Camp AMA 2015

Thanks!

      Let me start off by thanking the people that helped me get to camp AMA. A HUGE thank you to Barry Katona, Ted Hughes, 3DRC Forums, and Arvada Associated Modelers. In mid-April, Barry nominated me for a scholarship to attend  the camp. I found out on May 22nd that I was selected. (Keep in mind that I didn't even know that I had been nominated, so this all came as a big surprise!) Then at the June meeting of Arvada Associated Modelers, the club presented me with $100 to help cover travel and shipping costs, then they passed  a hat around the room and raised an additional $350. I was speechless, I mean this kind of stuff doesn't happen to me, right? Thanks to all the great people at the club, all my costs of travel were 100% covered!

     From June 7-13 this spring, I was lucky enough to attend Camp AMA. What is camp AMA? Camp AMA is a relatively new camp that is located at the AMA headquarters in Muncie, Indiana. It is a great place to socialize and fly with people your own age who are also into the hobby. I know this is a very repeated theme in the hobby, but the best part of camp wasn't the planes, it was the people! Some very, very good pilots were there including RJ Gritter, Nick Maxwell, AC Glenn and Jonathan Elie to help us with our flying. We did tons of flying, in addition to scratch building, visiting the AMA museum and XFC championships, and night flying.

    The main thing we did at camp was fly. We would wake up at 8, eat breakfast, and leave at 8:30. From the hotel, we went to AMA headquarters to get the planes we wanted to fly for the day. Then we would get to the flying site around 9. At around 11, we would get pizza from Papa Johns. We left at different time each day, but it was usually around 3:30. From the field we would go back to AMA headquarters to drop off our stuff and then go back to the hotel. Then we would go eat! Thank you so much to our sponsors who fed us! Papa John's, Buffalo Wild Wings, AppleBee's, Chili's and Outback. Also,  A big thank you to our other sponsors that gave us cool stuff in our goodie bags. Hitec, AJ Aircraft, Hobbico, Horizon Hobby, Anderson RC and Nick Maxwell products.

    The whole experience was great, but these were some of the highlights for me. We took a tour of the AMA museum. The museum was incredible! They had EVERYTHING imaginable from the very first RC transmitter to pulsejet- powered control line planes! One of the coolest things there for me was the  Great Wall of Transmitters. On the left side, there was the world's first RC transmitter receiver. (Check out the crazy pictures below.) Then there were probably about 50 or so radios in between with a modern day 2.4 radio on the right.

     There were some other crazy things there like one of the world's first ‘’drones’’, the world’s first RC plane ‘’Big Guff’’ and much more. If you ever get a chance, I would highly recommend visiting the Model Aviation Museum at some point.

On Friday, we took a short field trip to XFC (Extreme flight championships). We got to see some of the worlds best RC plane and helicopter pilots fly and it was incredible. 

    One other highlight was when RJ flew an brand new Carbon Z Cub in front of the AMA building. It is quite an small space for that size of a plane. We all expected him to do an nice easy flight around the field, but we were wrong. ON THE MAIDEN, he takes off, rolls inverted and proceeds to to an inverted tail touch on the trees, then he dragged the wing tip on the ground in knife edge for a good 20 feet. After that, he did more maneuvers that I don't even know the name of.  It was one of the more impressive flights I have ever seen!

     One of the other things we did was night fly! It was so much fun. Many people didn't have planes to night fly with, but someone had some very powerful flashlights... We had lots of fun with Micha's UMX Whipit. We would take turns shining the light, launching and flying it. There were some bigger planes there that did have lights on them that were very cool. Like RJ's Carbon Z Cub. There was also a bonfire with marshmallows!

    Sadly, some planes didn’t make it home. There were some pretty spectacular crashes. For example, when RJ ‘’landed'' his 64 extreme flight MXS inverted or when I had a brown-out and lawn-darted my plane into a foot of mud.

    One thing that a lot of people did was scratch build planes. In the hotel, at the field, and at the storage room. My new friends, Jackson and Ben, and I made an awesome speed wing out of a wing from a downed T-45 Goshawk. It flew and it flew fast!

     One of the most surprising things about camp for me was how many planes and other flying things there were. Most everyone had at least 3-4 flying machines. They were all very cool.

     My favorite part of the whole camp was when we played "pass the transmitter" with a 111cc, $3000 Extra 300. It was the last day of camp and there wasn't much time left. RJ wanted to buddy box as many people as possible on the camp's giant extra 300, but someone forgot the buddy cord. Thats when we played pass the transmitter with the camp's giant extra. It flew very, very, very well!

     All in all, camp was a great experience and I would recommend going if you can. Between the museum, XFC and flying the giant scale Extra, it was one of the best experiences I have ever had! Thank you to all the counselors who made this camp happen and thank you to everyone who helped get me here!

Learn more about camp AMA here: http://www.modelaircraft.org/education/campama.aspx