After all, it can take hundreds of hours to build one of these airplanes.
Flyer Lynn Osborn pointed out that the builder of a radio-controlled airplane
had to be fairly detail-oriented.
"Miss a few details and you end up with a pile of kindling," he said.
Still, builders vary in the amount of detail they are oriented toward. Osborn
is one who likes competition, so he doesn't put a lot into the final finish of
an "expendable" airplane that probably won't get through one complete racing
season without crashing to the ground.
Other builders can lavish a couple years on exact flying replicas of full-sized
aircraft, meticulously hand placing each rivet on their scale model where one
existed on the original.
Then there are the pattern flyers, who like to do what Osborn described as an
aerial ice ballet. Others still who fly radio controlled sailplanes and search
for updrafts.
Osborn said that simpler models can be built in 30 to 40 hours. Most builders
spend two or three hours at a time at the bench.
There is a wide variety of models available. The level of completeness varies
from scratch built to complete, ready-to-fly racers. Hobbyists can spend $300
or ten times that amount.
Osborn estimated that about a third of the Cascade Flyers are certified or
retired pilots. Their field, just east of Plainview, is a leased 66 acres off
Highway 20. They don't usually use all of it, but sometimes signals get
crossed, or a pilot suffers from "dumb thumb" and sends his plane careening out
of control.
For more information in the Cascade Flyers, which Osborn said is not a club but
a co-op of active members that shun politics, call Gordon Grubbs at 923-7671.
