One great reward of this hobby (and many others) is that it puts you in touch with people from diverse backgrounds. I was fortunate enough to be in the company of one such gentleman, Philip from Austria/Czech, who is a pilot by profession, but also an avid modeller.  Although we connected as heli flyers, I soon realized that he is into a lot more, especially water-landing aircrafts, and RC sail-boats.

His RC Groups page (user name "meatbomber", being the pilot of a plane doing parachute drops!) should work as a fair indication of his passion :

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/member.php?u=29823

What surprised me was that even in his short assignment in Qatar, he came with a Trex 250. And much more than that, he built a little sail boat using local stuff in the few days he has been around.  I wish I could be of more assistance, all I could contribute was some piano wire.  His commitment/passion has been really amazing.

And it was my first time seeing RC sail boats... no power/propeller system, just two servos to guide the boat using wind power... awesome !

Some more pics.

Losi pack??Is he a car guy too?

He visited an LHS here, and noticed a thin ply sheet (not balsa) that was suitable for building a small sail boat. So he just picked up compatible stuff to complete it, including the Losi 1/36 car battery. Since he already has the radio, the rest was easy (for him!).

He built it at half the size of the original plan.

Cool.Admire such guys.

Video posted by Philip in this thread :

http://rcqatar.com/boats/q-tip-a-12-scale-footy-micro-sailboat/

Interesting to see the shadow of the waves generated by the boat on the bottom floor of the pool !

Cool.....

Yet another reason to show to our loved ones, why being involved in RC can be fun, exciting and rewarding.... got a chance to go up in the para-drop plane.  Thank you Philip !

After the parachute folks jumped out, we went from 7K feet to 4K feet in like 8 or 10 seconds, and that felt like the first/steep drop in a roller-coaster ride with all the G forces ! (somewhere around 5:40 in the video).

At 7:56, there is a para-jumper landing after the plane has landed !

Nice video Anwar, looks like you had lots of fun.
I felt so involved watching it, much better than watching national geographic guys doing stuf like this
Thanks for posting.

There are 'Cattle' Class (like me)
There are 'Business Class'
and Then there are 'Cockpit Class' like Anwar, augustinev, Umanand et all!!

Kudos you fellas who enjoy all these goodness of life!

Alas!~! what a great divide  

I was just the happy victim of someone's generosity !

no no Anwar you paid your ride with 15cm of unobtainable pianowire

cheers
Phillip

And I guess the most thrilling part would have been feeling all those G's while taking that 10 sec dive

Man, that's awesome !

15 cm of wire for a trip, nice. Would 30cm qualify me for a first class flight?

You're really lucky Anwar and I see one more boat expert on our forum. Welcome to the forum, meatbomber.

I think, it is the hobby that makes us magnanimous , i was discussing with sushil_anand, in the RC hobby, building a model, crashing it, re- building it, if it can't be repaired , the ability to sulk awhile a to move on to another model, makes a kind of mental aptitude which is is rare to find, towards that we are in sort of even keel. no?

the video reminds me of my parachuting times, what crazy ass things we did, cant imagine doing that now, i remember jumping out, removing a cam a clicking a picture of my stick (6to 8 jumpers are called a stick) putting the cam back into the pocket, all before para opening that too at 1200 feet, will post the pic soon

My good friend Philip got married recently, and he and his wife celebrated the occasion in true RC style Yep, in the wedding dress !

Wishing them many more flights together in the years to come !

PS:  And we were talking about women RC pilots !