I'll give you the TL:DR up front: We SMASHED the previous record of 99 with 179 successful pilots in the air together for the official minute! Here's an article in the local paper about it. And here are my videos of the (now successful) attempt:

Video on board my aircraft:

Ground video courtesy of my awesome wife:

To give you a sense of scale, the 600+ of us (pilots, spotters, counters & officials) were lined up along a flight-line approximately 5 football fields long, in front of a flyable space about 2 football fields wide. All pilots were grouped into 4 "Flights", that launched in sequence, 4-3-2-1; 4 being the highest and longest-endurance aircraft, 1 being the smallest and shortest-lived ones. This was to hopefully give a good separation between all the aircraft right from the start. Mostly it worked, although there were plenty of mid-airs that brought pilots down. Most of the downed-pilots however, were due to signal interference. With 300+ radio transmitters/receivers in such close proximity, there was bound to be bad connections, brown-outs and the like. Luckily, I use a more robust radio system than most, and practice good antenna placement in my models, so I was one of the 179 that survived the minute.

I know what you're thinking; "How do you count the pilots who stayed up?" In order to get an accurate count, each spotter was given an orange marker-flag. If that spotter's pilot went down, they would drop and bend the flag. If the plane they were spotting stayed up during the official minute, they would hand off the 'up flag' to an official steward/counter for collection. There; aren't you glad you asked? ;)

It was an awesome week, and my wife proved herself once more to be a hero among heroes. Also, it was my son's first time on an airplane, and he LOVED it (which I also loved). :D

Here are some more highlights from the week:

Catch you all back online soon. :)