Warbirds Over the Summit

This weekend the Chattanooga Radio Control Club held its annual Warbirds Over the Summit meet, which brings warbird lovers from all over the Southeast together to fly models of WWII aircraft. The turnout was great, as was the weather once last week’s storms finally moved out of the area Saturday morning.

I took my B-25 (which didn’t fly as a result of a servo problem) and my P-40. Here’s a shot of me preparing my P-40 for flight. The plane’s scale exhaust header attracted a lot of attention, and the plane flew beautifully. It was fun putting the Warhawk through its paces with a crowd looking on, but also a bit nerve-wracking. The hardest part of flying R/C planes is landing them, and there’s a lot of pressure to make a perfect scale landing when there’s an audience watching your every move.

The Chattanooga club is home to David Payne, a world-class R/C flyer. You have to see David fly to believe it. Here’s David prepping his B-24 Liberator for the event. It was one of about 10 planes he brought with him. The B-24 flew well but ended up making a controlled crash landing after developing engine problems in flight.

The highlight of the Saturday event was David flying his Skymaster F-5 turbine, pictured below. The model is 96″ long, has a wingspan of 59″, weighs 25 pounds, and is equipped with a gas turbine engine with 30 lbs. of thrust. That’s $10K worth of airplane. David performed a beautiful scale take-off and then brought the jet over the runway for a few low passes. The sound was incredible. Everybody stopped what they were doing to watch.

But don’t take my word for it. Watch the video and see (and hear) for yourself.