2014 A Year in Port Polar Bear

Sat Aug 9 2014

As 9:30 rolled around this morning Zach & I finished loading the van and took the short drive to the pond. I had my hedge trimmer along to “Mow the grass” something we have not done this year. Andy had used it at NATS and said it was going bad. It had gone bad and would no longer cut anything. I drove off to buy another one. I think I bought it in 2010 and used it once, maybe twice to trim the small bushes I have, other than that it’s mowed grass for battles 2-3 times a year. When I got back to the pond and started to get to mowing Andy showed up. I had mowed to the water and we looked at how bad the weeds were. Think the worst part of our NATS pond for the whole battle area. Andy took over the trimmer and I went home to get my waders and another rake. When I got back I climbed in the water and started pushing weeds around, it was about 10:15. At noon Mike brought some burgers from McD’s, a short break and back into the water. We pushed about a 50’x50’ square clear. Connor & Brian arrived and it was time to battle, must have been 1:30 or 2pm.

We split into Bob (Wash), Zach (Zyrini) Connor (Scharny) vs Mike & Andy. Brian’s Balt was getting a dry box lid sealed and didn’t make it. Eric showed up just as we finished battling. Andy put his NC on the water and lost rudder control. Turns out both his rudder balloons had ripped and he had water in the box. He spun in circles and shot back, making it off 5, I think, or maybe we just pulled him out. We had traded A turrets and he was pumping fairly hard. Zach once again could not fire his sidemount on Zyrini when his pump was on. The ship didn’t do this for me at NATS and we had fresh batteries in it. He flipped off his pump and fired, then pump back on. Andy hit him with trips just as Zach turned and showed some red, taking a nice triple set of triple holes below the waterline. It was kind of a battle in slow motion as all ships got mossed, then freed, mossed, clear…

Andy was out, Eric in, So we changed teams to Bob & Zach vs Eric, Mike, Connor. Second sortie, Zach still can’t fire with the pump on. Mike & I traded sidemouts and as we slowly pulled away Mike was sinking. I didn’t look at the damage but must have blown something out.

Back out for a 3rd sortie, it was raining a little. Zach chased Connor and caught up with him for  a good group of sidemount shots on his stern port side. 

Connor packed it up and the rain became more of a drizzle than a drip. For the forth sortie we did a three way free for all. But Zach got a truce with Eric. Zach & I traded sidemounts and I chased him hoping he’d hit some weeds. I think the lighter ship was floating just above the weeds as he could keep up speed and I could not. Eric did get caught in the weeds a few times and I got some good sidemount passes on him.

After that we packed up and headed home, just as the rain stopped, about 4pm.

As I was sitting at the neighbors party having a beer, the can’t fire the gun when the pump is on problem was solved. When I ran the ship on my radio it worked fine. Zach has always had this issue. I thought it was low voltage on the batteries or a sticky solenoid piston. But I started to think it might be a radio problem. After looking at the end points when the pump switch was thrown off the gun would fire. But center it would not fire from the push button, but it would from the stick. When the pump switch was moved full forward the end point arrow would move as if the stick was moving. Turns out The Bike caused this problem. It’s set up to four a 4 channel radio, so I mixed Channel 2 and the channel 5 switch to turn the pump on. When I copied this set up for Zyrini this copied over too. I found the right part of the mix and turned it off. Now it works. Zach will be super deadly next time.

Bob H