Hugh Fraser leans over, tears some grass off the ground and throws it to the air. He grips a remote controller while he watches the grass drift past him to the east.
“Straight down the runway,” he says.
The engine of a gas-powered model airplane, the “Norseman,” revs to full speed. The propeller spins out the sound of a lawnmower mowing and the plane speeds forward, breaks off the field and soars into the air for the first time.
It’s the maiden flight of the Norseman. The Brandon RC Flying Club launched the plane on Thursday morning to bring life to a season’s work from one of its members.
“I spent all winter on it,” Rod Atkinson tells the Sun later on Thursday.
The Sun visited the club to learn a little bit about RC flying and gain a glimpse into what the hobby is like for the members. The club described a challenging, sometimes upsetting, and rewarding hobby.
Speaking to the Sun, Atkinson explained that over the cold season, he assembled the wooden frame of the model airplane, installed a propeller, wheels, an engine, remotes, and wire to function like a real aircraft, and then used a heat gun to shrink the cover onto the 1937-model replica plane.
It’s not the first he’s built — laying in the grass are other models he brings to the club.
The “Extra 300s,” also his creation, is caught on Thursday with an unresponsive rudder during pre-flight checks. It stays grounded for the morning, while Ian Fraser and Hugh work on it like doctors at an operating table. After some time, the team discovers that a remote is broken.
When asked why he chooses the hobby, Atkinson said RC flying is engaging.
“It’s one of those things where there’s a challenge involved,” he said. “And I’m a builder, I love to build.”
When the Norseman touches back down on the 500-foot airstrip outside Brandon and rolls to a rest, Atkinson sighs a breath of relief. His many hours of hard work landed safely on the grass to live another day.
Things aren’t always that way.
Earlier on Thursday, Ian’s plane, the Black Knights, drifted to the side of the runway on its approach and clipped a safety fence, snapping the nose and exposing a network of wires in its body.
Shocked about the crash, Ian collected the pieces and stacked them off to the side — they will be repaired later. He lit a cigarette, and said that a remote on the aircraft had been responding poorly when he came in to land.
But that’s part of the game.
“They all crash eventually,” he said. “You spend all this time building it, and then they crash.”
It will take two weeks to repair the plane, he said, and the model will come back stronger than it was before. There will be some repair work with a steam gun to purge wrinkles, and some adhesive and carbon fibre to the body.
While the repair is part of the hobby, and perhaps part of the fun, it’s not exactly welcomed by everyone, he said.
“My wife hates it when I bring home pieces. (She says) ‘I’m not going to see you for two weeks?’”
Later in the day, Ian takes up the plane he calls the “crop duster.” Smoke shoots out the back mid-flight, as he triggers a pump in the plane to push oil into the muffler. The visual trick heats the oil and turns it to smoke, leaving a trail behind the plane as it veers directly upwards.
The Brandon RC Flying club has been around for more than 40 years. The club operates out of a piece of land off provincial road 457, where they dug out stones, levelled the ground and now keep the grass cut short for a runway.
A former member, who passed away, is still remembered through the carport that he donated to the club that provides shade. Tables are set for repair jobs in between flights, and the equipment looks like a trip to Radio Shack.
New members are welcome, they tell the Sun. For now, it’s just the Brandon RC Flying Club page on Facebook, but they said a website is coming soon.
