LUNAR at the EBRC Airshow

by Jack Hagerty, LUNAR #002

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Photo 1. The LUNAR tent at the EBRC Airshow. (photo by Judy Heckenbach)

In mid September, I got a call from George Gissendaner of the East Bay Radio Controllers RC club. He told me that they were putting on their annual airshow for the public and wanted to know if we'd like to participate. "Sure," I said. "When is it?" "October 4th" came the reply.

That was a bit of a problem since it gave us less than three weeks to come up with a demo. Still, LUNAR hadn't been part of an airshow since the Livermore Airshow stopped flying a couple of years ago.

"I'll see what I can do," I said. I was pretty sure that I could count on some of our members to put a good demo together. A personal problem was that I couldn't be a part of it. October 4 happens to be my anniversary and when it falls on a weekend, the day gets spoken for really early.

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Photo 2. The LUNAR flight line at the EBRC Airshow. (photo by Judy Heckenbach)

So I put out the word on my e-mail list of members and got several responses right away. Tony Cooper, Tom Hail, Joe Heckenbach, James Spurling and Lee Techeira all jumped at the chance to show off in front of a crowd.

I did some minor coordinating up to the day of the show, and had to drive in to Castro Valley to visit the Alameda County Fire Marshall to negotiate a last minute fire permit for the show, but other than that, these guys took over the demo. The Heckenbach's, Joe and Judy, brought a canopy to set up over the club table for the static displays and club fliers. It gave us a great place to hang the banner from as well.

Originally George had given us 20 minutes for our show, but that got cut to 15, and they tried to cut it further to 10, but we knew that was impossible. To save time in setup, our crew decided to use all 18 pads rather than try to re-rack in mid demo. The rockets were all pre-prepped and placed on their pads in the display area. The wires were run out to the edge of the runway ahead of time so that when it came time for the demo, each owner only had to carry the pad with his rocket out to the end of the wire and pound the pad in.

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Photo 3. Under the LUNAR pavilion at the EBRC Airshow. (photo by Judy Heckenbach)

Lee Techeira did all the announcing for our part of the show and got everything launched within the window, except for a few misfires. The demos ranged from an Estes Mosquito on an "A" (which accelerates at over 100 g's) up the scale to several "G" powered flights. Since there was no waiver, we had to stay under 1,500 grams, but the crowd didn't seem to care. They all gasped and applauded at the appropriate times and we handed out a lot of club fliers.

The ultimate sign of approval is that we've been invited back for next year!