The Greater Cincinnati Jet Fly

The following are a few pictures from our time in Oxford Ohio. Below the pictures is a great review given Peter Laing on the RC Jets List. Also you can check out the home page for the event at: Greater Cincinnati Jet Fly Homepage.

This is just about 1/3 of the pit area gcjr_1.jpg 59.94 Kb 7/13/99 4:49:30 PM	Carl working away on his F-18 gcjr_2.jpg 86.66 Kb 7/13/99 4:49:34 PM	What on the road airplane meet would be complete without some late night building in the hotel room? gcjr_3.jpg 59.37 Kb 7/13/99 4:49:38 PM
I case you're not sure who's in charge, check out Joe Amato's shorts. gcjr_4.jpg 63.06 Kb 7/13/99 4:49:42 PM	The AMT team, and Terry firing up the big Pink Panter F-18, with Olympus on board. gcjr_5.jpg 66.11 Kb 7/13/99 4:49:44 PM

It was a really fun event...40 pilots, glorious weather, and plenty of flying for all. BVM, AMT, CJM were the manufacturers with the largest presence/no. of reps. and JHH & JPO had a somewhat smaller scale representation.

It was definitely a pilots' meet, with the flight line only shutting down (once) to repair a "depression" on the runway, which Rodger Shipley discovered the hard way. Poor Rodger did not have much luck after that flight. Several engine problems kept him on the ground and when he finally got airborne on Sunday, an inflight fire terminated his flight prematurely and he ditched the T-33 in a nearby cornfield. It went in pretty hard with a matching "thud" but it appeard that the damage was not as bad as one would have expected. The inflight fire was quite spectacular...it looked like he had a JATO bottle attached to the bottom surface of his exhaust nozzle.

There were a surprising number of the .45 class jets at this event: 3 JHH F-86's, 2 JHH Mirage III's, my Noel Mirage 2000, Scott's Rebel, and a HOB F-86 with . 45 squeezed into it. This was the most .45 sized jets I had ever seen at a single jet event in the Eastern USA. It confirms that the GCJR is a good pilots meet in that it attracted a lot of "ordinary Joe" or entry level d/f modellers and they were able to get all the flight time they wanted. Two thumbs up! The highlight of the 45 class jets at this event had to be the excellent formation flight routine that Scott McGowin and Rick Fusco put on with two JHH F-86's. Between those two airplanes, they must have clocked a good 15+ flights a day, for 3 days. Lots of fun for the minimal initial investment! The performance of the Noel Mirage with the Turbax I and the new OS 46 VXDF was also noteworthy. Our counterparts on the W Coast had witnessed the impressive performance of Da Fatha's JHH Fury with the K&B 48 in the Turbax I in Arizona last November and I think the performance of 46 VXDF + Turbax I in my Mirage gave us E coast lads a taste of what they saw at the Arizona Jet Rally last November. ....just 6 months later:-) Anyway, for the folks out there in the .45 jet class, between the K&B 48, OS 46 VXDF and the soon to be released Turbax 48, we will see a step increase in the performance of these jets equivalent to that of a .65 + Dynamax combination. It is amazing what an extra 2000 rpm will do to the thrust output of the "old faithful" Turbax I.

Another highlight of the event was Lance Campbell's flights on his Y/A SR 71. It is not often that one gets to see one of these (model) jets in action.

Terry Nitch attended and put in several (impressive) flights on his Bandit and AMT F-4 and F-18.... Enough to capture him 3 of the 6 awards. The BVM models and reps. did another good job for their "boss" with 5 of the 6 awards going to either a BVM model or BVM rep. (or both). Lance Cambel was the odd man out, winning Best Scale Finish with his Avonds F15.

The organizers did an excellent allround job with this event and capped it off with giving lots of nice prizes away to all of the registered pilots. A CJM sport Hawk, CA F-22 and Futaba 6XA were raffled off and then the pilots raffle allowed every pilot to walk up to the table and pick the prize of his choice from the goodies left over. People walked away with Turbax I and Dynamax fans, Spring Air retracts, $350 gift vouchers for kits etc,etc. These prizes were worth more that what the average pilot had to spend to attend the event for the 3 days. What a bonus!!!!!!