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Pilots 're-create history' at St. Charles model airplane show

Every meticulously crafted model airplane needs a pilot in the cockpit, and the figurine in Tom Flint's PA-18 Super Cub bears a striking resemblance to the Geneva man.

Flint sat for a special photo shoot to create his look-alike. Software combined the images, and a 3-D color printer produced the miniature pilot he calls “Mini-me.” Both wear a mustache.

“Actually after I saw it, I decided to lose 40 pounds,” he deadpanned.

It's one example of the craftsmanship Flint and other members of the Fox Valley Aero Club invest in their year-round hobby. The club hosted its signature event — the Windy City Warbirds & Classics show — Saturday at its 11-acre flying field in St. Charles.

Vanity aside, building close replicas of civilian and war planes preserves a sense of history, pilots say.

“All of us really have a passion for all things airplane, from the physics of what keeps an airplane in the air to trying to re-create history,” event Chairman John Fischer said. “That's what we're all about.”

Big band music and a flyover from a full-scale jet set the patriotic tone of the event, now in its fourth year. The physics came into play on a windy runway Saturday that grounded some treasured aircraft.

Pilots use a radio controller with two joysticks to put on a highly acrobatic show, wowing crowds with low passes and aerial stunts. And though they didn't launch off an aircraft carrier, a “shooter” still signaled when each plane was ready for takeoff.

“We say it's not an airplane until you fly it in the air,” Flint said.

That means these detailed planes, often hand built, are not meant to look pretty on a shelf.

“In the summer we fly. In the winter we build,” said Flint, the club's spokesman.

His is a time-intensive and expensive hobby. To fly in the giant-scale event, the wingspan of one-winged aircraft must run at least 80 inches — or nearly 7 feet. The cheapest plane at the show costs roughly $5,000.

“Some of them seem like they're only art,” Flint said.

And as such, some hobbyists from around the Midwest travel to the show driving their prized possessions in trailers. A total of 80 registered pilots from seven states displayed about 300 planes over the three-day event at the club's headquarters near Route 38 and Peck Road.

For history buffs, the World War I and World War II bombers are designed almost as a tribute to the veterans from those eras, pilots say. A model of an F4U Corsair from the Pacific theater was covered in rivets, put in by hand with a soldering iron.

“A plane like this is a lot of work,” club President Dale Gathman said.

Fischer flew his model B-25 Mitchell, a medium bomber, in honor of the 75th anniversary of the Dolittle Raid on Toyko after Pearl Harbor.

“We're telling a little bit of a story,” Fischer said.

  The fourth-annual show featured about 300 remote-controlled aircraft. Many were exact replicas of actual planes that flew in both world wars. John Starks/jstarks@dailyherald.com
  Jeff Edstrom, of Minneapolis, takes in the acrobatic show alongside his World War I fighter plane Saturday. The 1/4 scale model aircraft is an exact replica of a plane his grandfather flew. John Starks/jstarks@dailyherald.com
  Hundreds of spectators relaxed in the sunshine to watch the Windy City Warbirds & Classics RC Air Show hosted by the Fox Valley Aero Club in St. Charles on Saturday. John Starks/jstarks@dailyherald.com
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