The high point was Saturday afternoon at the drag races.   I had taken my Xcell up there to race, but since it had a broken rod and it didn't seem like I was going to have time to fix it before Saturday, I had pretty much given up on it.

Friday evening I was out and about and visited Bruce Bennett's tent. We started talking about engines (Bruce's favorite subject) and the next thing I knew Bruce and all his helpers were swarming over my helicopter and "poof" I had a new rod in my engine. He didn't even take it out of the frames! What really did the trick was Bruce gave me his own special handmade tuned pipe to use. This thing is awesome! I've run that engine before, but it never came close to having the power it had with that pipe. He added 3 ounces of his own formula of oil to a gallon of my fuel and Saturday we went racing.  I had some control problems the first two races, mostly because I was so nervous I could barely hang on to the radio. I managed to win two out of three. I was actually disqualified in the second race for getting into the other guy's lane.  Thanks to Bruce and all the guys that helped I ended up the winner.

The Takeoff in the final round

Bruce and I with our trophy.

The low came Saturday around noon when Mark Kiner was doing a demo using my brand new Robbe Nova. Mark was doing a great job. He started an absolutely perfect rolling tail slide from a very high altitude. It was coming down faster than I've ever seen. Just as he started to pull out, one of the blades failed. Needless to say, the machine was wadded up pretty good. If anyone got a picture of the corpse, I'd like to post it here.

Of course I couldn't have had any fun if  Jim, Audie and Nathan hadn't been holding down the fort at the the booth. These guys worked their tails off all week and I really appreciate it. It might look like fun, but I'll tell you what, it's hard work, and these guys did the vast majority of it.

On the way back home (1900 miles) we stopped and I got to spend the night at my folks house. I don't get to see them often and I really enjoyed it.