MODEL PLANE LOVERS TAKE TO THE SKIES

GORDONVILLE -- Frequent flyers stood alongside raw recruits during the Southeast Missouri Modelers Association Air Show Saturday at Gordonville Airport.

The show, which featured model airplanes built and flown by SMMA members, was a flight demonstration put on for tourists riding the St. Louis Iron Mountain Railroad over the weekend. About 100 tourists watched flights on Saturday, and demonstrations will continue all day today.

"We're doing flight demos for (the railroad)," said SMMA president Stephen Diebold. "We started this last year with two weekends, and we're doing it two weekends this year."

Experienced and novice model plane hobbyists participated in the airshows. Some flew planes they had worked on during the past winter, while others flew planes that were more than 25 years old.

"The plane I'm flying was actually one my son flew when he was at home," Diebold said. "I actually sold it, and somebody found it in the back of a truck years later and asked me did I want it back. I think it's the oldest one out here."

The local organization has more than 50 members, all of whom hold required memberships in the national Academy of Model Aeronautics. Diebold said the group is diverse, with everything from very experienced younger pilots to older pilots who are just putting together their first planes.

"Anybody interested can join," he said. "We have doctors, lawyers, retired people, young people: It's really a togetherness club."

Club members said 17-year old Daniel Wunderlich of Jackson was one of the youngest and most experienced flyers in the group. Wunderlich, who has built and flown model planes since he was a first-grader, was the youngest flyer in the United States when he joined the national organization 11 years ago.

"My father and both of my older brothers had started this, and it was just a natural progression," said Wunderlich. "When I started, I flew the same trainer plane as my dad and both my brothers."

Daniel and his father, James Wunderlich, said the hobby brings the family closer together. "You spend all that time building an airplane you can't help but be closer," the older Wunderlich said. "He's a good flyer -- one of the best in the group."

Diebold said there were fewer local viewers than usual watching the pilots try out their planes, possibly because of hot weather. Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday are big flying days for the group, he said, and many regulars come to watch the planes.

Rosemary Diebold and Valeria Adams, Diebold's wife and daughter, said they've been watching model plane pilots for more than 30 years but never tire of seeing the planes in the air. Hobbyists often work several months on one plane, they said, and invest anywhere from $300 up to thousands of dollars to get a plane in the air.

"There's a lot of precision involved," Adams said. "If they aren't put together just right, they don't fly right."

Rosemary said she doesn't mind the time and energy her husband puts into the planes, and she feels almost as bad as he does when a plane crashes.

"It keeps them off the streets," she laughed. "In the wintertime, I know he's going to sit and build them. Then they fly them, and sometimes they crash them and it has to be redone.

"We know how much it costs, so when they crash they get very quiet. Then they all get together to try to figure out what happened and see if anything can be saved. It's a hobby, but it's very serious."