World War II model airplanes fly again at Windy City Warbirds and Classics show in St. Charles
One hundred years ago this spring, in an era of open-cockpit biplanes, Great Britain merged its army's and navy's flying services to form the world's first independent air army, the Royal Air Force.
And when the Fox Valley Aero Club holds its fifth annual Windy City Warbirds & Classics radio-controlled airplane show June 21-23 in St. Charles, visitors will be able to watch scale-model RAF Sopwith Camels and Sopwith Pups do battle with Fokker biplanes and triplanes like the one “Red Baron” Manfred von Richthofen died in three weeks after the RAF was created.
Viewers also will be able to taste the RAF's finest hour, early in a second world war. Several radio-controlled Spitfire fighters from 1940, one-fifth as big as the original, will battle hundreds of feet overhead against a radio-controlled German He-111 bomber that measures 16 feet from wingtip to wingtip.
And fans of more recent aircraft can see models of modern jets like the F-18 and F-15, powered by genuine little jet engines that can move them 200 real miles per hour.
John Fischer, chairman of the event, said pilots from six states and Canada are expected to join the club's own 195 members to provide some 300 “giant-scale” aircraft. Last year's show drew 2,000 visitors and 92 visiting pilots. As many as six planes fly at the same time.
Club spokesman Tom Flint said the club's members, who live all over the Chicago area, normally build and fly all sizes of planes. But at the annual show each monoplane (one-winged aircraft) will be at least 80 inches in wingspan, each biplane (two-winged one) at least 60 inches.
That German bomber — brought in by a visiting pilot from Wisconsin — will be the biggest in the air show. But it will be rivaled by two new B-17G Flying Fortress bombers with 12-foot wingspans, co-owned by FVAC members Dave Murray and Paul Martin.
Murray, 66, of Elgin retired last fall after a career flying real Boeing 777s for United Airlines.
“Now I'm back flying corporate in a Learjet,” he said as he showed off his Flying Fortress. Martin, 51, of South Elgin still works as a United pilot, flying full-size Airbus 320s.
The noses of their RC planes bear names chosen from the name of real-life B-17s — “Thunder Bird” and “Kwit Ur (expletive) .” Each bomber's wings house four separate gasoline-powered motors. The cockpits include tiny, realistic gauges and controls, plus doll-like crewmen.
Martin said flying a model with a radio control device in your hands is harder than flying his real airliner. When you're in a real plane's cockpit, you can see and feel the plane's attitude, speed and direction. When you're controlling a model from a fixed spot on the ground hundreds of feet away, he said, “the perspective between you and the plane is constantly changing,” as you have to imagine what you're doing with this radio-controlled levers and buttons.
Originally, Murray said, “Thunder Bird” was equipped with servos that moved its four machine-gun turrets on radio command. That would have required two people to control the plane from the ground — one working the controls that fly it, one handling the gun controls. “But we decided to take that out,” Murray said. “The more complex it gets, the more things can go wrong.”
By removing the gun controls, the duo also was able to reduce the model's weight from about 60 pounds to a mere 50.
Rob Getz, a 55-year-old software company CEO and former corporate-plane pilot from Prospect Heights, showed off his 110-inch-wide, 45-pound model of a Tucano trainer plane painted in bright red, white and blue British colors.
Like the real thing, Getz's Tucano is powered by a turboprop system, in which a jet-like engine turns a propeller.
“The turbine turns at 150,000 RPMs, but this reduction gear reduces the prop speed to 5,000,” Getz said proudly.
However, most club members are not professional pilots. Cliff Fullhart, a retired insurance broker from Geneva, said he joined the club almost 50 years ago. Today, “I'm out there pretty much every day,” he said.
The club traces its roots to 1929. A band of 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.
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.
“I have about 20 planes that are flyable and another 15 that could be flown after a little maintenance,” Fullhart said. “I love biplanes,” including an 80-inch-wingspan Sopwith Pup — one-fourth the size of the real ones the RAF's predecessors used in World War I before the more advanced Sopwith Camel came onto the scene to fight the Red Baron's Flying Circus.
Martin said he spent two months, working every day, to place 120,000 fake rivets on one of the B-17s.
Asked how much money and time went into building his Pup, Fullhart said, “I built this from a kit that cost $300. It took probably a couple hundred hours. But you don't count the time. It's a labor of love.”
If you go
What: Windy City Warbirds & Classics radio-controlled model air show, sponsored by Fox Valley Aero Club
When: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday and Friday and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, June 21-23
Details: Special one-hour air shows at noon Friday and Saturday. Visitors may mix with pilots at the flight line after the air shows, and the Saturday show will end with planes dropping candy to children in the audience. Food vendors on-site. Some grandstand seating, but visitors are urged to bring lawn chairs.
Where: Fox Valley Aero Club Field, 3821 Karl Madsen Drive (south side of Route 38 just west of Kane County Judicial Center), St. Charles
Admission: $5 adults; free for veterans and children younger than 12
Details: <a href="http://www.foxvalleyaero.com">www.foxvalleyaero.com</a>