In just a couple of days will kick off the official beginning of spring and with it the unofficial end of another R/C auction season. This year instead of walking aimlessly through one auction isle after another I had a plan. I was on a mission to find that perfect, already built fun-fly airframe for our upcoming contest season. There were certainly an abundance of airframes at our own auction but buying anything would prove difficult as my duties as co-auctioneer kept me occupied. There were two other auctions however that I had hopes of attending and I was confident that I would score a real bargain at one of them. The first one was the highly acclaimed Northern Connecticut auction a mere three hours away. I had reservations about going to this one since it was so far away, but the hope of stealing some of their ideas to possible improve on our own event kept me interested. Fellow members Rob Kallok and Stu Katz also wanted to go and I gladly volunteered to drive. For whatever reason I could not sleep the night before and by the time we left the house at 5am I was working on 1-1/2 hours sleep at best. The trip was going smoothly until about 6:30 am when we hit a patch of black ice coming off the interstate. In an instant my Expedition skidded sideways off the highway, up a curb, and slammed into a guardrail. Luckily for us nobody got hurt but the truck didn’t fare so well. The main damage was to the front left tire and rim and to my ego for not having a spare tire with me. We waited two hours for a tow truck on that cold Sunday morning and with the additional time it took to repair the truck we finally made it to our destination by 12:30. It may have been my frame of mind but I knew the minute we got there, that it was all a waste of time. I didn’t see anything there that was of any interest to me other than a hamburger and in short order we were on our way back home. And so two weeks later I joined a gang of JCSF members that piled into two vans driven by Adam Lilley and Rob Kallok for our annual trip to the Lebanon Flea Market. Despite dreading the anticipated 2-1/2 hour ride to get there I was eager to find that perfect airframe and this may have been my last chance before the start of our flying season. About an hour after our 6:00 am departure, this time it was Adam’s vehicle that suffered some misfortune as a fuel pump failure left him stranded at a toll booth in Pennsylvania. With bizarre similarities to the Connecticut trip, we watched as Adam’s van was loaded onto a flat bed and was headed back to his home. That didn’t stop us from continuing our journey however, as we all crammed into Rob’s vehicle to complete the trip. Luckily just as the tow truck arrived so did JCSF member Frank Beshears who was riding solo and heading to the same place. This allowed us to reduce our occupancy by one person but we were still cramped. Well we finally made it to the flea market and I was lucky enough to find just what I was looking for. A semi beat up profile fun-fly airframe for $35 bucks. Of course if I factor in all of my other costs involved in finding it, it’s probably closer to $750.00.  A true bargain for sure