It took three months for my remote controlled plane to arrive in Poland from Los Angeles. It took two days to assemble it, and then just 8 seconds to crash it beyond recognition. Now, 4 months later, I have all new parts required to put my Hobbico Switch back together again but I’m trying to avoid the same mistake and won’t take to the sky unless someone shows me exactly how its done.

When picking up my special order parts at a local hobby store I talked to the personnel about learning how to fly, and sure enough that weekend an RC plane battle took place just a few miles away. Obviously I’m not about to participate but was told maybe I could find someone there that would teach me. By the way, if you’re in the Wrocław area and are looking for expert advice on your RC stuff, look no further than modele.sklep.pl  The very friendly staff there is pretty awesome and very knowledgable.

While I couldn’t exactly find anyone at the RC battle in a chatty mood as everyone was really focused on their own planes, I did witness some pretty cool flying. RC plane battles are basically games that are meant to honor the fallen pilots of WWI and WWII. Small model planes with electric engines and bodies made of foam-like material pretty much bounce off the ground when they’re ‘shot’ (hit) out of the sky… except when they don’t! and nose dive deep into the grass. I’m not sure why this gas powered model was there at all, but it looks pretty heavy duty.

Each plane tows a ribbon behind it and the idea is to cut the ribbon off with your plane’s propeller. Sounds easy enough but from the minute six planes are let loose it looks like bee’s swarming in the sky. To an untrained eye it just looks like everyone is flying everywhere and by sheer luck catching the ribbons while not crashing. But crash they did, and during one six minute heat only one plane remained in the sky.

That’s not what I want to do. For now I need to learn how to get off of the ground and safely land back on it…after I glue the bastard back together again.

I didn’t really take many photos and my point and shoot couldn’t exactly keep up with fast moving RC planes, but I would like to redirect you to a Wrocław newspaper article that has some pretty cool photos from the event:
http://www.gazetawroclawska.pl/artykul/538353

And before I go, is it just me or is this Homer Simpson walking with a plane in hand?