Model-aircraft fans show their planes, flying skills at Cape

Dozens of model aircraft enthusiasts from around the state and beyond converged in Cape Girardeau's Galaxy Park airfield for the Southeast Missouri Modelers Association's fifth annual Fly-Low-In this weekend.

Mark McCoy, the contest director, said aside from a pop-up shower, the weekend proved to be a great flying opportunity for pilots of all stripes.

"We've got people here from all over the place," he said. "New Jersey, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Indiana."

He said one of the biggest factors in the success of the Fly-Low-In is the hospitality of the Cape Girardeau community.

"The guys from New Jersey, they just couldn't believe it. And we have some world-class pilots who come here and they get to interact with people here, and it's pretty neat," McCoy said.

Case Dussia of Otsego, Michigan, demonstrates his Extreme Flight Demonstrator Edge 540 model airplane at the Southeast Missouri Modelers Association's Fly-Low-In event Saturday at Galaxy Park. Fred Lynch

Some of the remote-controlled aircraft buzzed in long, winding circles, while other pilots showed off their trick flying.

"We just want to make sure we have a safe, fun event," he said. "But it's primarily for acrobatic fun."

He pointed to one plane as it dove toward the field. Instead of arcing smoothly out of the nosedive, however, it corkscrewed twice violently and whipped back up into the sky.

"It's the flips and flops and things like that," McCoy said. "The type of stuff that you couldn't do in a real plane and walk away from it alive."

At one end of the field, 16-year-old Joplin, Missouri, resident Ben Cantrell was running his 70cc-engine plane through similarly extreme maneuvers.

"I've always been kind of fascinated with airplanes, ever since I was a kid," he said. "My dad had a model plane hanging up in his study when I was younger. We tried to fix it, but it was too broken, so I got my first model plane from a hobby shop when I was 9."

Where did he learn how to do all the fancy flightwork?

"A flight simulator on the computer," he said with a laugh.

On the other side of the field, another 16-year-old, Jase Dussia, was taking tricks to a new level. "It's called 3-D flying," he said later, explaining the advanced aerobatics.

At one point, he eased his plane up into what's called a "hover," where it hangs in the air nose-up, floating. He let it hang in a hover for a minute before performing a series of slight spins in place, known as "torque rolls." Between sudden twists and sweeps mere feet from the ground, the plane looked as though it were waltzing rather than flying.

"And all that is completely under control," McCoy said. "He knows exactly what he's doing there."

But not all the pilots were teens. Herb Prater, 86, of Thebes, Illinois, began flying model airplanes when he, too, was only 9.

Of course, they were different back then.

"The ones I was building back then were for what was called 'free flight,'" he said, recalling the balsa wood-and-tissue paper contraptions he used as a boy. "They had a rubber band that you'd wind it up and just see where it goes. That was 1939, though. Cost me a quarter."

He started working with radio-conrolled planes in 1979, he said, but said he doesn't get too fancy in the air.

"To each his own," he said with a shrug. "Some people like to do tricks, and some people just like to fly. To each his own."

tgraef@semissourian.com

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