AstroWings

Schwanke-Kasten is a full service jeweler since 1899, offering a selection of fine jewelry and diamonds. We are an authorized dealer for watches by Breitling, Tag Heuer and others.

Proud to donate this year’s Grand Prize, a man’s Tag Heuer watch worth $1,600.
Buy a raffle ticket for your chance to win! 

Schwanke-Kasten Co., Inc.
417 E. Silver Spring Drive, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53217
414-964-1242 / 800-965-1242
www.schwankekasten.com

Visit our new location at
763 N. Broadway St.,
Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53202
414-271-1242

AstroWings of Wisconsin welcomes slopers to The 1st Annual Midwest WeaselFest ; A “Weasel-centric” Sloping Fun Fly!
Saturday, April 19th and Sunday, April 20th, 2008
Open to all AMA member pilots.
Join us for a Radio Controlled Slope Flying party at The Omega Hills Slope

For more info check out our Midwest WeaselFest PDF flyer. It has all the answers!

I made a trip out to Omega Hills today to check the condition of the hill and the road after our winter of record setting snowfall. 2nd place at this point and we may not be out of it yet! Anyway, the hill is in very good shape with minimal snow left. The road is still snow covered on the north side from about 3/4 of the way up to the top. It is melting and should be good in a few days if the weather holds. I’ll be checking regularly and post when the hill is ready for our slope season to begin.

Hi All,

I am going to send in our order for the Weasel slopers that we got a special deal for, as discussed at the November meeting and in the AstroWings Newsletter, on December 4th. If you are interested in getting one of these versatile, fun slope planes, get a message and payment to me, greg@slopeflyer.com, by Monday, December 5th.

If you need more info let me know.

Thanks,

Greg

From my bunker of an office (no windows and lots of air conditioning) the only link to what the weather was like was the internet, and it was saying 70deg with 18mph winds…at the end of OCTOBER! I called Greg in the morning so I knew he’d be flying the new Omega Hills site this afternoon. I’d had about enough of work at 2:30…Ok, who am I kidding…I had enough the moment I walked in but I thought it’d be bad form to just walk in and walk out so I waited till the afternoon.

I got to the hill at about 3. Greg was already flying his 60” LEG P51. Greg is a master flyer and was making the P51 really groove. The winds were about 16 – 20mph giving impressive speed and half pipe turns.

I grabbed my Soaring USA Spyder. This plane’s been crashed and repaired several times so it’s the perfect plane to limber up what skills I have before flying my Opus. A few laps with the Spyder and I was ready for more.

Mike got there about 20mins after me. He’d repaired his Pixel after knocking the tail off on Sunday and started ripping it up. Mike is another fantastic flyer. I usually struggle with landing and he sticks them every time. He had gotten a slope fuse for one of his planes and today would be the maiden flight. As it was the flight had some ups and downs. Turns out the elevator pushrod was binding which made the elevator not center. Makes it hard to fly when your elevator isn’t working well. Pull up and it keeps going up. Push down and it keeps going down. He got it on the ground with no damage except to his nerves. Way to go Mike!

Ben Bauman got there moments after Mike and had a Zagi looking plane. He said he flew on Wednesday when we had a NW wind and temps in the high 40’s. With temps about 70 it was quite a difference.

I flew my CSD P51 till a bad hop on landing broke the tail. This type of PSS plane is real easy to repair so it won’t be down long.

Greg tried some DS with limited success. We’re determined to make this spot work for DS so we’ll continue testing till we find what winds work.

We continued to fly till about 4:30 when Greg, Ben and Mike had to leave. I continued to fly for about 30mins practicing my landing with the Spyder. Toss it, make a few passes and land. Repeat.

This hill is going to be a dream come true. Winds that we couldn’t do anything with are now an invitation to fun. Thanks Greg, Mirko, Roger and everyone else who made this possible.

Our group’s exclusive access code, give to those who attended the orientation, for entrance into the Omega Hills property has been programmed into the access gate control system.  Effective immediately, please begin use of that code for access.  Please circulate this information to anyone who may have utilized the temporary code provided last week, as it has been deactivated.

Also, a reminder that the “*” button must be pressed after entering your four digit code to activate the automatic opener.

If you did not attend the slope orientation and want access to our new slope soaring site contact greg@slopeflyer.com.

Club Member Michael Davidson sent in this report.

Astrowings members flying: Dave Kraemer, Mirko Bodul, Greg Smith,
Michael Davidson

Strong and gusty winds greeted Dave and I around noon at the new Omega Hills slope site on Saturday. Winds were out of the northwest around 15-20 mph. Not sure of the temperature, but it is definitely time to start gearing up for our year ’round slope season with plenty of layers and warm gloves.

Read the rest of this entry »

Dave K and I had planned to take a trip to South Dakota this weekend and so he had a couple of days off from work. It is hunting season in SD and rooms are few and far between. Our favorite motel in Chamberlain was all booked so we decided to stay local. With the opening of our new site at the Omega Hills landfill it was a safe bet that we would get some flying in if there was wind.

Thursday Dave and I met at Omega Hills and found a due east wind at 8-10 mph. We flew the face that faces Northeast and while it was not spectacular it was very flyable. Dave flew his Spyder and I few my Pixel. After about 45 minutes the lure of the east wind prompted us to head to Concordia.

We continued down the coast of Lake Michigan for most of the day and had a good day of sloping here in Wisconsin.

There is more about the day of slope flying in Wisconsin on the slopeflyer.com and soarmilwaukee.com sites if you are interested.

Orientation day on Sunday, October 21st  was about as perfect as could be hoped for! Mid-70’s and 30mph of wind! I think there were at least 30 visitors to the site and a dozen or more pilots flew.

What are all those people doing on that hill?

I had a great time with my Pixel and Wizard Compact II. Team Bandt from Janesville proved the potential for PSS planes like the LEG Warbirds with 60-inch P-51D Mustangs as well as their LEG ODR planes while Steve Meyer flew the largest plane of the day, an over 3-meter Fazer with a pound and a half of ballast. Dave K had out a 60-inch Spyder, A Lumberjack and a CSD Mustang. Russ had his whistling Vern Hunt plane called High Anxiety. In addition, several Weasels and 48-inch wings flew. All in all we could not have hoped for a better first day at the new slope.

Jack Dowden,<jdowden@wm.com>, the fellow we are supposed to notify when we fly at the Omega Hills slope site, asked me to let you all know that we should add Larry Buechel <lbuechel@wm.com> to the notifications we send when we intend to fly at the site. So, send a note to both Jack and Larry.

Russ’s Vern Hunt design called High Anxiety.

Dave launching a CSD Mustang

Howdy slope pilots! The long wait is over. Things turned out a bit differently than we’d originally planned but our friends and fellow club members at AstroWings of Wisconsin helped us finally gain access to one of our local “Holy Grail” slope spots. Thanks to AstroWings and especially Roger Zahn, as well as the folks at Waste Management for this opportunity.

On Saturday, October 6th Mirko, Greg and Tracy made a preliminary venture to the Omega Hills Waste Management site in Germantown, Wisconsin for some test flying of what promises to be a great venue for slope soaring action in Southeast Wisconsin. On this particular day the wind was about as poor a direction (SW) as we could have and we still had many flights of 10-15 minutes. I had on at least 20 minutes. Remember this was in the least favorable wind direction!

For those of you who have been looking forward to flying at Omega hills please mark your calendars for Sunday, October 21st at Noon. We will meet at the Omega Hills gate on County Line Rd. and be given an orientation by the site manager outlining the few rules that we need to be aware of. After that we will be free to fly!

If you will be attending the orientation please RSVP greg@slopeflyer.com. I need to get a head count for the site manager.

Also, please remember, to fly at this site you will need to be an AMA member and an AstroWings of Wisconsin member too. I will have membership applications for AstroWings at the site.

FYI, this has been over 5 years in the making and we are really looking forward to making this relationship work. Your help as responsible pilots and people will be greatly appreciated!