“Since you’re concentrating on your model, you want to communicate to the guy next to you and tell him what you’re doing, because he’s not seeing you. Taking off, Ray.”
Fifty years ago, second-graders Tony Hardin and Ray Howard fished together in Morehead. Today, they fly radio-controlled -or – RC – model planes together and with other enthusiasts.
On a warm summer day, they’re the only fliers at the Cool Meadow RC airfield in the Woodford County Park – Tony’s home field, with a grass runway maintained by the county. He’s a member of the Woodford County Aeromodelers. Ray’s is in Bowling Green – a larger, asphalt strip that’s home to the Southern Kentucky Model Aero Club.
“Tony kind of drug me into this thing, we kind of compete and do what each other does and try to outdo each other all the time. So you know, it's, it's kind of a what would you call a challenge each other, you know, just …”
“I was gonna say sickness.”
Tony is the associate minister at Journey Church, a couple of miles from The Kentucky Castle in Woodford County. His RC journey began in 1998. Ray is the manager for a battery supply store in Bowling Green; he started flying a year or two after Tony. Their hobby/slash/sport has grown on them and so has their collection.
“So how many planes you got?”
“I don't keep track anymore. That's what rookies do when they first get into the hobby. They count their planes. Because then your wife will know how many you got. So she asked. I don't know. You know, I just, I got more than fit in my garage. I’ll put it that way.”
“Tony, I forgot to ask you that. How many do you have?”
“No comment. She asked me once. She said how many airplanes do you need? And I said, ‘Why? do you know someone's got one for sale?’”
Most jokes aside, Ray and Tony say at this stage, when they want a new plane, they sell an old one. Usually. Their collections include planes of all sizes. Some are battery-powered. Some are gasoline-fueled. All could put a hurt on people, as Ray explains.
“We had a young man in our club last year who severed his pinky with an electric plane. But luckily, they were able to reattach it. And he's, he's got full function of it now.”
Ray says, against his mother’s wishes, the young man flew again the next day. As Tony explains, it’s not an easy task, even for those with years of experience and 10 healthy digits.
“These have a receiver and we operate a radio with gimbles with sticks. On the ground, we have all of the same controls that a full-scale airplane has from rudder, elevator flaps, all its three axis, we have roll, pitch and yaw just like just like a full-scale airplane.”
Crack-ups aren’t uncommon. Tony says the trees near the Woodford field, like the one that kept grabbing Charlie Brown’s kite, seem to have a hunger for model planes – but he’s been able to patch them up and fly again. The Academy of Model Aeronautics says there are at least 29 RC airfields in Kentucky and nearly 2,000 members. Tony says today’s fliers must be licensed to fly at AMA-certified fields, which provide insurance in case something goes wrong.
The longtime friends have something else in common. Each was baptized and became a Christian in 1995.
“God gives us gifts and talents, gives us skills and gives us passions. And we can leverage all those for him. And so we do that as much as we can. There's an organization called the Christian Fellowship of Aeromodelers that we’re all a part of.”
“And I would imagine, every once a while you utter a prayer to get your craft in safely.”
“Just about every time usually on the takeoff, we act on faith on landing.”
On this day, that faith is rewarded, and the friends of half a century leave the airfield with planes – and egos unscarred by good-natured teasing – intact. I’m John McGary in Woodford County.
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