dialarotor
Key Veteran
Location: Traverse City, Michigan
My Posts This: Topic Forum | IRCHA-NWMICH HELI GUYS-SWARM-SWAG-BIG WINNERSA glorious fun week. Go back 7 days,Wednesday the 13th, the boys from NWMICHIGAN HELI PILOTS meet up in Cadillac at 0700. Fueled, loaded, IRCHA money stashed, tires aired-up, GPS maps turned on, walkie talkies set.
Head'em Up, Move'm Out, Roll'n Roll'n Roll'n, keep them doggies movin'. I was pulling the pop-up, Chris Z in the PimpDaddy Bus,
Tony and Larry/Jerry Lawhead in the Toyota/Trailer rig, SR & JR in the
Ranger/pop-up rig made up the caravan headed for Muncie. Others would follow later, Raptor Chief, Lars and family, Nick & Brandon, Big Steve and wife, Newman, the new boys from Kalkaska. Beautiful weather and easy traffic and the trip was pleasant. We had lunch and a gas stop in Auburn IN, and then on to Modeling Mecca in Muncie.
Our gang arrived around 1400, that's 2PM for you land lubbers, ayeee.
With the pop-ups,camper setup in a semi circle the boys from NWMICHIGAN had arrived. And right next to us the boys from SWARM started arriving with their tents and camping gear. The SWARM had the usual guys from Wisconsin and the transplants that make-up the West Palm Beach/Port St. Lucie Chapter of SWARM. For those in the know, SWARM guys are the creators of the Friday night flight line party. They are the RUMBALL KINGS, and prep rumballs and deep friend cajun chicken wings, SWARM SHOTS all topped off with crazy night flying. The "coach" Mike Sherman is the deep fryer, Dave "launchpad" Lewis, is the MC, and "UBE" is the keeper of the tales, with Tim the
DJ. Dave Lewis got the nickname "lauch pad" after he got the brillant idea of using his transmitter case as a flat surface to launch a fireworks mortar. Only problem was the mortar was put in upside down and the case, radio and charger inside got blown to hell.
Damn, hate when that happens.
Wednesday night was nice with the EZE-UPS set on the flight line, the grill was fired up for some dogs and whatever. Thursday dawned beautiful, sunny, cool breeze and the flight line was 3/4's full already. The midway was bigger with more vendors lots of hot vendor chicks passing out swag. T-shirts, hats, water bottles, brochures, crash kits, were coming our way in steady streams. Thanks to all the vendors, we loved it. Lots of new manufacturers with helis I have never seen before. The photo boys from Heli Freak, RunRyder, RC Heli,SKS Video and Crack Roll were everywhere. There was no shortage of coverage for this event.
Thursday night with the help of Debra Z, Steve B's wife and myself, we set up a KABOB factory to make dinner for our group and for the SWARM guys for taking such good care of us the past 2 years. Chris fired up the campfire pit, the Corona bucket was full and iced, limes cut, cocktail fixins ready and 4 platters of Kabobs. Our own Chef Mark B. setup his deepfry factory and made beautiful deep fried onion rings,mushrooms,cauliflower. Mark is the master of the deep fryer. The KABOBS went on 3 grills and the party was on.
I finally called it quits as 0125.
Up at 0715 and it was day 2 Friday, the campground was swelling and more eze-ups on the front line, and the helis and golf carts were going crazy. The antique heli tent was full of helis from yesteryear and they were flying great and making us old timers wonder, "where did all the time and money go?" The scale flight station was active the whole 4 days with lots of scalers, big and small, eletric, nitro,and turbine going strong.
The Boys Scout again did a great job of providing good value food snacks all day long. The after dinner flying was always good with all stations full. 18 stations on the flight line and flight area 3 being used. The SWARM guys were busy in the afternoon running the rumball factory for the evenings festivities. Finally the sun set, our village had the tiki lamps lighted and the cocktails came out. Once we saw the SWARM tribal fires and music going we abled over for the Friday night soiree. When I arrived, "Coach" was deep fryin' the chicken, "Launchpad Lewis" was doing the seasoning, Tim the music selecting, and the SWARMTENDERS were pouring the mystery shots. People started ambling in out of the darkness with the hungry look on their faces. Pretty soon, Mike, aka "Coach" looked at me and said,"I don't think we have enough wings to feed all these people". I said, "NO PROBLEM" I still have four batches of Kabobs from the night before on ice. Tony Lawhead, grabbed his cool grill, I fetched the kabobs and barbeque sauce and we went to work. I cut up 8 limes for the cold Corona's SWARM provided this night. I put out the plates and kapkins and Tony and I hit it on the grill, soon platter after platter of grilled goodies along with SWARM'S 40 pounds of chicken wings was being devoured. The night before we present the SWARM with their new "spudgun" and with the party now going nicely SWARM members Clay and Tim got into the spirit of things and had a bang-up time. Finless Bob and other HF guys drifted in, CrackRoll guys, Outrage heli guys and many others were gather around. To add to all the fun, SWARM had all their night flying birds ready and put up some cool night flights. Singles, doubles, and the topper, a flight of 5 night flying helis gettin' it done. "Launchpad Lewis" was going great in the 5-way but finally put the Stratus night bird in the dirt. Now that takes real rumballs to night fly a Stratus on working man wages, no factory or team behind Dave, just Visa and Mastercard. "Ube" had the brightest light on his bird and made all of us over-50 types proud with the flights he put up. Youth is wasted on kids. "UBE" can still get it up and lay it down. Well just shy of 0200 I called it quits and the clean up was done. Thanks to the mystery guys on the far side of the site for putting up that cool fireworks show.
Time for sleep.
0720, Oh Boy, Saturday, the biggest day. Damn, more sunshine and gentle breezes, heli flying is a biotch. The good news, the SWARM/NWMICH HELI GUYS joint effort of the night before wasn't mentioned at the morning pilot meeting. The bad news, 2 boneheads did some crop damage with some golf carts, too bad, at least it wasn't our guys. The day was full with lots of buying at the vendors. Our own Chris Z was in the hunt for a new TREX500. Well wouldn't you know, at the Align tent they got into a trivial pursuit thing and Chris Z guessed the right answer after Tony L put him on the right track and he won a NIB TREX500. Way to go Chris. As the sun started to move to the west side of the field folks drifted down to the show center/midway area. It was getting close to Heli-Christmas time. The NWMICH guys staked out an area with our chairs. A few of us slipped off for the IRCHA dinner, this year provided by BOSTON MARKETS food prep people. The dinner was very good with options like mashed potatoes, cornbread,macaroni and cheese, sweet corn, grilled chicken, meatloaf, gravy, and drink. Food at IRCHA is not a problem. There was a big smoked barbeque trailer besides the Boy Scout food tent, several drinks station vendors, ice cream treat vendors, and Dominos was on site with hot and ready pizzas to go. With the NWMICH guys in their seats and about a 1000 other folks gathered around, the IRCHA PRIZE PATROL folks arrived and the fun began. Brett did a good job of MC'ing the proceedings with the help of his lovely assistant. There were lots of moments of laughter and joking and our own Chris Z, was finally given a new nickname, (PimpDaddy) as he kept sending his little girls up to coax prizes and swag from the presenters. With all of us sitting there minding our own business and wishing we had different pilot numbers, out the clear blue, lightening struck. Mark Bonofiglio RAPTORCHIEF had his number called and he won a MIKADO LOGO 600 + battery. WOW, WOW, WOW,WOW. I was afraid he might faint and we would have to revive him. Way to go Mark. So on goes the Price is Right Giveaway and then BANG, Nick Harwood's #611 is called and he wins the cool new hot ATOM 500 heli with battery,blades,servos,gyro, monster motor, made by COMPASS Models. The first one in the USA. Well shut my mouth, our group has won 3 helis in 24 hours. Then BANG AGAIN, one of our SWARM buddies PhotoBoy CARLOS, wins the Henry Caldwell built and tested new
OUTRAGE 450 with battery, DX-7 radio system, way to go CARLOS.
The prizes were terrific this year, THANK YOU all you vendors and manufacturers. Chris Bergen, your TASER was gorgeous, TINA of ALIGN all those TREX helis and that GRAND PRIZE 700 was the bomb. The AURORA grand prize was also a beauty, thanks AVANT. JR,Futaba,Kyosho,Protos,Outrage,Scorpion,Century,Hirobo,Genesis and all you others, THANKS from all of us. Also many sponsored pilots and multiple winners recycled there prizes, kudos to all of you, that was very classy.
Prizes awarded, it was time to stake out new locations for the night fly. With the sun down past the horizon the night fly featured two groups 5 and 4 with the top 3 and 2 of those groups going to the $1000 fly off. The flying was sick. The blade stops were real crowd pleasers. The winner, Nick Maxwell,basically flying a lighted hocky stick as he scrubbed all the LED lights off his homemade night blades as he flew them into the dirt making high speed low passes, he must of stole the heli because that is the way he flew it.
After the night fly we all ambled back to the tiki lamps, campfire and all the remaining hooch came out. Soon the SWARM GUYS with all the Floridians gathered around the NWMICHIGAN HELI PILOTS campfire area to keep warm and then the boys from CRACKROLL.COM with a huge box of beers and many others stumbled in. Thanks CR guys, glad you had fun the night before at the SWARM/NWMICH SHINDIG. An HF guy showed up with a full pitcher of COSMOPOLITANS along with our Bloody Marys and Margaritas. Tales were swapped along with names, and addresses, and friendships made. I headed to the rack at 0240 and the hangers-on finally drifted off by 0400.
Sunday, 0730 the group was up and off to Boy Scout breakfast sandwiches and coffee. Campers and tents packed once the sun dried off the dew. The NWMICHIGAN caravan was off and gone at 0930 and I remained to enjoy the SUNDAY flying and I took my time to savor the last day of IRCHA 2008. Checked all the last minute deals, watched the pros fly and got in some flights of my own. With the camper, coolers, tables, helis, and new purchases packed it was time to say goodbye until next year. Only 361 days to go.
                  |
