There’s no shortage of airports in the northwest suburbs. And you don’t even have to include Chicago’s massive O’Hare International Airport. There’s Palwaukee Airport in Wheeling-Prospect Heights. Schaumburg and Lake in the Hills each have their own municipal airports.
Then there’s Deer Grove East Forest Preserve in Palatine, where on a typical Saturday or Sunday morning, the air traffic is moderate to heavy. That’s where members of the Blue Max Flying Club ply their hobby of operating radio-controlled airplanes.
“We like to think that we have our own little airport out here,” said Scott Christensen of Barrington on a recent Saturday morning at the Palatine field. “And with that in mind, RC pilots do the same pre-flight rituals as regular pilots. First, you check your controls in the pit area, because once you take off, there’s no tomorrow. Then you taxi out onto the runway, take off into the wind and have fun. You’re flying.”
The Blue Max Flying Club has more than 90 members–men and women, young and old–from throughout the northwest suburbs. The club is one of several radio-controlled airplane clubs in the area that fly out of places such as Deer Grove East and Busse Woods Forest Preserve near Elk Grove Village, both of which have designated areas for such flying. Along with weekend flying, the Blue Max club also meets the third Monday of each month at the Buffalo Grove Youth Center, where they discuss RC plane technology and review the past month’s “crash reports.”
Ron Petterec of North Barrington is president of the Blue Max Flying Club, which was formed in the early 1970s.
“Blue Max has a lot of knowedgeable, proficient flyers, people who aren’t afraid to share their ideas and their love of flying,” he said. “That’s what makes our club great. Plus, we’re very safety-conscious, which is important with RC planes. They’re like a flying lawn mower without the guard. You have to respect them. But if you do crash your plane, the nice thing is that you always walk away.”
RC planes range from those with wingspans of 4 to 6 feet up to ones that measure 10 feet or more. For instance, Petterec has a J-3 Piper Cub RC plane that has a wingspan of about 10 feet and is built to 1/4 scale, which means it is one-fourth the size of its real counterpart. Beginner models reach speeds of about 55 m.p.h., and the more advanced planes travel at 100 m.p.h. or more. A typical fuel tank holds enough for a 15- or 20-minute flight.
Some pilots build their own planes from kits, and others buy their planes assembled at hobby shops. An assembled starter plane costs around $500 (a kit is about $350), although competition pilots may spend $10,000 or more on their planes.
An RC plane is operated by a hand-held radio transmitter with two sticks. One stick controls left and right turns and up and down maneuvers, and the other stick controls the throttle and the rudder. The radio will control the plane up to a mile or more away, but, for safety purposes, Blue Max pilots stick to the forest preserve’s circular flying area, which measures about 10 acres.
Mark Moldowan of Lincolnshire started flying in 1989. “Most people in the hobby–me included–have a love of aviation,” he said. “These planes can do pretty much everything a full-size plane can do.”
At that point, Moldowan executed a series of four-point rolls (each quarter-turn constitutes a point), eight-point rolls, snap rolls (quick rolls) and knife-edge loops that would have wowed the crowd at the Chicago Air Show.
On this day, there were about 20 club members present, though it’s not necessary to belong to a club to use the forest preserve fields. Petterec says it’s not unusual to have 50 or more on any given day; some come out just to watch and talk about planes.
Petterec said the Blue Max club encourages beginners, and the club has several members high school age or younger. One of those is K.B. Kaeser, a 13-year-old from Barrington Hills. He made his fourth solo flight on a recent Saturday.
“My dad, Roland, and I had an electric plane a few years ago,” he said. “We crashed it, and that was that. Then a few months ago I went to the library and started reading about RC planes. Then we went to the hobby store and picked up a plane and I got started. I’ve always been interested in how things fly, and I can learn a lot by flying RC planes. Maybe someday I’ll join the U.S. Air Force.”
Christensen began flying solo RC flights 43 years before K.B. Kaeser did. “Let me tell you, flying an RC plane in 1954, with the unreliable radios we had back then, was real exciting,” he said with a laugh.
Christensen works in product development for Kyosho, a Japanese company that makes RC planes, cars and boats. He joined the Blue Max club two years ago.
“Half of this hobby is social,” he said. “Flying RC planes is a great time, but it takes a little of the fun out of it when you don’t have great guys to fly with. Our club has people of all ages, and we all love to fly.”
Petterec began flying in 1990. He lived in Buffalo Grove at the time and a couple of his neighbors were RC pilots. “I came out and watched them for a year or so, then I built my own plane and an instructor took me up,” he said. “I’ve always loved flying. I took real flying lessons in the 1970s and got my pilot’s license. Then I graduated up to the little ones.”
Gene and Jason Derbick of Hoffman Estates are a father-son RC flying team. “I started coming with my dad two years ago, and I’m already flying solo this spring,” said Jason, 13. “I love landings the best.”
The Derbicks were exposed to RC planes by happenstance. “We were out on a bike ride once and saw these planes flying overhead,” Gene Derbick said. “It was great to see. And I still get a thrill every time I go up. It’s fantastic. But the one thing I tell new pilots is: `Don’t fall in love with your plane.’ Because we do have a crash now and then.”
Indeed, on a recent visit to the Deer Grove East flying site, the garbage can was stuffed with the smashed remnants of what used to be an RC plane. And that day of flying produced another casualty, when the wings separated from the rest of a plane. The balsa wood, plastic-coated wings fluttered gently to the ground like the feather in “Forrest Gump,” while the rest of the plane plummeted into the ground nose first.
Marvin Green of Buffalo Grove joined the Blue Max club in 1975, and he has owned about 30 planes over the years. “And I’ve probably cracked up 25 of ’em over the years,” he said. “My first flight, my plane took off, I took one turn and it crashed. That’s when I knew that there’s more to this hobby than meets the eye.”
As part of the safety that’s stressed, the Blue Max club allows only four planes in the air at one time. When one taxis in, another one taxis out.
“Everyone out here is fascinated by everything that flies,” Christensen said as he conducted another pre-flight check. “That fascination covers everything from paper airplanes to jumbo jets. And the same rules apply to them all.”
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For more information on the Blue Max Flying Club, call Ron Petterec at 847-382-4741.
PLENTY OF COMPANY IF YOU WANT TO SOAR
The Blue Max Flying Club isn’t the only local RC flying club.
All these clubs are members of the Academy of Model Aeronautics in Muncie, Ind. The association was founded in 1936 and has more than 170,000 members.
For more information, call the group at 765-287-1256, or visit its Web site at www.modelaircraft.org
Local clubs include:
– Chain-O-Lakes Eagles RC Club in Woodstock.
– Chicagoland Circle Cutters in Des Plaines.
– Chicagoland RC Modelers in Mt. Prospect.
– Elgin Academy of RC Flyers in Elgin.
– Giant Aircraft Specialists in Prospect Heights.
– Hobbytime Flyby Knights in Hanover Park.
– Lake Shore RC Club in Crystal Lake.
– Northwest RC Club in Hoffman Estates.
– Silent Order of Aeromodeling in Radio in Arlington Heights.
– Valley Hawks in Algonquin.
