Above is another shot of Dan pouring the drinks while I hovered the ship. Every time a skid would touch the ground the team would loose a point.

Above is a photo of the water balloon bomb drop. This was another game that everyone enjoyed, both as participants and as spectators. The rules were as follows. The passenger was given three water balloons that were held on the passenger's lap. The pilot would fly over the target, that was a cone on the ground, at 100 feet agl and 65 mph. When the passenger thought it was about the right time to let the water balloon go, they would toss it. It was amazing how hard it was to hit a target in plain sight.

We gained a real appreciation for the bombardiers of WWI and WWII.

This game was a lot of fun. During all of the games we had several club members keep the spectators well back so that no one was in any danger. The person sitting on the chair is the judge, Terry Kinsley. He sat next to the target and in 5 years only got wet once.

In the photo above you can also see the course that we laid out for the precision hover contest. We would tape a 24" piece of string onto the the front left landing gear toe then attach a chain to the string. That way if the chain became caught on anything it would simply pull off or the light string would break This was to prevent the pilot from a dynamic rollover should the chain become hung up.

At the end of the chain was a tennis ball. Attached to the chain 12" from the end was a second tennis ball. The object was for the pilot to drag the bottom tennis ball around the 12 foot square course while keeping it between the tape lines that were 12" apart. If the ball touched a line he/she lost a point. If the ball came off the ground a point was lost. If the second ball touched the ground another point was lost. This was really fun if the pilot could hover reasonably well. Sense I was teaching folks to hover I had the advantage of more hours than anyone else so I usually won this one.

In the above photo you can see the precision hover course lined out on the asphalt. The helicopter in the photos is playing Helicopter Soccer. The idea was for the helicopter to fire up and come to a hover over a predetermined point. The person on the ground would then roll a plastic beach ball with a quart of water inside (to keep it on the ground) into the area in front of the helicopter. The pilot would then use the rotor down wash to move the ball toward the goal, the two cones.

This was a timed event and the pilot who got the ball through the goals in the shortest amount of time was the winner. It was hilarious to watch, especially when my wife was piloting our ship.

During this weekend meet several of us flew out to the Sacramento River to go exploring. In this photo above Tom Macmillan was making his approach to the gravel bar. You can just see him to the left of the bar, a little white long dot. After Tom landed I thought it would also be fun so Sheila and I landed at the other end of the gravel bar. We shut down and had a great time with Tom and Dorinda as we shared some snacks and planned where we would fly next.

Dorinda took the shot below of Sheila and I landing behind their helicopter as Tom went through his shut-down check list.