Serious pilots behind radio-controlled planes coming to St. Charles

Dave Murray of Elgin, a professional airline pilot, assembles his Excalibur radio-controlled jet, which can fly 180 mph and has a 90-inch wingspan. Courtesy of Fox Valley Aero Club

These aren't your granddaddy's model airplanes.

They fly on their own power up to 400 feet up. They have wingspans of five to 20 feet. Some of them go 200 mph. And the guys who control them via radio waves from the ground range from retired Air Force and airline pilots to engineers, salespeople and lawyers who would rather avoid the expense, hassle -- and loneliness -- of flying a "real" plane.

From 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, spectators can see the hobby of radio-controlled flying up close as the Fox Valley Aero Club holds its third annual Windy City Warbirds and Classics air show at the club's 11-acre flying field west of St. Charles.

Spokesman John Fischer said 75 pilots from seven states and Canada are expected to bring along 200 remote-controlled aircraft, or RC aircraft as they're called, joining the club's own 177 members from the Chicago area.

"Last year our main emphasis was World War II planes," said Fischer, a 57-year-old salesman from Plainfield. "This year we will highlight World War I, and the air shows at noon Friday and Saturday will begin with dogfights between Snoopy and the Red Baron."

Prizes will be raffled off to benefit the Tri-City Salvation Army's Angel Tree program, and a "candy drop" will be held for kids in the audience.

Fischer said last year's show drew 2,000 people.

"Flying these involves the same physics and aerodynamics as a full-sized plane. But it's much harder," said someone who should know. Dennis Smalley, 67, of Batavia graduated from the Air Force Academy, flew F-111 and A-10 attack planes in Vietnam and Cold War Europe, retired as a lieutenant colonel, then spent 18 years flying airliners for American Airlines.

"The problem (with flying an RC plane from the ground) is perspective," Smalley said. "In a regular plane, you can feel the G forces and the turns and you're looking right at where the plane is going. With an RC plane, you have only what you can see from the ground. You can't feel anything. And sometimes, with the controls, left is right and right is left, if the plane is flying toward you."

"I have been blown away by the crowds they get here" for the summer air show, Smalley said. "It's a lot like the military air shows I used to fly in."

Smalley's pride and joy this year is a Tiger Moth biplane trainer like one he flew while serving in England 50 years ago.

Cliff Fullhart's pride this day was a model of "Red Baron" Manfred von Richthofen's all-crimson World War I Fokker triplane. Fullhart, the longest active member of the club, will be at the controls of that as it dogfights a Sopwith Camel, with a little Snoopy the Beagle in its cockpit at noon on Friday and Saturday.

How it began

A World War I Fokker D. VII German fighter plane flies over the cornfield last year at the Fox Valley Aero Club's Windy City Warbirds and Classics show in St. Charles. - Daily Herald File Photo

Fullhart, a 75-year-old retired insurance salesman from Geneva, said the club traces its roots to a group formed in 1929 -- just two years after Charles Lindbergh flew the Atlantic solo for the first time. A band of aviation enthusiasts from the Fox Valley formed a club called The Flying Fools that flew little hand-launched, free-flight gliders and small models powered by wound-up rubber bands.

Later they began flying planes with small engines, connected to the ground by ropelike tethers. Their meetings floated from one location to another.

In 1979 the Fools changed their name to Fox Valley Aero Club. By this time the transistor had made radio equipment so small that they could control an engine-powered plane from the ground without any physical connection to it.

An A-10 Warthog jet flown by Paul LeTourneau of Oconto, Wisconsin, takes a cruise during last year's Fox Valley Aero Club's Windy City Warbirds and Classics event in St. Charles. - Daily Herald File Photo

The club moved to their present site, rented from the city of St. Charles, in 2003. It has an 800-foot asphalt runway and a 600-foot grass runway.

Planes occasionally crash into a cornfield next door, so club members erect marked poles along the cornstalks, making it easier to figure out where in that maze of maize their cherished aircraft has disappeared.

Fischer said most crashes cause only minor damage, such as broken landing gear. But if the searchers in the corn call for a garbage bag to be brought, that's a bad sign, he said.

Most of the planes are made by their owners, using wood, fabric, scale-model blueprints and off-the-shelf engines in a process that can take hundreds of hours. A beginning model can be finished for as little as $300, but costs also can quickly rise to $1,000 or more.

Painted like the real planes they represent, monoplanes must have wingspans at least 6 feet, 8 inches, and biplanes at least 5 feet.

Most RC planes are powered by liquid fuel or electric motors. They go a maximum of 60 to 70 mph. But a handful of the planes at the show will be powered by real-life miniature jet engines. These babies are really fast, really hard to fly -- and really expensive.

A real powerhouse

Just ask Dave Murray, a 63-year-old Elgin man who flies Boeing 777s for United Airlines in his day job but has built or bought several RC-controlled jets for flights with the Aero Club on his days off.

Fox Valley Aero Club member Tom Flint of Geneva explains to his granddaughters, Madeline and Eleanor Costlow, how his radio-controlled model of a Piper Super Cub works. - Courtesy of Fox Valley Aero Club

As Fullhart talked about that red Fokker, patterned after a real plane built 99 years ago, a loud "vroom" filled the air. It was a twin-tail, high-performance jet named Excalibur, with a wing span of 7.5 feet, zooming past at 180 mph. Murray was working its radio controls.

"Going at this kind of speed, things can get out of hand really quickly," Murray said.

But with no electronic readouts or automatic pilot, he said, it's a lot more fun -- and usually more challenging -- to fly RC craft like the $6,500 Excalibur, or like the $10,000, 7-foot-wide, 32-pound F-22 Raptor jet fighter he brought to the show last year.

These jets must land at such high speeds that they need real brakes to slow them to a safe stop before the end of the runway.

"This hobby is relaxing. It's an art to put a plane together, knowing every detail has to be just right," Murray said.

But when he flies in the winter, Murray said, the servos that work a plane's control surfaces get stiff, as do his own fingers working the radio controller down below. "I'm not going to take a chance with the jets then," he said.

So he trots out some machines that are just a little less ambitious -- like a model he built of a P-51 Mustang fighter from World War II that has an 8-foot, 4-inch wingspan, an 85 cubic centimeter engine and landing gear that retract in flight at his command.