In 2006 at NATS one night for dinner we were all at some resturant. Turns out the guy who took me left and I had to catch a ride with someone else. Space was tight. So I rode in Charlie's truck. It was roomy and comfortable. When we got back to the hotel he back up to a group of our people and unlocked the trunk so I could get out. It got a pretty good laugh. Someone has a photo.
Also at Nats 2006... I found that the nearby grocery store had my favorite brand of hard cider! Darth Kessler had one and I had a few, and he watched/egged me on as I used the cardboard carton that the bottles came in (along with some CA glue, fiberglass, a zip-zap remote control car, a coffee stirrer(stuffing tube), and random bits and bobs from my parts box) to make a 'convoy ship' The range of the zip-zap remote was only 10 feet, and alas, my totally awesome convoy ship never saw use at the campaign battle, but it was an epic fun evening even if my memory is a bit sketchy Great times.
What else were we do to, there was a tropical storm blowing over. The tornado at Denver NATS was pretty wild too. Also the Vinegar & Balsa dinner, at least Tim was a good sport about that one....
2008 NATS, a bunch of us axis types were sitting around in a room at the beginning of the week making up new "technology" secrets to brag about, because why not. Someone thought up soaking balsa in vinegar to make it softer/hole better. (the slight acid would break down some of the balsa and it would become "softer", sounds just reasonable enough) We all got a good laugh about it and moved on. Mid week some time Tim K came out to dinner with the group and he happened to be the only allied guy at the table. At some point in the dinner the vinegar and balsa trick was brought up and Tim started asking questions and getting more into the idea. We then proceeded to embellish this "technology" a bit and started getting into actual science to see how much BS we could throw out there and make stick, it got to be more or less all the axis guys that were at dinner throwing out different vinegar based methods for softening balsa. I remember at one point explaining how using heated up vinegar could speed the process up due to activation energy of the reaction and other science based backing. (some people were swearing by apple cider vinegar but as a whole we had settled on plain white vinegar). This kept going on for a while with Tim buying it hook line and sinker. He went to the bathroom at one point towards the end of the meal and as soon as he was out of the dining room the whole table busted out laughing. We let him in on the joke at the end of the meal and he took it like a champ, kudos to him for being a good sport about it. Probably one of the funnier NATS moments I can remember. Vinegar still gets brought up in the occasional email/forum post so it has had some staying power. Yes, after NATS more than one person has tested out if soaking Balsa in Vinegar makes it softer, you probably should give it a try if you haven't already!
The vinegar thing goes back even farther. In 05 Jeff was explaining to a couple rookies how to select balsa the first part of the explanation was all correct. Then he goes into how he holds it under a black light and the better balsa is a different color. Sometime in 07 soaking in vinegar came up. I had several people ask if it was real. In 2010 I got into the back seat of Steve Rs car and found a half full bottle of vinegar. I asked what it was for and he told me for soaking balsa.
That dinner might have been at 2007 NATS I don't think it was 2006 but I could be wrong, it was a while ago.
I saw somebody soften 1/8" balsa with windex. It worked, the balsa was able to fit the curvature of the hull very nicely while it was soaked in windex. Then the windex dried... and the balsa turned brittle. Every single hit we landed on him was a 1/2" or larger chunk. Haven't seen vinegar tested, though.
Now that we're kind of on the subject of food... At NATS 03 we had the Friday night awards banquet in a very small room. They served turkey and stuffing. The food was terrible. There were many mostly full plates left laying around and many people went out to eat after. I put it up there as the worst Friday night awards banquet we've had. Brian L's wife has supplied a very delicious brownie/caramel desert when NATs was in Houston. Lots of Doritos laying around battles sites. I've burned several hot dogs with my two settings minigrill. It's either off, or set to burn. Gerald on the other hand has made some wonderful lunches at Wade's. Peter & Steve made great lunches at MN NATs. Thanks to the deer that committed suicide on the side of Ron's truck. Can't drive to a battle without trail mix.
Mmm Dawn made Butterfinger Cakes as the dessert for the 2007 Nats Banquet. The brownies were lakeside daughter #2 has taken over as Head brownie maker nowadays though
The awards banquet on the Texas in 2007 was a lot of fun, but so was the 501st showing up in 2010. One of the really cool parts about the MWC was getting to travel to so many different places of the country to play with our toy boats. It is a pretty big country and there is a lot of neat stuff to see along the way.
We always try to have good BBQ and one the best rib places I think we had been was Dreamland BBQ in Birmingham AL. It was a rough area we were driving through and got a little lost.. so this caravan of 5 or 6 cars with a trailer is circling around in this rough area... residents started walking out to the end of their driveways.. folks started to get concerned.. but we got there and had BBQ and all was well. I think it was worth the trip..
For those that don't know the 501st is a group that dress up as Star Wars characters. We had a couple Jedi, three Storm Troopers and Darth Vader. It was pretty well put together by Johnny. He had the Jedi guys come out for some Allied awards. Then the Storm Troppers came out. For the Axis awards Darth Vader came out to his theme music. We all got photos with them after the dinner. It will be hard to top that in the future.
From seeing the pictures and hearing about it, I think it'd be damn near impossible to top in the future I hope that someone tries, though!
