ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, July 30, 1996 TAG: 9607300072
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: FAIRLAWN
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
They zoom, dive and corkscrew through the skies over Pulaski County in maneuvers that would seem too much for any pilot to stand.
But the pilots of these colorful airplanes of many shapes and types are standing safely on the ground at the former AT&T property, flying their craft with hand-held radio controls.
Welcome to a gathering of the Pulaski County Flying Aces, organized in 1991 for model builders and fliers to get together. They usually do that on Sundays in a section of what is now a Pulaski County industrial park, on about 12 acres leased from the county which they keep grassed and mowed.
The club's members range from about 10 years old to retirement age, and come from all parts of the New River Valley. The public is welcome to come and watch while as many as four planes at a time twist, turn, roll over and dip through the air.
"We're just a bunch of guys that like to get out and fly what we build in the wintertime," said Ron Fuller of Pulaski. "When the weather breaks, we come out and play with our toys. ... It's good clean fun."
These monoplanes and biplanes can be made of balsa wood, foam, fiberglass or plastics. Some are covered with a film-like material, others with fabric like the old biplanes and other old aircraft that they emulate. And they can be made as elaborate as the hobbyist's skill and pocketbook allow.
Randy Cannady, from McDowell County, W.Va., wore a "Shut Up and Fly" tank top when he attended the club's "fly-in" Saturday where others are invited to participate. He mounts a camera on one of his planes and takes pictures from the air of all the fields where he flies.
"The first camera I had, I had to take it up, snap it, land, advance it, take it up, snap it ... " he said. Now he has a camera that advances the film automatically after he snaps a picture using his plane's radio control.
He can also mount a box on one of his planes, which he can open with a flip of his radio switch and drop out a variety of tiny toy figures that parachute down to the ground, launching a miniparatrooper invasion. Other planes are designed for such things as leaving smoke trails across the sky, or have lights on their wings for night flying.
"The longer you fly, the more customizing you want to do to it," said Roger Vass of Pembroke.
"These things are capable of doing any aerobatic maneuver that a real airplane can do, and then probably some more," Fuller said. "Probably every airplane that's ever been built, someone's built a model of them."
Sometimes the model precedes the plane, such as the new YF-20 fighter plane under development. "Modelers have been flying that airplane for years," he said.
Fuller began flying "free-flight" models that you just throw into the air around age 10, then moved to models that fly at the end of control lines. Radio-controlled models were a natural progression for him.
"They just fascinate me," he said. "I have no desire to ride in a real airplane. I have no desire to fly a real airplane. But I love working the radio-controlled."
Vass, a retiree, got interested more recently. He has been building and flying about three years.
"I'm still in the training stage. I need more reaction time than these guys," he said. "I used to work over there at the [Radford] arsenal for years, and didn't even know about this."
The control boards have two levers that can be moved side to side or up and down, allowing the ground pilot to regulate gas, rudder, flaps and turns. For trainees, an instructor has a backup control board and can take over the in-flight craft with the push of a button. The club has three certified instructors.
Jim Hawkins of Radford is club president. "I cut my teeth on control lines back in '62 in the military," he said. He had not known that other people from the New River Valley and beyond shared the enjoyment of his hobby until he learned of the club.
Club members can often be found helping the Pulaski County or Radford humane societies with bingo or other fund-raising activities. "We try to be community-oriented because they [Pulaski County] allow us to use the field," he said.
All the club members also belong to the Academy of Model Aeronautics, which provides liability insurance and a monthly magazine listing what "fly-in" events are being held around the country that modelers might want to attend. The Pulaski County club is planning another for Sept. 28-29.
The planes take off and land on the tightly cropped grassy runway much like their bigger real counterparts. Occasionally, one will crash. Cannady maintains that there are only two kinds of model planes, those that have crashed and those that will.
But, as Vass observes, "you just take your motor and your radio and go do another."
LENGTH: Medium: 96 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: GENE DALTON/Staff. 1. Elton Shelton (top photo) ofby CNBPulaski flies a model plane across the runway as Ron Fuller of
Pulaski watches. 2. A variety of sizes and styles of model planes
(left) sits along the airstrip at the former AT&T property waiting
to be flown. color. 3. Allen Reynolds, 10, of Blacksburg rolls his
plane off the runway. He is one of the youngest radio-controlled
aircraft pilots on the East Coast.