Respectable defeat and binocular camera

The glider competition was good fun. We were fortunate to have bright sunshine for the event. Having said our glider looked good after seeing a picture of it, I realise I was mistaken. Amongst the carefully sculpted planes belonging to the other entries, our glider looked distinctly half assed. Not even the shark sticker on the side or our name on the wings made it look any better. Nobody else was using 5p pieces to weight down the nose either. We were allowed 15 minutes to do any final tweaking we needed to do, which in our case was making sure our wings weren't going to fall off. In the end we basically tied them on with elastic bands. As the competition started I wasn't confident of our chances. Although one plane had broken a wing during practice, so we stood a chance against them. The rules of the competition were every plane got 3 flights and the longest time in the air of any of those 3 was what counted. After a couple of solid efforts of over 20 seconds of flight and good looking gliding form it was our go. The planes were being launched using a fishing rod with a ring on the end of the line to pull the planes in to the air. We got some good height on our first pull, the ring released and then the plane plummeted in to the ground, smashing the end of the wing off and ripping the wing covering in a couple of places. It was in the air after release for 2 seconds. Things weren't looking good. We repaired it with surgical tape, and were able to get it looking like a glider again, adjusted the wing somewhat and got it ready for the 2nd run. By now the best time was 47 seconds. Again, we got good height on the launch and the release was OK. It was a beautiful, perfectly balanced run... And we managed 19 seconds of flight. Very satisfying. The third run got up to a good height but didn't release properly and after some brief aerobatics, managed about 6 seconds. Our 19 second best time was good for 6th (out of 8) place. After the competition, the kids started playing with the gliders and got some much better performances than the adults had managed. We tried to fly our for a 4th time, but the hook ripped out, causing the plane to crash and breaking the wing irreparably this time. The day continued with lunch at my Uncle's house and a good time was had by all.

My brother and his girlfriend had forgotten to pack their camera and so asked her Dad if they could borrow a camera from him. Luckily he had just picked up a camera from a car boot sale. It was a pair of binoculars combined with a digital camera. The box art was funny. It was the binoculars zoomed in on a woman lying on a beach in a bikini. It is good to see the aspiring pervert market being catered for so well nowadays...