C/LCombat F
loods and Flying: As the old saying goes, stuff happens. My wife and I got home from a little Labor Day wedding jaunt close to 8 p.m. on the
Wednesday after. We had heard that central Pennsylvania was getting a lot of rain, but it turned out to be a lot more than anyone bargained for. When I checked the backyard the water in the creek was already within 3 feet of the grass, and it was still raining. Since it was already 3 feet above the
record high level I was a bit concerned and moved some of the irreplaceable shop equip- ment upstairs—the old, old Atari 400 com- puter that drives the foam cutter, some file drawers and tool drawers, and some boxes of engines, including my 35 Combat engine collection. Went to bed and woke up at 3 a.m. The
water was now at the grass and an inch on the basement floor from the sump overflow- ing. Yoicks! More stuff upstairs. I stuck on the 18-inch high barrier in front of the slid- ing door to protect it from damage. The wa- ter kept a coming. I kept moving stuff high- er and higher, but by noon it was getting hip deep in the basement and pretty dangerous to keep walking around. Then the fire department came around
and told the eight or so of us on the lowest part of the street that another thunderstorm up stream was dumping more water with a flash flood as much as 10 feet more possible. We evacuated up the street to a neighbor’s house. Enough was enough. Fortunately the flash flood didn’t occur.
The water only went up another 2 feet over the basement window sills, and topped out around 2 p.m. Thursday. It was way down by Saturday morning. The local volunteer fire department and Hummelstown borough organized a volunteer cleanup on Sunday. By the end of the day, with help from a con- stant flow of friends and neighbors all the water-damaged stuff was out and the floor pretty much clear of silt.
by phil cartier You can reach Phil Cartierat 34 Sweet Arrow Dr, Hummelstown, Pennsylvania 17036, or via e-mail at
philcartier@earthlink.net
PHOTOGRAPHY: PHIL CARTIER
Air Wars winners: Paul Kubek, second place Sportsman; Larry Wilks, first place Sportsman; Phil Cartier, first place; Ken Cook, first place Sportsman Half-A; Al Ferraro, first place Half-A.
Chuck O’Brien, a good flying buddy, came
over and we took down all the drywall and wet insulation. The whole pile of junk must have been about 4 feet high by 8 feet wide, and forty feet long. But we got the basement cleaned up and ready to start repairs. Old tropical storm Lee had come in, just
rolled to a dead stop over the watershed, dropping some 14 inches of rain into our “creek”. The old record level was 16 feet. This one topped out at 28.2 feet at the flood gage upstream a bit. We probably got an- other 6-12 inches.
A few weeks later I was able to go to the Vincentown Air Wars, put on by Roy Glenn, a former MACA president. Roy and I have been working on these multi-round contests for a number of years trying to structure the rules to attract non-Combat flyers. It seems to be working. This year the entry was back up to 14 fliers, making it the second biggest contest on the East Coast. Even better, half the fliers, some of them very good pilots, are Combat newcomers. That includes three or four young folks. 28 matches and only one or two midairs. This kind of attrition makes Combat much easier for flyers to get into. No need to ready a dozen planes for a contest. Two motors and 3-4 planes can last a long time.
Making up for the flood, I got my first ever full-blown first place in one of these galas. It only took 20 years. Roy Glenn came in sec- ond. In sport Half-A Al Ferraro got first, Louis Lopez second, and Ken Cook, a new Combat flyer from the Philly Flyers, got third place and the Sportsman Half-A award. We did try something new to help limit
Rule #2: Don’t hit the ground. Al Ferraro gave it one thought too many before hitting the dirt. Nice and soft, no damage to the plane or motor; however a good cleaning of the engine will help.
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super long over-runs at the end of the match. Landing before the six-minute mark was worth another 100 points. The first round was free so pilots could see how long they were running. After that the circle marshall kept the match watch running un- til six minutes, if needed. I think we only had one or two overruns, mostly from planes that took a long time to start. Oth- erwise, these things are amazingly consis- tent from run to run. A 25LA runs about 5½
DECEMBER 2011
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