here's life

I am thinking that if I am going to be spending time outside (a noble quest) I should invest in some sunscreen. Today I went to a Design, Build, Fly Competition. The main object of the game was to carry stuff. The flights consisted of a take-off and flight past the upwind flag, then a 180 turn to downwind, with a 360 the other way on the downwind leg, and then going beyond the downwind flag, another 180 and land. The first event had a ten minute time limit, and they had to carry 96 tennis balls aloft for 2 minutes. All the teams I saw did this in two loads. Many teams were not able to complete the second load because of time or batteries. There were several crashes of course---one plane stalled way downwind and spiraled into the ground over the rise. Another team did the same thing nearby---plummeted into the ground, and a spray of chartreuse balls rebounded and scattered. There were some of your common nose-overs as planes came in to land. One from Mississippi did a good tumble as it landed on it's nose and wingtip, but it must have been pretty sturdy because it only got chipped up a little. There was a flying wing that performed pretty well, and some unconventional two-boom planes. The wind really made it interesting, as it ramped up from about 15 knots in the morning to over twenty in the afternoon. One plane lost a wheel on take-off, but their pilot just continued the flight, and coasted into an impressive no-roll landing. I think he may have been one of the hired pilots, a practice which was looked down upon by teams who actually flew the plane themselves---sort of like slapping a Hate Box on your helicopter to make it autonimous.
The planes with big wings had a hard time flying up wind, but they didn't have trouble with the 100ft takeoff roll maximum like one team. One of the big-winged planes was doing the next event---carry 48 tennis balls, then two 2-liters, then a chunk of 4x4 board---and they were on their last downwind,,,and the batteries gave out. The plane made a sweeping arc into the ground, shattering into pieces. They weren't the best at the loading and unloading of the varied payloads, but they were pretty good and so they would have made some points---the score was inversely related to how long it took your loading team to add and remove the cargo. Some teams really had it down---the tennis balls were the real trick to get from the bucket into the plane. Especially if you were doing the whole swap in about 20 seconds
The Isreali team had an interesting plane; while not a blended wing design, the fusilage did seem to be shaped to help lift the load. They spoke to each other in some language I didn't understand (i.e. not English) I heard that one of the Turkey teams crashed on takeoff, but I saw the other one complete an event quite well. I wish I had picked up more Turkish from my sister.
There were over twenty teams and I didn't see them all fly--an interesting one had three fusilages, each with an engine. Maybe if I go over before church in the morning I'll see it fly.