Jason Berman eyed the pieces of his broken airplane.
The Townsend resident had just crashed it into a McIntosh County field. Escaping unhurt, as most remote controlled airplane fliers do, he clearly mourned the loss of the remote controlled craft with its 3-foot wingspan.
Its nose was buried in 6 inches of topsoil, its fuselage broken in two, but its price tag intact in Berman’s mind.
Fellow flier Mike Keen of Brunswick looked on with a smug smile on his weathered face.
“All of these remote controlled airplanes have an expiration date,” he said. “They’re all going to crash sooner or later.”
Perhaps that’s why Keen, Berman and other members of the Coastal Planes Radio Control Club reserve their riskiest maneuvers for the least-expensive planes, ones they build themselves. They’re called E-SPADs, which stands for electric simple plastic airplane design. They’re extremely light - about 12 ounces each - futuristic in appearance, and zip frenetically through the air like huge, deranged insects.
They’re made chiefly of a type of lightweight foam insulation board sold at home-improvement stores, with engines and avionics glued or taped to the foam airframe. They’re so light that when they do crash, there’s usually little damage. Even if the airframe is destroyed, it can be replaced for a few dollars.
“We stage mock dogfights with them,” said club member Jerry Matherly of Brunswick. “We literally go at each other.”
To illustrate, four club members sent their E-SPADs aloft. The pilots, their feet planted firmly on the ground, worked their big plastic controls with shiny silver antennas like hyperactive puppeteers.
The remote controlled planes climbed and dived, turned sharply, circled and spun. The pilots thumbed their radio controls frantically, but the dogfight appeared headed for a tie.
It seemed impossible for one plane to catch up with another, but then came a slight grinding sound as one craft dealt another a glancing blow. The most injured of the two foam birds plummeted 20 feet to the ground, where Matherly retrieved it.
“A little hot glue and it’s ready to go again,” he said, pointing to a 2-inch tear in the foam.
The E-SPADs are only some of the “big-boy toys” club members bring to their flying field at McIntosh County’s Industrial Park every Sunday. They also fly gas-powered remote controlled airplanes and remote controlled helicopters, and the old-fashioned line-controlled planes.
Their aircraft range in price from a hundred dollars or so to thousands.
Keen, the club’s president, hauls his fleet of models around in a covered trailer.
“These are not really toys,” he said. “Some of these airplanes go 70 to 80 mph and can be dangerous if you’re not careful.”
So it’s safety first on the flight line and heads up at all times.
The club is affiliated with the Academy of Model Aeronautics, a national organization dedicated to the hobby. Members of Coastal Planes also must join the academy, which provides clubs with liability insurance coverage.
Coastal Planes members are serious hobbyists and eager to recruit others. But they warn that the hobby can be addictive.
Source: NewsJacksonVille
Technorati Tags: Remote controlled airplanes
