I FLY THEM, I FIX THEM, I BREAK THEM

foreign [Music] planes bring back memories of Eddie Rickenbacker's hat in the ring Squadron a Von richtoven's Flying Circus a French escadrilles and British and Canadian aerodromes memories of men who first challenged the sky they're all gone now but their Spirit lives on at Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome a small Airfield north of New York City every Sunday from May through October Cole Palin and his crew are Up Before Dawn preparing for their weekly Air Show [Music] year early in September Cole's Air Show becomes part of a World War one weekend today is the World War One radio-controlled aircraft Jamboree a day when Cole shares the skies with other planes just as authentic but built to a much smaller scale and controlled by transmitters on the ground for the modelers building and flying these old planes is just a sport for Cole Palin it's become a major part of his life I purchased this old abandoned Farm in Rhinebeck in 19 late 1958 and got a thousand foot of Runway made start eating peanut butter and jam it was strictly a low budget operation but I loved it that way I was rebuilding planes in the living room of the house uh ain't getting in some flying and to me that was well the most exciting time of my life was the beginning of this creating this uh World War One air drone about five years ago some of the members of our Mid-Hudson radio control Society who had visited the deardrome got together over coffee and discussed the possibility of having a World War One Jamboree here at the aerodrome we approached Cole who is an old modeler himself and he went for it so this is how we started the first contest had about 17 contestants we've now grown to 126 on last year's meet and our contestants come from all over the United States mostly the Eastern Seaboard we've had them from as far away as England Canada and Mexico well we came down from Vermont just because we heard about it through a friend of ours for a long time decided to come down and see it what do you think so far fantastic it's great I was up here as a spectator last year and I got the bug I had to build something for the content and build they do in spare rooms basements and garages an airplane is slowly emerging from scraps of cloth and Wood and Wire well I think the most important thing about building one of these models is to make it look as nearly like the real airplane as possible in this particular case I'm building from actual model plans however many scale modelers will use Factory drawings as the basis for their ships the structure of this airplane is primarily a balsa wood which is very light and very strong and the model is powered by a half horsepower engine inside the plane are four of these small serval mechanisms which help control the airplane in flight when I'm flying the airplane I use this transmitter which I hold in my hand and which sends a continuous signal up to a small receiver located in the airplane which is connected to those Servo mechanisms to make the airplane go up I pull the stick down and the airplane will climb when I push the stick forward the airplane Dives to make it turn to the right I move the stick to the right and to make it turn to the left I move the stick to the left this lever on the side of the transmitter controls the throttle on the engine and I can make the engine run from a low idle to high speed by sliding this lever back and forth now of course when the airplane is finished you won't be able to see any of the servo mechanisms or the engine or other internal details because the entire model will be covered with silk then it's doped and painted so as I build I take photographs to document each stage of construction and these photographs will be used by the judges at Reinbeck to compare my craftsmanship and attention to detail to that of the original airplane strict attention to detail is only the beginning the proof of any Radio control aircraft is in the fly at Reinbeck we have four categories of competition Mission Maneuvers combat and scale and all involve flying so I'm gonna start to get right in your eyes then yeah okay this is not a pass not if it's not a pass not a pass not a path this is not a pass when I'm flying at a contest I usually have butterflies for the first the first flight we call our butterfly flight this once the butterflies get settled down then you fly you're completely absorbed in in the airplane it's just as if there were nothing but the plane and yourself but the mere fact that you can fly a real plane that doesn't necessarily mean that you can fly one of these I've flown real planes and actually it's it's much easier to fly them when you're right inside of them than it is to fly them when you're on the ground and the plane is up there because when it's heading away from you you give it right and it goes right when it's heading towards you you give it right and it goes left knowing exactly what the plane will do when you move the control stick is the secret of Maneuvers competition begins on the ground where each contestant has three minutes to start his engine and have the plane airborne in the first world war it often took eight men to crank up a plane three on each side to hold down the wings a strong idiot to swing the propeller and a pilot to work the priming pump and the Magneto didn't fire the pilot stayed on the ground the modeler has another option if spinning the prop by hand doesn't work he attaches an electric starter and gets on with the competition contestants are required to put their models through a series of specific Maneuvers designed for the capabilities of the real aircraft so while not all planes are flying the same patterns all are flying patterns equally difficult and are judged on placement in the air smoothness speed and realism each maneuver is scored on a one to ten basis in judging each maneuver I look to see how accurately the plane has performed the predescribed flight plan if the maneuver calls for a perfectly round Loop and the loop is less than round points are again deducted if the maneuver calls for the plane to enter and leave the maneuver and a straight and level flight and at a particular altitude and these things are not accomplished points are deducted the total number of faults found in a maneuver are deducted from a possible tens and the final score for that maneuver is then entered [Music] while judges tabulate points each modeler is alone at the controls guiding his aircraft back to The Landing Zone below [Music] excuse me in the mission event the modeler gets a maximum of 50 points each for a Precision takeoff this was originally set up to be a fun event but it's turned out to be one of the most competitive from the time the modeler lifts his plane off the ground he's all business there's an enemy Target down there and he gets one chance to bomb it balloon busting simulates destroying an observation balloon a mission attempted by only the most Reckless World War One Pilots [Music] the modeler is given five passes with a decreasing number of points for each pass of course the object is to destroy the balloon not the airplane the mission of that ends with a spot Landing a perfect score can give the modeler 200 points most Rhinebeck contestants are able to land their planes on the ground in front of them but a soft Landing was far from routine for the World War One Pilot what happened to her she get out of control no it's just a misjudge on distance didn't want to fly over the center of the field where another pilot might be taken off so I tried to keep it off the side there's been any accidents and getting it over too far over why he's got it looked like much damage well it could be worse it always could be words you know [Music] you apply many trees no I'm not accustomed to climbing trees in Mission it's every contestant for himself but in the combat event two men fly as a team simulating a dog fight by using actual World War One tactics and maneuvers combat is the most subjective event because there are no specific Maneuvers required the closer two planes come to each other the more points the team gets a good mid-air Collision will bring a maximum of 24 points and an end to one or both airplanes foreign [Applause] [Music] I think it's the people who come here that make Rhinebeck unique the Jamboree is a family affair and really attracts a cross-section of people we have everything from the common Layman to doctors lawyers Engineers professional people but all the contestants seem to have one thing in common a love of Aviation and particularly model Aviation if a contestant wipes out his plane as long as he's had a chance to fly it'll usually a say well that's what I built it for I build it to take the Rhine back and fly it I flew it and I'm happy during the day it's strictly competition but at night everyone gets together around the campfire [Music] [Music] we had a contest down in Montreal where it was one of these contests that uh we couldn't get any good turnouts for a regular contest so one of the fellas rigged up a contest where you roll the dice and whatever number you got in the dice you had to go up and do that many a number of loops and they were timing it was all time so one of the uh gizmos was that with the wise would all try to fly and the wife that held the transmitter for the longest number of seconds would win the prize so it was my wife's turn and she had the controls in the airplane it was a little Top Dog and it was going like right now so anyways uh I said it's getting close to the ground you better give up she says all right and I decided I'd join it to the extent that I decided you might as well capitalize and create things out of this so I wrote a song yeah it's called model airplane Blues [Music] and if I forget some of the words you'll have to excuse me can't ever remember my songs what's the first line honey well since I met you honey this life of mine has changed caught loving you mean loving too to your model airplanes I wish I could be reconciled to my secondary wrong but it's hard to be romantic [Music] I'd like to hold your hand in mine but at every time I do do our hands get stuck together with your model airplane blue and I guess that you could say I've got those airplanes [Music] clear the prop please buzzer we've got okay early Sunday morning while the modelers are still dreaming of a perfect flight Cole Palin and his crew are warming up the planes for his air show oh I see all right now darling's working on I don't know why but that's not very good that's my dual ignition system too they're ready okay switch on attack I just love old airplanes and I fly them I break them and I fix them but more than that I like to think I'm preserving their history maybe recreating a bit of history with these old planes [Music] I first came in contact with him at Roosevelt Field where there had been a museum in the early 30s when I heard the field was going to be posed I couldn't help but wonder what would happen to the Old World War one plane at that time I was going with a young lady and I suppose to try to impress her I acted like I was going to buy these old airplanes and I was amazed to find out that indeed they were for sale as it turned out I did get the planes and I lost the girl [Music] thank you [Music] for three years we had air shows here just formally flying the airplanes but we found that uh who are getting more people helping us fly the airplanes on the other side of the fence than we were having paid customers coming in to watch our show so we evolved a little a little metal drama based on a hero they're pretty good fell the villain the black Baron and throughout our melodrama the black bearings trying to picnic with Trudy true love but he's always being interrupted by Sir Persian Goodfellows hunchmen who are flying in the skies above that's roughly the story I say roughly because our story was never written and it's always changing um whatever a new piece of equipment becomes available we try to work into the shop by making our story a bit more involved now I'm collecting old cars so we're working them into the show all cars and planes they go together they they were born together really and we like to use them in old motorcycles in our story I think it's great it brings back something that we seem to have lost uh the past and our forefathers and we we like to bring back the color and everything the hero of our melaton is the king takes a part of Sir pricey good fellow and flies his own stop with Pub Stanley cigalis is the flying farmer and also one shot cattley Dave Fox plays a part of the Regal eagle [Music] see when they taxi the old planes Down The Runaway in front of the audience there's there's just a wave of cameras coming up and there must be 500 pitchers taking during every takeoff I think that the color and the spectacle these old planes makes this a great place for taking pictures I'm making myself up now as the villainous Black Baron the biggest villain of all who every everybody gets to boo in his throughout our melodrama [Music] during his picnic the Black Baron gets bombed the charcoal bombs by Sir Percy Goodfellows henchman he considers this a challenge and he takes off in his focused trip plane to shoot down his adversaries [Music] sir Percy sees how unfair the fight is and takes off when it's off of the pub to protect one shot Gatlin flying his Avro foreign [Music] Goodfellow gets shot down in white smoke and the black parent was shot down in the blacksmith but somehow they both survive and when the Blackberry lands he is one bomb left being The Big Short that he is he keeps throwing his bomb up and catching it finally he drops it the bomb blows up in the black bear and has destroyed himself but like all fairy tales this one ends happily the Black Baron is brought back to life by truly true loves kiss and everybody of course lives happily ever after of all the great aviators to come out of the first world war perhaps the most courageous was a funny looking dog with a big black nose flying from a base deep and Allied Rhinebeck territory his software doghouse is the best known of the radio-controlled novelty aircraft [Music] please [Music] [Applause] while our hero goes to quaff a few root beers a camera and another novelty aircraft is photographing his every movement this is a camera carrying glider I have under the wing a Kodak instamatic spring wound camera it's controlled by a Servo which is also the throttle Servo up in the front it's actuated like this when it's in flight first I turn the transmitter on turn the radio and the plane on when I move from high throttle to low throttle the camera takes the picture like that when I move back into high throttle it resets itself for the next picture another modeler not content with still pictures has mounted a movie camera on his novelty aircraft the airplane is a nine foot Taylor cub powered by a Cox chainsaw engine uh the camera Kodak movie camera gets mounted on the plane and the servo actuated from the ground from the transmitter I've been flying the camera and the plane combination for three years I used the film on lecture tours and at Adult School the combination works out very well films like this one taken in Super 8 and blown up to 16 millimeter show the modeler how stable his aircraft is in the air and give him a new perspective on the plane's flight characteristics and maneuverability hey Lou you ready for judging well here's the airplane for the Rhinebeck contestant scale is the ultimate in competition you'll find in here that there's a pitch of the real plane and the actual construction has been duplicated all the way down the line photographs the modeler took when building his plane proved that he is authentically duplicated the nuances in color and details of construction of the real plane everything is inaccurate scale the instruments and controls that guided the planes the machine guns that fired through and often into the propeller blades before a synchronizing mechanism was invented bombs that were carried in an aircraft that was no heavier than a motorcycle today the bright colors of Daredevil pilots who believe they were Invincible in the sky the spirit of that era lives on at Reinbeck today where scraps of cloth and Wood and Wire have somehow been made into a flying machine Insignia of that bygone era are displayed proudly as judges examine each part of the plane's Construction the fuselage sometimes fashioned from laminated plywood the engine that carried the pilot through the skies at less than 100 miles an hour cloth covered wings that might fly off in a steep dive the landing gear that touched down in any clear area available the tail surfaces the paint job the overall General appearance in each category of competition the judges award a maximum of 50 points 25 of these are for workmanship 25 for attention to detail well it's hard to believe this is too realistic in here on my side he has done some repair over here but not very neat and fitting the tail in he did put his little window in and a cute little clamp on the thing I got even a middle team [Music] okay he had a 17 Again [Music] the contestant scale points will be totaled and multiplied by the score he received in the Maneuvers competition combat and Mission points will be added in and a grand prize winner will be selected but to the Rhinebeck contestant winning is not as important as just being there yeah you can always tell the age of the child by the size of his toys I think little youngsters have their their sandbox Toys their bulldozers and what have you and a bigger boys we just have these bigger airplanes that's all [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] foreign [Music]