Nasty Tree!

Above left, a killer tree, right our flying field.

We went over to Gunn High School this morning to, guess what, fly our planes. It was a bit breezy and Lou got her plane up nice and high and flew it into a nice big oak tree. The plane was nicely stuck in the branches about 60 feet up. Rocks and twigs thrown at it didn't help much. The tree just grabbed them too. We tried with some weak twine and a sock in a rock but the twine just kept breaking. Some nice survey twine did the trick. By that time I was pretty good at getting the twine over a branch to shake it and the survey twine didn't break and eventually the plane, and a lot of the twigs and other stuff that the tree had grabbed came down. Success, and it only took a couple of hours. There does come a time when retrieving a $30 plane doesn't seem worth it. That point should have been reached after only about 10 minutes, for "normal" folks, but time didn't deter us. We do fly these planes for exercise, don't we, and we got plenty of that today. I'll probably have a sore (or is that a soar) arm tomorrow though.