The weather is great. Mid 70's. No rain. Ground was a little wet from rain the night before, but no rain during the day of the event. Partly cloudy. And 8-10mph winds with gusts to 15 from time to time.
Got to see a few people I only usually see at the event. Glew a bunch of flights and saw some great flying too. We had sponsorship from Walt's Hobbytown (mainstay local hobby shop for the area) and from BK Designs (Bert and Suzi really did us a solid kicking in a bunch of raffle prizes for us). It was all great. Except it wasn't all great...
I don't know if it was all the bad weather we've had this spring and people wanting to be elsewhere on a rare nice day, or what, but attendance by pilots and spectators was way down. Of the 11 registered pilots (only 10 of which made it to the event), only 4 flew (myself included). My club's helicopter contingent has been dwindling over the last 4 or 5 years. We have two new pilots in training this year, for the first time in a few years. But by and large it appears to be a dying segment of the hobby for our membership. Some diehards remain interested and flying, but it is a far cry from what it once was both for our weekly heli nights and for our annual Heli Jam. Airplane flying remains quite popular among our membership. FPV drone flying and racing has not caught on, with only 2 or 3 of us showing any kind of interest, and that is fairly tepid.
I'm honestly not sure if I'm going to put on the event next year. We'll have something, but I think it is going to be very low key. No prep work and setup effort. Just a day on the weekend we set aside for helicopter flying getting field priority. We'll fire up the grill. Get some flying in. Shoot the shit. And that's it. It's too much work for something that's become so poorly attended to keep it going. Hopefully it will pick up in interest again at some point and we can fire up the event machine again. But it's clear that at least here for this event and club, helis are not the in thing anymore.
Oh, and I crashed my Goblin 700 KSE. Don't know the full damage yet. At least a main gear, canopy, tail and main blades, a link or two, probably some servo gear sets (don't feel stripped, more like the shafts in the servo got bent), a tail belt, tail fin, and some tail parts (shaft and/or hub). Boom got away clean. Frames and skids too. Expecting main shaft or some part in the head to need replacing too once I start pulling things apart. Going to be an expensive one. Damn ground. It was going so well up until that point.
