One good friend of mine was lucky enough to get selected for Vietnam. :)  when he tells me that you realize the word luck might have been used improperly  !!!

   He went into tank repair school and when he got shipped over, there wasn't a huge amount of heavy tanks, but there were tracked personnel carriers with smaller guns on them..

He thought "whew, at least I will be on a major base with a shop.. WRONG.. They immediately sent him out to a unit that was constantly picking up and moving all over the place. He has some scary stories about it being so hot you would sleep up on the vehicle.. to try to stay a bit cooler.. knowing it could be dangerous at any moment. Lots of misery and lost sleep...

Well he told me during his tour...two or three times at night they were surrounded with gunfire coming out of the dark, and a couple times he said he was sure they were all going to die. On I believe two occasions it was so bad they called in an air strike.. to make the enemy run or die first....

     According to him when the C.O. called it in they wanted to know where to hit.. and they were told every where right up to our perimeter..  My friend said the Air Force actually told them to pull down all the big whip antennas on the vehicles... He thought it was some sick joke at the time. But he claimed some F4 Phantoms showed up and made some passes so low over him they might have actually gotten close to hitting ground objects. Ever since then he has loved F4's, and flown ducted fans, and now turbines.. And he has had a F4 model a time or two. Years after the war he ran into a guy on a job interview that had flown Phantoms at the same time and area he was located.. And they both just couldn't believe they may have crossed paths.

2nd story is one the Royal Corsair for sale in the add area reminded me of..

One of my best friend picked up a wrecked Giant senior sized Royal Corsair.. Meister scale sized bird. He got a great deal because the entire gull wing and fuse center was GONE... Well he is very picky and worked on it for a long time..he had every angle indicator and plumb , and level he owned sitting on it as he built.

Finally it was done, He flew it around most of a summer then took it to Byron Aviation Expo... He was in charge of the Japanese group of fliers during this period.. In Ankeny.   During the free flying he had it out and was just having a blast flying it around .. Suddenly he realized he had no throttle control and it was wide open.. I dont know if a kill switch was required then or not, but if he had one..it wasnt working.. So he flew, and flew ..he passed the radio around to trusted friends.. waiting for it to run out of gas.. Then he started getting worried..he had installed a LARGE gas tank.. Finally one time around the pattern he felt the battery getting soft in the turn... And he knew he was going to have to put it in because of the mass of people. On the end of the runway clear out in the distance was a tree.. My friend decided maybe taking the wings off in the tree would be better than putting it in on the nose..or letting it go off dead stick.. So he aimed for the top of the distant tree,, and his motor coughed and started sucking air just before he hit the trunk of the tree dead on the crankshaft.. It was a total write off ... for years I recall him looking for a crank for that motor it was some older heavy motor  a 100cc ?

Gas tank was intact and dry in the wreckage..

Anyhow its been a story we have mulled over many times... 

A dozen years ago or so, I had a cheap 50-size Me-109 ARF that I flew and flew and flew until it was in tatters...which I then crudely patched with more monokote and continued to fly and fly and fly.  Well, one day, high up, it went into a most unusual spin/dive heading down almost vertical at full speed into a densely wooded area at the end of our field.

It disappeared into the trees still going vertical.  As always, all the guys trudged over to pick up the pieces.  It took us some time to pick our way through the trees and the underbrush.  But eventually, we found it.  It was just sitting there on the ground on its gear as if someone had hidden it there.  Looking up, I could see no break whatsoever in the tree canopy above.  Nothing but dense foliage.  No visible damage on the model whatsoever.

So I picked it up, carried it back to the field, did a quick structural and radio check, fueled it up, and flew it again.

     Another story comes to mind now... And I have told it more than a few times ...

    The builders in you will all get a bit of a laugh ,and probably a little sad how things have turned.

     I went to a big RC swap meet on the north side of Kansas city Missouri with a good friend of mine. He really enjoys staying to the end of these things and getting the best deals from people that don't want to take anything home.. I on the other hand make a fast pass to get what I want.. Typically I would buy up balsa first.. and very seldom would I buy a kit.. or anything built..

Now abandoned projects are often tempting. ..and usually priced decent.

     So after my third pass I saw an old BUSA 1/4 cub kit that was priced right..I picked it up, and there was a 80 inch Mustang ARF that had been stripped that I thought a friend back home might want.. And there was this 60-90 sized Corsair kit . I think the tail had been started. Well everytime I walked past this guys table he would see me look at it and say something like  ...

    "You need that kit "  " I only want 80 bucks"  next pass around  "Its only 60 bucks I dont want to haul it home"

  Finally my last pass thru he says "  Listen , For you 40 dollars" 

   Well I picked it up , sort of turned it over and around...Like the weight of it in my hands would tell me something I didn't know..or help me make a decision...

  

   Then this guy standing next to me says to the seller   "whats the size of it?" And he grabs the box and starts trying to gently pull it out of my hands.. I look at the guy like ..at least let me set it down. Then the guy says to the seller ..

  "Is this a wood or foam ARF?"

  The seller replies.. "Its a wood kit..you have to build it"   This guy lets go of the box so fast it almost fell out of my hands onto the floor !!

hahahahahhah, sad but true...