front wing hold-down bulkhead was so old that it literally tore out of the fuselage causing the wing to come off. It will dive again! So we'll have "Hefty Challenge - the Sequel (coming to a theater near you)!