up, up, and away?

So when Julie and I were in DC hanging out with some of my family, I was enlightened by my cousin Josef on one of his hobbies: model airplanes. Now many of us had heard of model airplanes before but I had not heard of the recent innovations in the past 5 years that have greatly decreased the cost from hundreds of dollars to about 30 bucks! for the High end model planes you cannot even buy the batteries that go in the remote control for $30.



As you can see I purchased one of these magnificent beauties of flight and have had a ton of fun with it outside around the house. Well, I decided I would show off the plane to a couple of friends of ours. I should first tell you that my particular model is the most aerodynamic of the air hogs, incredibly efficient, and requires the least amount of thrust to maintain altitude. That being said, I was out showing some friends my new purchase and noticed that it was a little windy which I was excited about because of how quickly it gained altitude. I had previously never taken my toy above 15 feet but that day i was feeling adventurous... within seconds my plane was above 40 feet and fear was setting in. The models that I had flown with my cousin require that to descend you only need to let off of the acceleration. This is not true with my model... After I had let off of the acceleration my model was taken by the wind and found its way into a tree about 40 feet or so in the air. The fear that had taken root now became sadness as I now was facing the loss of my $30 toy. My friends and I spent the next 45 minutes trying to get it down. I used rocks, a soccer ball, nerf football, an airsoft gun, and a football. Needless to say I was able to recover my toy with a punt kick that knocked the plane loose to a lower branch. We were finally able to recover it and I am flying my toy once again. =)