An all black radio-controlled model of the Lockheed U-2 spy plane is pictured flying in front of the wind farm located at Bwlch, South Wales, UK in May of 2018. The picture is credited to Phil Cooke. The sky is blue dotted with white clouds and the rolling hills are various shades of brown and green. At the right of the photo's subject there is a grey, BluFly logo consisting of the words « Blu » on one line and then « Fly » on the next line.  Both words are contained within a grey box. The former is shaded blue and the latter is shaded white. Below the logo are the words « May, 2024 » in crisp white letters.
This month's outstanding banner photo is of the famed Dragon Lady — also-known-as the U-2, of course. It was taken by our good friend Phil Cooke at a power scale soaring (PSS) event at Bwlch, South Wales hosted by the SWSA1 and the PSSA2 in May of 2018. Yes, builder and owner Andy Meade's U-2 is a glider. Check out more of Phil's photos from this and other PSSA events with his robust Flickr3 footprint.
May, 2024
“It isn't where you came from. It's where you're going that counts.” — Ella Fitzgerald
In The Air

Regular readers of the defunct New RC Soaring Digest — the predecessor of this humble effort — will remember the distinctly mixed blessing that was my monthly editorial entitled as immediately above. In each article I drew mostly on my only slightly coherent stream-of-conciousness otherwise known as whatever was on my mind at that particular moment. While it did, from time-to-time, address the obvious requirement of foreshadowing what was in store for the new issue, In The Air strayed into coverage of wandering grey partridges, itinerant wasp colonies and bicycle trailers amongst a variety of other subjects. It was nothing if it wasn't — well — all over the map, candidly.

That said, In The Air was fun to write and while I can't yet say I'm fully committed to a revival of the series, I am at least thinking about it. Don't tell anybody but I actually miss the monthly ‘chore’ — it was a challenge to routinely come up with something every month which readers would find mildly entertaining at some level. If I somehow managed to also accomplish the goal of enlightening that same readership in some way that was a bonus — and very satisfying, I must say.

A good place to start, this time, will be to address the eight-hundred pound elephant in the room: "is this now a monthly publication kind of like the New RC Soaring Digest?" The answer to that is an unequivocal no, it is not, for two significant reasons:

For the record, my definition of a ‘publication’ is a place where new, original content shows up for the first time. Based on that, BluFly is already a publication given it has kicked off the original series entitled BACKSTORY.5 This is where I'm atttempting to tell the very long and very detailed story of how BluFly came into existence and — perhaps — where it is going in the future. However I realise that's a long way from the satisfying thump of a new issue arriving on you doorstep each month. All I can say for now is stay tuned — you never quite know where things will wind up.

Another important lesson I learned in my tenure with the New RCSD was to be brief. I think I may have already failed at that with this article so without further ado, I will wrap up and turn you loose on the social feed for this month's issue. The most recent item at the top and this will have items added to it over the course of May. Also, by all means, please let me know what you think.6

Until next time, whenever that is, fair winds and blue skies.

Terence C. Gannon
Managing Editor

Recent Posts from the Feed

Until such time we have our Table of Contents pages up and running, we are providing the most recent posts from the feed7:

Another well rendered article from Jacopo Prisco of @CNN.com: « Now, a new version of the Beluga is replacing the original fleet, which has gone on to power a standalone freight airline called Airbus Beluga Transport … » Read the rest with link. | 🛩️ 📰

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— BluFly 🛩 (@blufly.media) May 31, 2024 at 8:52

A spectacular end of what sounds like a perfect day. | 🛩️ 💺

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— BluFly 🛩 (@blufly.media) May 29, 2024 at 18:25

Did you manage to catch it during your flight? | 🛩️ 💺

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— BluFly 🛩 (@blufly.media) May 29, 2024 at 18:21

Spectacular. | 🛩️ 💺

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— BluFly 🛩 (@blufly.media) May 29, 2024 at 18:17

Imagine being one of the ground staff and seeing him peering out at them. | 🛩️ 💺

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— BluFly 🛩 (@blufly.media) May 29, 2024 at 18:13

Yikes. We think you should have been offered a refund on that surcharge. | 🛩️ 💺

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— BluFly 🛩 (@blufly.media) May 29, 2024 at 17:58

From Julia Buckley at @CNN.com: « There are plenty of spectacular landing strips around … here we’ve put together some of the most beautiful approaches in major destinations – along with which side of the aircraft you should sit to best appreciate them. » So, how many have seen for yourself? | 🛩️ 💺

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— BluFly 🛩 (@blufly.media) May 29, 2024 at 12:45

Very cool. | 🛩️ 💺

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— BluFly 🛩 (@blufly.media) May 29, 2024 at 12:30

Sounds like a line from a Mad Max movie. As rabid fans of the franchise please accept that as the huge complement it is intended to be.

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— BluFly 🛩 (@blufly.media) May 29, 2024 at 12:28

You always have great shots of really interesting places, Harald. | 🛩️ 💺

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— BluFly 🛩 (@blufly.media) May 29, 2024 at 11:10

Note that the embedded posts above are from the Bluesky Custom Feed7 which is the ‘reference’ feed for BluFly. Check out said feed if you want to see what else we posted about this month.


1 The South Wales Soaring Association: « The SWSA has been reformed to bring together slope soaring people from South Wales for fun flying, fun competition and promote slope soaring within the region and further afield. »

2 The Power Scale Soaring Association: « all about building and flying scale model gliders of full sized jet, rocket or piston powered aircraft, excluding powered gliders. These basic guidelines enable the modeller to construct slope soarers based on a huge variety of full sized aircraft. This is demonstrated by the vast array and diversity of model designs seen soaring over the years … »

3 Here's where you can find Phil Cooke's mostly PSS-oriented Flickr albums. Phil is one of the best working in the field and we're also proud to have him as a BluFly Trusted Contributor.

4 The core social platform for BluFly is Bluesky. You can also find subsets of this feed on Threads and Instagram. Please follow us on any and all of these platforms as they will be the source of the latest and greatest from the BluFly team.

5 The place place to start, of course, will be with Part I of the multi-part BACKSTORY, which has the intriguing subtitle of Combing through the Wreckage.

6 Rather than split comments onto too many channels we are collecting them on the Bluesky post for this article. Please leave your comments as a reply 💬 to this post, where they will get prompt attention. Note, however, that will require you to sign up for Bluesky — not a particularly onerous task and, of course, free of charge.

7BluFly 🛩️ is the Bluesky Custom Feed on which this page is based. For more on this concept, check out First Things First: What's a Bluesky Custom Feed? in our Guide for Followers and Trusted Contributors.