BAe HAWK SLOPE SOARER MAIDEN FLIGHT
Photos provided by Nathan Knight | natebomb@gmail.com
EVERY YEAR, DURING THE first weekend of May, the annual Sunset Beach Camp N Fly event is held by the Bay Area Model Flyers at Sunset State Beach in Watsonville, California. It’s for Slope Soaring only—no powered aircraft are allowed.
In 2021, approximately 4 weeks before the event, Nathan Knight (Lakeport, California) decided to build an 8-foot, scratch-built Red Arrow BAe Hawk. The photo shows Nathan (“That’s my head on the left”) not knowing whether he had correctly figured out the center of gravity. Was the weight of the airplane too much for the wind? Were the throws correct? Would it be tossed correctly? “You’re basically throwing it off a cliff [during the] maiden [flight] and hoping everything works,” he wrote.
Roy Branda is shown in the middle of the photo. “He’s my ‘official’ big airplane launcher—he launched my 1/6-scale F-100 a couple of years previous,” Nathan noted. On Roy’s right is Alex Sawczuk, whose father, Marek Sawczuk, was the photographer.
Photos and information about the event are included in an RCGroups thread at https://bit.ly/36u2xyl. Nathan’s build log with videos of the build and the maiden flight is located at https://bit.ly/35nSzoP.
