IT'S A BIRD, IT'S A PLANE, IT'S ... War planes, acrobatic copter hit at fly-in

CHUCK THOMPSON
Staff Writer
Vintage Warbirds, high-tech speedsters, acrobatic specialists, remote-controlled parachutists and experimental gyrocopters all filled the sky and bedazzled several hundred people who attended the Dixie Aeromasters summer fly-in Saturday.
Club president Doug Gerdes said the turnout of 35 registered pilots, most who brought several planes to fly, was better than expected.
"We've got people here from South Carolina, Dublin, Perry, Andersonville, even Alabama" Gerdes said, "And the weather is just about perfect. If we could only get the wind coming down the runway instead of across it, it would be. But the guys are such good pilots, it doesn't matter."
The show they put on at noon, plus their free-flying practice before and after, was ready proof of that.
The fly-in was held at Commissioner's Field at the closed dump on Overland nearly every day flying their radio-controlled model airplanes and helicopters. The quarterly fly-ins are a way to attract more interest to the sport and raise money to help pay for improvements at the field. Perhaps the most amazing performance Saturday was Joey Scott's crazed maneuvering with his radio-controlled helicopter. He had it darting around the sky like a crazed bumblebee, or hovering upside down only inches off the ground like a flying lawn mower.
There was also a model plane that dropped foot-tall parachutists dolls who also were radio-guided back to the ground for precision landings on the runway, and acrobatic composite planes that were put through various loops, spins and rolls, and even hovered straight up and down to touch their tails to the ground without crashing.
But perhaps generating the most interest were the three vintage handmade models of World War II warplanes brought to the event by the members of the Trenton Club of Augusta and South Carolina.
Richard Prouty, his father Dick Prouty, Luis Parraga and Randy McDowell brought balsa-wood models of a P-47 Thunderbolt Razorback fighter plane and B-25 and B-17 bombers and flew them together during the air show.
"I bought my plane already built, but I imagine it took six to eight months to build," Richard Prouty said of his P-47.
"It's an excellent flying airplane and surprisingly sturdy for being so light," he said.
Prouty said he began flying radio-controlled planes as a little boy with his father. "It's a lot of fun but addictive. Some people have $6,000 or $7,000 in their planes" he said. "I got out of it for a long time, but my father got me back into it about three years ago. We either fly at our field or go to a show somewhere like this nearly every weekend"
Tougher to fly than Prouty's P-47 were McDowell's twin-engined B-25 and Parraga's four-engined B-17.
"There;s more torque with the multiengine planes, so you have to be on your toes, especially with that B-17," Dick Prouty said. "But Luis is such a fine pilot, you would never realize how hard that thing is to fly by watching the way he handles it."
An added element to the show Saturday was a visit by two gyrocopters from a club in Macon.
These were manned experimental craft that are a cross between a plane and a helicopter. They are powered by a plane propeller behind the pilot, but they also have a rotor similar to a helicopter, but it is underpowered. Instead, it acts as the wings to give the craft lift as they spin simply from the wind power as it moves through the sky.
The two make several low-level passes to give the radio-control pilots and spectators a chance to take photos.
Many of the Dixie Aeromaster members are retired, but Gerdes said the club would like to attract more young people and families.
"We have some expensive planes being flown here today, but there are inexpensive starter kits that are easy to assembly available", he said. "We have a new 13-year-old in the club who is already becoming a good pilot. We have meetings at the field every third Monday and welcome anyone to come and join us. "