Remote Control Airplanes
I read an article recently about the Las Vegas Soaring Club, the largest radio-controlled model sailplane club in Southern Nevada. The article brought back some memories of our adventures in model airplanes, and two very important lessons we learned from our model, Little Cecil (all notable flying machines have names, like The Spirit of St. Louis and the Starship Enterprise, and our model was no exception).
Lesson Number One: Some assembly is required. I bought Little Cecil for Kerry as a Christmas present. I brought the box home from the store and wrapped it, with visions of us flying it on Christmas day. It wasn’t until Kerry unwrapped it that we realized the box contained an airframe, not an entire model airplane. It was only after another trip to the store, and many hours of installing the electronics and remote control system, that our plane was ready for the wild blue yonder.
After that rocky Christmas start, we enjoyed many hours controlling Little Cecil, until the day we learned Lesson Number Two.
Lesson Number Two: Keep batteries charged. A model airplane’s battery should be charged before every flight, because when it runs out, you lose control. We learned this the hard way, when Little Cecil lost battery power one day and, literally, flew off into the sunset. We searched for several days, but never found him. Like Amelia Earhart, Little Cecil’s current whereabouts are an aviation mystery that may never be solved.
All this reminiscing has me thinking there might be another model airplane in our future. Flying the plane, and hanging out with other enthusiasts, was really a lot of fun. The Las Vegas Soaring Club meets every Thursday and Saturday across the street from the Desert Sportsman’s Rifle & Pistol Club just west of the 215 Beltway off Charleston. If you’re interested in getting more information on the Las Vegas Soaring Club, you can visit their website at lasvegassoaring.org. And to Little Cecil – good night and good luck, where ever you are.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Leave a Reply