Stetson Flyers

November 24th was our Annual Christmas Dinner. Fifty members and guests enjoyed excellent food and a fun and relaxing evening. ‘Special’ presentations were made and the children received gifts from one of Santa’s elves. We had many draws for door prizes, including several gift cards graciously provided by Great Hobbies and Orleans Hobbies. Thank you to both hobby stores. Your support to our club events is much appreciated. The highlight of the evening was the opportunity to suitably honour our recently retired president, Daniel Marcotte.

Our Annual Christmas Dinner was back this year after too-long a break. By all accounts, everyone had a very pleasant evening enjoying each other’s company as well as the plentiful buffet.

October 1-2, 2022: The 15th Annual Worldwide Ringmaster Fly-A-Thon is over and what a blast! The final numbers are in and as of  15 Nations worldwide submitted a total of 10,481 flights logged by 605 pilots. A whopping 2,154 flights more than last year's record setting 8,327 flights logged by 553 pilots!

For the Stetson Flyers Club it was the 4th consecutive year participating in this event.
Mother Nature graced us with a good weather weekend. 
Stetson Flyers Club’s previous Fly-A-Thon records were surpassed: 15(14) pilots flying 12(5) variants of the "Ringmaster" logged a total of 241(66) flights over the course of the two days. Interest in control line (C/L) is definitely on the upswing. Piloting the model aircraft were new, very lapsed (i.e. decades), budding and veteran C/L pilots.

The final session of Flight School for this year enjoyed favorable weather, despite a fairly gloomy forecast. It was attended by five students flying a mix of Apprentice, Mini Apprentice and AeroScout trainers. No models were hurt during this event!

In the accompanying pictures you can see the instructors hard at work scrutinizing models before flight, showing a student which switch not to press, demonstrating how to make a turn, and just standing around after a successful flight. Len is guarding the Flight School’s collection of equipment. One picture shows 12-year-old Kailen, a very promising pilot.

Flight School will return in 2023 with ground school sessions followed by a resumption of flight training as soon as the field dries out after the spring runoff.

Thanks to all who contributed to making Flight School 2022 a success.

President Daniel Marcotte

Stetsons Giant Scale Fun Fly:  A Royal Event!

Saturday September 24, 2022 provided near perfect weather for our event with sunny blue skies and warming temperatures. Winds down the runway helped as thirty-one pilots signed up and flew a wide variety of aircraft with no major incidents.

The high point of the day was the arrival of Her Excellency, the Right Honorable Mary Simon, Governor-General of Canada who visited to watch her grandson Christopher Simon fly his dad's big Jaguar jet. Chris did a fantastic job of showing us all up as he flew the big bird through a very smooth routine filled with loops, rolls and multi-point elements in all directions. He nailed the landing in a bit of a crosswind at the time as well, just to put the rest of us to shame! 
The GG was very generous with her time, joining us for lunch and allowing lots of photo opportunities.

Flight Line help from Mike Lalonde and Safety Officer Peter Wakefield kept things moving well throughout the busy periods.

Compliments go out to the many pilots who flew safely today with lots of communication on the line.