The next meeting and fly-in of Illini Skyriders will be held this Saturday, May 20th (Armed Forces Day) at the private airstrip of member Curt Shoaf, Watseka, IL.  The location is 3 miles north and 3 miles east of Crescent City.  Curt will provide burgers, hotdogs, and drinks.  Anyone is welcome to bring a covered dish or dessert.

Curt’s principle runway is north-south 600 feet long with a telephone pole on the south end.   Fly over the pole and you won't` hit the wire.  Also available is a 500 foot east-west runway with buildings on the west end.  You can land to the west and takeoff to the east.  GPS yourself to N40-49.1 by W87-48.2.

For driving instruction, or pilots following the roads go north out of Crescent City 3 miles to County Road 2100N (about a mile past the fairgrounds).  Turn east and follow for 3 miles until you come to the river.  Turn left (north), cross over the bridge and Curt is the first place on the right.  The physical address is 2110N 1700E Rd.  Their home phone is 815-432-6448.

Everyone is welcome in the afternoon; we plan to have food starting about 3:00PM and a club meeting about 5:00PM.  That should give plenty of time for evening flying, and enough time for visitors to fly home. The days are getting longer and we are approaching the best times for flying of the whole year.  See you there!

The April 22nd Fly-in meeting at the Paxton airport was “blown out” by high winds.  The expression “blown out” comes from the sport of hang gliding.  Sometimes it’s just too darn windy to fly.  It was too windy to even open the hangar doors!  Only four members were present and we had a nice visit.  If there was some way to reliably contact all the members we could shift the meeting to another day on short notice, but it just isn't practical.

As an alternative, that evening we contacted all the members who receive email and suggested we try again for the fly-in part the following day, Sunday.  The weather forecast looked good.  Sunday morning Raymund, Mark, and Tom headed out for a cross-country flight to Cushing field near Lansing Illinois.  The winds had not let down and they turned back at their first stop which was Dwight.  By late evening, Sunday the wind had finally subsided.

Since I don't have much in local news, I will share my recent experiences at the annual Wig-Wag microlight competition recently held near Monticello Indiana.  I came in second to David Hempy who surprised everyone by turning in a perfect flight on the last task where everyone else had struggled.  Since 2004 I have earned one first and two seconds at this event.   It is known for it’s difficult and somewhat experimental type tasks.

The first task was a race over a 22-mile course drawn out on the map.  It replicated a famous grand prix racecourse in Europe with hairpin turns and long straight runs.  Except in this race, there are no marks on the ground.  You must do it all from the map.  Each turn has invisible “bumpers” or rails.  If you cross them, you loose points.  Downloading the track from your sealed GPS after the flight is completed reveals the score.  It is based on 50% speed and 50% accuracy.  I took second to a very fine young pilot with excellent eyesight.

The second task was a test of how many miles we could fly on exactly 3 gallons of fuel.  I won the task by flying 11 laps around a 7-mile course or about 80 miles on 3 gallons. I landed with 0.1 gallons.  There was abundant lift, I flew slowly, and I have a header tank that shows the last 0.5 gallons of fuel.  Each tenth is 4 minutes, or 3 miles, and I can watch it in a small mirror as it runs out.

The last task involved flying a line and looking for ground markers that should indicate changes of direction.  The course should zig-zag around the area ending up at a secret location.  Unfortunately the markers used this time were hard to see from the air.  Orange letters on a white background did not work. Only one pilot was able to find them.  Also the contest designer tricked us.  He gave a list of 10 possible letters, only used three, and almost none in the first part of the course.  We either missed seeing the letters altogether or turned back thinking we had missed them.  I got second in this task and Dave Hempy won the task, which helped him win first place in the overall score.  Only a few points separated the top three pilots and I was glad to see my friend Dave win one.

See our calendar of events below.  We have confirmed the Busbooms for June and have scheduled Gary Gustafson for July.  There are only two months open in the calendar for this year, September and October.  The November is usually indoors due to the weather.   Anyone interested in having us visit your airstrip in September or October please let us know.