Event Report
Lake Casitas Fun Float-Fly
April 18/19, 2000
Hosted by the Ventura Comets
(Please note that these event reports were originally prepared for use in the Riverside RC Club monthly newsletter, Prop Talk, and are not intended to be comprehensive coverage of the event. Rather they are reports, for our club members, of my personal experiences and perceptions.)
Doris and I packed up our motor home and Aerostar minivan towed car (sometimes called a “Toad”) and headed for lovely Lake Casitas, a water district recreation area near lovely Ojai, CA. This was to be a shakedown cruise for the vehicles before our planned Summer RV trip. We left on Friday afternoon and returned on Sunday afternoon. We camped alongside the Comets’ fine paved model airstrip, alongside the big, beautiful lake, where a bass fishing tournament was in full swing. The Ventura Comets have been at this wonderful flying site for 25 years, and they hold three float-flies per year.
We had just had the 5.5KW AC generator in the RV repaired, as it had been leaking oil. But when I tried to start it up, it would not run. This was “dry” camping, with none of the usual RV park utilities hookups (electric, water sewer), so the generator was our only way of recharging our 12 VDC “house”, batteries, or running 120VAC appliances (microwave, TV, toaster, etc.). It turns out that the inaccessible generator fuel line from the RV gas tank was sucking air. A fellow RV float flyer kindly loaned me a 5-gallon gas can, and we hooked up a temporary line to the generator, which then ran just fine. We will now have to drop the motor home gas tank out of the rig to install a new rubber line to the generator. (Great engineering – RV designers!).
The float fly was a fantastic success, with 78 registered pilots, and at least 100 seaplanes. There were no mid-air crashes, despite five very busy flying stations. The weather was warm, with the usual afternoon winds. The Comets offered their usual barbequed tri-tip lunch, with all the trimmings, for a reasonable $8.00, and the selection of raffle prizes was outstanding. I won a field box and a deluxe transmitter case. Friends Paul and Millie Bowman joined us on Saturday. Paul flew his Sig Clipped Wing Cub on floats (originally built by Howard Born of RRCC). Paul belongs to the Santa Fe Dam RC Club.
There were many beautiful seaplanes, both floatplanes and flying boats. I have shown some examples in the photos below. There were two huge four-engine China Clipper flying boats, which both flew well. Many Piper Cubs on floats were seen in the air, and it made spotting my ¼ scale J-3 Kitten quite difficult. (The J-3 Kitten is a single-place ultra-light, based on a ¾ size Cub, and my ¼ scale Kitten is painted Cub Yellow.) The Kitten has a 28 ft. wing span, resulting in a ¼ scale wing span of 7 ft., which fits in the Aerostar without removing the wings or floats
A Heinkel of the Swedish Air Force A Canadair "Super Scooper" Water Bomber
Two beautiful DeHavilland Beavers
Millie and Doris relax in the shade Oscar's J-3 Kitten and Paul's Clipped Wing Cub
A 20 year old Proctor Antic converted to electric Another view of the China Clipper
Views of the 5-station flight line and the pits, with beautiful Lake Casitas scenery in the background