Ravenna Thunderbirds RC Modelers Club lights up local skies

Ravenna Thunderbirds club members Jim Valovcik and Alan Hoffman during a night fly at Jetway Flying Field in Ravenna. Jeremy Brown/The Portager

Shortly before sunset on Aug. 31, several Ravenna Thunderbirds RC Modelers Club members filled the skies with remote controlled aircrafts of varying sizes and models. The meeting continued after dark, thanks to colorful LED strip lighting attached to the planes.

Ravenna Thunderbirds RC Modelers Club membership is gaining new heights in response to their night flying events, taking place at least monthly, weather permitting, and membership enrollment is open for anyone wanting to join in on the fun.

Thunderbirds Vice President Dan Foreman. Jeremy Brown/The Portager

The club was formed by President Mike Ryan about 45 years ago and initially held meetings at Diamond Hill Park in Ravenna, but in recent years, they’ve added Jetway Airport at 7648 Peck Rd. in Ravenna as an alternate place to meet, which they share with Corsair Model Aircraft Club.

RC aircrafts come in several styles, including micro planes, gliders, jets, sports planes, scale aircraft, helicopters and more. While they may be inferior in size to an actual to-scale aircraft, the controls are similar in function; the difference is the throttle, rudder, elevator and aileron on an RC craft is controlled with a remote controller transmitter by an operator on the ground.

Bob Eaglen, Dan Foreman, Mark Zaher, Jim Valovcik, Dave Lees. Jeremy Brown/The Portager

In addition to night fly events, the club also holds float fly meetings, where members attach pontoons to their planes and lift off from Nimisila Reservoir or Lake Hodgson, as well as several impromptu meetings and picnics throughout the year. This year, they held their first Fun Fly Competition against the Corsair Model Aircraft Club.

It was over a decade ago that the club began to hold an informal biyearly night fly, but with its increasing popularity, it has grown into, at minimum, a monthly scheduled event called the Night Fly Series.

“We started doing these [night fly meetings] once a month and it seems to have taken off,” Ryan said. “A bunch of guys got into it and it’s actually started to attract people. Of course, we have regular meetings; we try to schedule something at least every month, or at least every other month. In winter time, we kind of all back off.”

Many of the club members build aircrafts in the winter in preparation for the following season, which starts when the weather lets up around March.

Ryan cited the advancements in flexible LED strip lighting as a factor in the popularity of the night flies.

Mark Zaher adjusts the led strips on his plane. Jeremy Brown/The Portager

“We can cut those [strips],” Ryan said. “They roll up; it’s like tape. If you look at the circuitry, there’s a resistor and an LED. They put three of them in line, which pull 12 volts. We can cut them, so it doesn’t have to be just three, we can go to 12; it’s got to be a multiple of three. Guys will cut them and glue them on, wire them in. I put white on the bottom [of the plane], so it lights up its own area when it’s coming in.”

For those thinking about starting an RC model airplane hobby, kits can range from $200 into the thousands, but Thunderbirds club member Mark Zaher said the real challenge for some beginners is learning to fly these aircraft: It’s much easier to learn from trainers at a club.

“Initially, try to keep your costs low,” Zaher said. “Pretty much to get started with something that’s not a toy, it’s pretty much around 300 bucks. The other thing would be to try to find a local club and pay them a visit, and talk to them, see if they offer a training night. If you try to learn to fly on your own, you’ll probably end up discouraged and not pursue the hobby, but if you hook up with a club and they have an instructor, they can help you through getting control of your plane.”

The Thunderbirds will train new members, and Corsair offers a training night, as well.

RC aircraft training is similar to learning to drive at a driving school, where the instructor sits in a passenger seat equipped with controls that enable them to take over the driving in the event of an emergency. The difference is, with RC aircraft, the instructor has an alternate remote-control transmitter that can override the student’s remote.

“You can connect two transmitters together: You have the teacher and the student transmitter,” Zaher said. “Typically, in the beginning, what we’ll do is, the trainer will take the plane off from the ground and get it up to an altitude of what we call three mistakes high, and then turn the controls over to the student. If the student gets the plane into a position that is going to be an imminent crash, the instructor just has to push a button on his radio and he has control of the plane. He can usually regain control of the plane and get it back to an attitude that’s flyable and return it to the student.”

Attitude refers to the aircraft’s orientation to the horizon.

Many newcomers to the hobby opt to buy a kit that requires minimal assembly, because they’re cheaper, and because it makes the user more familiar with the inner workings of the aircraft, which comes in handy when repairs are needed.

“If you’re starting to build the airplane yourself and you have no knowledge of it, it’s good to hook up with somebody that can show you some of the things to do and not to do,” Thunderbirds vice president Dan Foreman said. “The original ones, you cut all the pieces out of balsa wood, you glue them all together, and you cover the airplane. The new style airplanes you can buy in kit form, they’re made out of almost a styrofoam, and sometimes all you have to do is put the wings on them. Horizon Hobby has a lot of those; they come with the radio and everything in it.”

Foreman said newcomers to the hobby should make a visit to a local club before buying an RC aircraft, to “look around, see if you’re interested.”

Jeremy Brown
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