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The Fun Fly this year was a terrific event.  The weather was excellent and we began getting set up at around 8 am.  Roy Lightle brought the pop and ice, I brought the hot dogs and BBQ.  I also brought prizes and got them set up on a table.  We got some signs posted and began signing up contestants.  Rhonda Benedict took charge of collecting the fees and organizing the concession and raffle sales.

This year we planed to combine our swap meet and fun fly into one event and we planned to get the swap meet started first thing.  It appeared that there wasn't much activity with the swap meet part of this event and there could be some good reasons for this.  I overheard some of the guys saying that they didn't have much that they wanted to part with.  Some guys said that they couldn't afford to spend any money.  One thing that might have been a factor is that after loading up our fun fly equipment there wasn't much room for swap meet items.  We might want to explore this situation before we consider another swap meet.

At a little after 10 am John Peterson got the contest started with a pilots meeting.  There were a total of 14 contestants entered in the fun fly and most of them were from Pendleton, Tri-Cities and Walla Walla.  The pilots meeting went well and John did a good job of explaining the events and fun fly rules.

We began with the Timed Flight event.  This year we modified this event by adding some flying tasks to perform during the flight time.  The idea was to try distracting the pilots timing so they would have a harder time deciding when to land and stop the clock.  Overall I didn't see much difference in the times however, the added maneuvers were a fun.  Delbert Danly encountered mechanical problems with his plane during this round and had a bad crash.  He earned fun fly points however, he wasn't able to continue flying for the rest of the contest.

The Poker Scotch event was next.  Many of us did poorly in this round and John decided we had enough time to fly an second round of Poker Scotch.  Most of us did better in the second round.  Roy Lightle's plane lost the landing gear during this event however he made a belly landing in the grass and earned points.  I think a Four Star would look good with retracts.

The next event was the Taxi event.  Most of us made it through the taxi course on the runway okay however there were a couple pilots that needed to help their models to the finish line.

The last event was the Limbo event and it's always fun and exciting.  Some pilots were bold enough to suggest that we add bonus points for an inverted ribbon cut.  No one was able to perform this bonus maneuver but some were tempted.  John Peterson tried to sabotage this event by flying his plane into one of the poles that held the limbo line.  His plane broke the pole (3/4 " PVC) and continued to fly okay.  When he landed, there was no damage to the plane.  We replaced the pole and continued the event.  Bob Plucker had a wild time trying to fly under the limbo line and his plane ended up diving straight into the grass.  We had to use a shovel to dig the engine out of the grass however it appeared that the only damage was a broken motor mount, needle valve and prop.

At the end of the Limbo event the scores were figured up and we began passing out the awards and prizes.  The final scores are as follows:

1st  Joe Escudero
2nd  Mark Ewert
3rd  Boyd Petty
4th  Darrell Benedict
5th  Dale Christensen
6th & 7th Roy Lightle & Jeff Harshman (tie score)
8th  John Peterson
9th  Jim Conachen
10th  Dan McGranaghan
11th  Larry Mitchell
12th  Don Danielson
13th Bob Plucker
14th  Delbert Danly

We had our regular framed award certificates for 1st through 5^th place and a special award for the best crash.  It was voted that Delbert Danly had the best crash and he received the award.

This year we spent some extra money on the prizes and everyone was a winner.  The first three winners got to take home a $50 airplane kit and the rest of us got prizes that were worth as much or more than our $10 entry fee.

The raffle winning ticket was drawn after the fun fly prizes were given away.  We spent some extra money on the raffle prize this year and bought a O.S. .46 FX.  One of the guys from Pendleton was the lucky prize winner.  I noticed he also bought a Sig Wonder from Delbert Danly and that ought to be an interesting combination.

Special thanks goes to several people who helped make this a terrific fun fly.  Rhonda Benedict was a big help in handling the money and taking care of the concession and raffle ticket sales.  Thank you very much Rhonda.  Also, thanks goes to Spencer Avey for providing an excellent sauce for the hot dogs.  Thanks to John Peterson for the excellent manner that the contest was directed.

When I counted up the income and compared it with the expenses, it appears that we almost broke even at the end of the fun fly.  A couple months ago we voted to supply the funds we earned at the helicopter fun fly toward the fun fly prizes.  With these funds figured in we actually came out about $50 ahead in our fund raising compared to fun fly expenses.  This means that this year all our club members were winners at our fun fly.