In truth, I can't tell you about the 9th, I wasn't there on Sunday, but I was there on Friday and Saturday. I was working the Blacksheep squadron booth in the Education Area. It wasn't exactly a booth since it occupied a space about 60 by 120 feet with a 25 foot ceiling. The display, education and the Build-Fly-Take tables were crammed into one end of the room with along with the Smith Brother's Hobby table, the only place in the whole EXPO selling stick and tissue, some spectator seating, and the AMA's education area with the R/C flight simulators. Behind the Blacksheep display and education table was a safety net and the rest of the room was used for flying. The kids who did the Build-Fly-Take (modified Skystreaks) used the flying area, with contests every half hour, along with a few exhibition flights by Blacksheep members with some "real" indoor models.
I was in the center of the display area, doing demonstrations of wet covering with domestic tissue, Esaki, and silkspan, using prototypes of the new Beaver. On Saturday I was also scratch building some floats for the Beaver. I was flanked by some really good modelers, on my left Don Smith, a repeated winner in scale contests, and Jim Springer who is noted for building amazing things. Jim had a contest winning air-powered model along with an air power unit for display. The pressure vessel was two Red Bull cans epoxied together (Holds 180 psi!) which got a lot of double takes. On my right was Rob Cobb, with lots of Guillow's stuff, Dave (Stuka Dave) Gee, president of the Blacksheep, who was also doing some building, and Don Butman with an assortment of the jewel-like models that he so prolifically builds.
Had the opportunity to meet many people who I only knew from books, magazines, or the internet. including our own David (scigs30). I had much favorable reaction to the Beaver and Porter and many of the confirmed R/C types who came through said that they really wanted to build some stick and tissue again. The most common remark was, "I used to build Guillow's kits as a kid, but they never came out like this. I have to build another one." Another very common remark was from the younger R/C fliers who grew up with ARFs, "You really build these things! Wow!"
Of course it wasn't all fun. I was so busy that I really didn't get out to see much of the rest of the EXPO, which had everything from sub miniature R/C planes to models you could put a stick an rudder bar in and get in to fly, guest speakers, a special 100th anniversary of Navy flight display, static contests, and even R/C ships and tanks. The over the topper was a booth selling kits for a real helicopter. You could take one home for a mere $35,000. (I think some of the giant scale R/C ships cost more than that!) And, one of the Skystreaks that the kids were flying got over the safety net and center punched my 600 series Piper that I had just gotten trimmed to fly in this room. Oh, well, I was going to re-cover the fuselage anyway.
I only managed to take a few pictures, They give you no idea of the crowd that came through.
To my left, Don Smith and Jim Springer
To my right, the bearded one is Dave Gee
In front of me, covering tools, pan of water, Uhu glue stick, terrycloth towel, cutting board to left.
Build-Fly-Take kids at six-place, Skystreak winding stooge.
"Kids" waiting to fly.
