The River Valley Photography Society took advantage of the fine weather a week Saturday ago – and enjoyed the aerial displays of the CrowValley BarnStormers This is a group of radio-controlled model airplane enthusiasts headed up by Jim Brethour. This group meets in the fields North-and-west of Campbellford whenever the breezes are down and the weather is warm. This usually stretches from April to October with allowance for a few days outside the norm.
The picture to the left shows the expansive CrowValley airfield with its “manicured” runways. At first, the flying area looks so big that the distant trees hardly appear to be threatening at all. But as we found out, the planes really cover quite a lot of ground and so it turns out those are dangerous model airplane eating trees. Of course the afternoon breeze is another hazard as a the radio control planes are quite light. The result is that even modest winds can wreak havoc.
For example, the red biplane below soared up and about so quickly and then got caught in nasty downdraft
such that the plane-eating trees were able to devour the biplane with the greatest of ease.
Just below are some of the half-dozen radio controlled model airplanes out for a Saturday whirl.
The CrowValley modelers put on quite a show for the local hawks who seemed to be reluctant to surrender their airspace to these buzzing model airplanes. So 8 keen eyed photographers from the River Valley Photo Group were treated to some amazing airobatics and fine photo-taking opportunities.
And the Barnstormers were soon putting on display of their flying skills.Fast take-offs, aerobatics, but
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the mostly challenging flying turns out to be to do a steady landing. As you can see below landing a model airplane in trick winds is no small flying feat.
On a nicely manicured airfield photographers were treated to quite an airshow with barnstorming loop-de-loops, hammer head peel-offs and a variety of aerial acrobatics by the CrowValley Barnstormers. In short, a delightful afternoon for both parties and – flyers and photographers.