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October 30, 2003 - Buzzing furiously up in the
air, its black and yellow colors brightening the overcast sky, the
tiny helicopter looked like a bumblebee doing acrobatics.
It whirred backwards, flipped upside down and spiraled in the air.
Members of The Plane Vanilla Modelers, bundled against the cold,
looked over at Mike Swift, and watched with a bit of envy.
"That guy has been to the nationals," said one man.
"Most guys don't fly like that."
The fancy spirals and spins, called aerobatic maneuvers, don't
come easily, said members of the group, who meet regularly at
Bates Woods in New London. The people who get really good, they
said, fly every day, taking their hobby to a more serious level,
sometimes to national competitions where they are judged on
dashing displays that call for quick, creative choreography.
The club, which formed about a year and a half ago, started when
its members, from across southeastern Connecticut and from all
walks of life, got to know each other through the Salem RC
Propbusters club, before they decided to branch off into their own
group.
Though you don't have to be an engineer to have fun flying model
planes, it doesn't hurt when you're building your own plane, as
has Ed DeLaura of East Lyme. He embarked upon the project after
becoming dissatisfied with his old model. While flyers can make
their own planes from scratch like DeLaura, the models also can be
bought at hobby shops like H&H Hobbies in West Mystic.
"It flies unbelievably beautiful," DeLaura said of his
plane. "I had a plane like it, but I didn't like the way it
flew; it didn't make the kind of aerobatic maneuvers I wanted it
to do. I was very fortunate it came out the way I wanted it to.
"The reason we like this hobby so much is that it has an
appeal whether you like to build the design or fly," DeLaura
said. "It's good clean fun, and we would like to promote it
with kids around here."
Steve Stadnick, another engineer and also from East Lyme, has been
building models all his life, and said that flying the planes was
something he always wanted to do. Stadnick is the vice president
of the club.
The club has about 22 members, but on a recent Sunday, about a
dozen showed up. The men - no women have joined the club - share a
quiet camaraderie, watching each other's planes take off from the
mowed miniature airstrip.
Clutching their controls and adjusting their radios, members said
their little aircrafts function much like real planes; they do
everything their bigger counterparts do, with speeds that can
exceed 70 mph. Stadnick said some models can reach 200 mph and can
cost as much as $10,000. But those airplanes, equipped with little
jet engines, require special licenses and have restrictions on
flight.
Some members, like DeLaura, long to fly a real plane, but the
price is too high. "I don't have a million dollars," he
said of the cost of owning a plane. Model airplanes, he said, can
run about $350, and that includes everything. "It's not a
cheap hobby, but it's not exorbitant, either," he said.
Controlled by handheld radio devices, the planes run on glow fuel,
a combination of methanol, nitrogen and castor oil. The controls
are set on a radio frequency, and by flying in a group, each
member can tune into different channels or take turns flying.
Otherwise, with two planes on one channel, a crash can occur, even
with model planes as far as one mile apart. There are a lot of
safety rules, members said. When they get together, members use a
sign-up board to keep track of which member is using which radio
frequency.
Still, things can go awry, and on this day, the group's attention
was fixed on a plane disappearing over the trees.
"Whoa, get up there John," warned one man. The plane
nose-dived and disappeared into the dense horizon of tree-tops.
"I don't know what happened," said John Adams, who lost
control of his plane. "That's a done deal - it's a done
plane."
Later, Adams learned the engine had died, and after searching for
his plane, found it with a broken wing. The repairs, Stadnick
said, would be costly, and because the plane was old, he theorized
that Adams would buy a new plane, perhaps salvaging some parts
from the broken one.
The crash got the group talking about safe flying, and they said
the rule of thumb for keeping control of an airplane is keeping
sight of its wheels. If you can't see the wheels, said the flyers,
your plane is too far out.
For those who watch the planes buzz about and itch to take over a
control, yet hesitate because they fear their first flight might
be the last for the plane, a "buddy box" can help. The
device allows an experienced pilot to take over from a novice when
things look dicey, keeping the plane intact.
All members of Plane Vanilla Modelers belong to the Academy of
Model Aeronautics, which supplies the individual pilots and the
club with insurance. They and the City of New London are covered
for up to $5 million for their skyward sojourns in Bates Woods.
Recently, however, the city has asked for a $25 fee for every day
they fly, which is three days a week. The group expressed
disappointment, saying they could never afford the price. They
took pride in the fact that they had improved the roughly graded
land to make it a suitable runway for the small wheels on the
planes. They had a deal with the City of New London to maintain
the site, doing the bulk of the mowing in return for the right to
fly.
The club operates solely on dues, and is now looking into the old
Waterford landfill as another possible flying site, Stadnick said.
Waterford is closer than the club's Ledyard site, also a filled
landfill, which the club has been maintaining as well. The locks
on Bates Woods will be changed on Nov. 4, which is around the time
the club ceases flying for the winter.
For now, the pilots keep trudging to Bates Woods, enjoying their
skyward sojourns in even the most unpromising weather. On this
overcast day last weekend, the clouds gave way to rain, and the
airplanes were quickly packed up, the men lingering just long
enough to take a group photo. As they piled into their cars, they
glanced up at the sky and gazed once more at the field. Their
brooding glances foretold the coming of winter; and with it,
hibernation for the busy little planes that buzz in the air with
colorful wings.
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