FliteFest 2015

Started by Crazyflyer, July 12, 2015, 11:05:10 PM

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Crazyflyer

Eric, Julien and I just came back from Flite Fest in Ohio, it was a fantastic event.
Here are a few pictures from the trip.
Over 3000 people came over 4 days, many stayed camping ... since it is in middle of nowhere USA.
We had rain on Thursday and Friday morning which meant that things got very muddy. They couldn't allow people to park on the property until things dried up Friday afternoon. Luckily they started putting hay on the ground to help with the mud.
The organizer flitetest.com were very friendly and the whole community felt like a big family.
They had 6000 sq ft of build tents and provided table and power where people could build their planes (flite test foam boards and anything we brought), there were plenty of people to help as well.
There were quite a few vendors as well; they were also very willing to help and offer tons on information.
The flight line / runway was only 30' wide and right next to the crowd, I was about to have a heart attack every five minutes with the planes crashing into us (literally!), people adjusting their aircraft's in the middle of the runway while we were trying to land, and shockingly the AMA were there with a big trailer and saying nothing about safety!!
There were of course plenty of mid air crashes, Mike H and Greg C and Simon would have felt right at home!!! There were usually about 20 airplanes flying together, flying and coming back in one piece was definitely more about luck than skill.
There was plenty of night flying until about 11:30pm.
They also had some pros showing off their skills with nitro planes and jets, it was shocking what some of these guys could do with their planes.
The Flite Test crew with volunteers even built a deca-plane that flew, I will try to post the video.
Overall, it was quite an awesome few days, a fantastic experience.

Stephan


Crazyflyer


Crazyflyer

This show was insane, he was even zooming by 10' from the crowd at full speed.
https://youtu.be/hCQjnbLwCSY

BJROB

WOW unbelievable videos....
And the plane stated together ...  got to love foamies   
I'm dizzy watching that plane dance all over the place.
did they provide oxygen after all the smoke cleared?
or was that plane just spraying bug spray to keep the bug away.... after all the rain
awesome video now I wish I went  to Ohio and partake in the Flite Fest-titivates 
My Work??? is so secret....
I Don't even Know what I'm Doing!!!

Crazyflyer

Well funny you mentioned the bug spray Bjerne because the bugs weren't bad at all, I don't think I even got bit.
The smoke didn't smell but now you are making me wonder???
I would be fun to have a TEMAC group go down together actually.

battlestu

"I'm disrespectful to dirt. Can you see that I am serious?"

Oscar

The 3D demo is amazing  :D

Papa

I'm glad you three had a great time despite the bad weather.
Did I see some sort of a skills challenge course?
Was there anything there I could use to freshen up our challenges?


I know I'm sometimes a bit of a wet rag when it comes to safety but that demo was unnecessarily dangerous.
There was little or no crowd control and the plane was much too close to the spectators who were out in the open on the runway.
One hooked wing and 20lbs of anti-person mayhem would have ensued.
I have seen this numerous times before in videos from other countries and hope none of you think it's acceptable.


Jack.



A motto to live by:
"What other people think of me is none of my business"

Crazyflyer

#8
Hi Jack, I was definitely not comfortable with the proximity of the crowd vs runway, and one of the main pro demo got way too close for comfort, I wasn't willing to get too close, but it was a heck of an adrenaline rush for the crowd. Eric even got hit in the head by the wing of an Icon A5 that lost control on landing.

The main skills challenges they had were the streamer combat (cut the ribbon from each others tails), the full combat (hit the opposing planes, we need cheap planes for that), the other skills challenges they had included going through the circular winged plane, but that would necessitate fabricating a big plane with a 6' diameter circular wing.
So I think streamers would be a great add-on to our shows, which also look great for aerobatics instead of using smoke.
Otherwise the only other challenge course was setup for FPV racing (both quads and planes with FPV setup)

https://youtu.be/aBMLkdT96fc
https://youtu.be/a2EsnetWnK0