The second week of the 89th annual National Aeromodeling Championships is underway at Muncie’s Academy of Model Aeronautics, the world’s largest model aviation society. The event draws upward of a thousand model aeronautic enthusiasts every year and features around 120 different aero model events ranging from races and time trials, to acrobatics and precision flying—ensuring plenty of excitement over the course of the month long event.
As site coordinator Tony Stillman puts it “this is not your granddad’s hobby.”
One must-see event on the schedule is the radio controlled combat competition, which as the name suggests, involves precision models doing battle hundreds of feet above the ground. Radio controlled combat, or RCC, consists of multiple pilots battling one another for aerial position and ultimately supremacy.
All planes are fitted with 30 feet of streamer fixed to the fuselage. The goal is to cut the other pilots’ streamers as many times as possible without colliding, using either the propeller or wings of the plane. Precision maneuvering is crucial as points are deducted for grounding your plane as well as for trying to avoid combat. After all, this is nationals.
With nationals or “nats” as the pilots call them being the highest tier of model aeronautic competition, the best-of-the-best are all in attendance, attempting to earn one, or more, of the many titles up for grabs.
“It takes a competitive person to do it,” says Texan Dane Mcgee, most decorated combat pilot of 2014. “Every person out hear is competitive, I guarantee it. There’s no way around it; everyone wants to win.”
Despite the high level of competition Radio Controlled Combat Association (RCCA) president Bob “Longhaul” Loescher says that combat pilots are a close knit-group.
“Many of the pilots that are here [for nationals] I fly with on a regular basis,” says Loescher, who travels as far as California and Texas to compete with friends and fellow members of the RCCA.
RCCA vice president Dane Mcgee considers combat pilots to be kindred spirits of sorts.
“It takes a certain kind of individual to maintain a combat fleet and do the contests every week,” said McGee. “Not everybody wants to maintain 50 aircraft.”
“The community’s real tight knit, everybody helps each other, I don’t know that I remember a harsh word ever being said at a combat contest.”
The National Aeromodeling Championships take place in Muncie, at the Academy of Model Aeronautics every year from the first week in July to the first week in August. More information can be found on their website modelaircraft.org or by checking out their in-house magazine “Model Aviation.”
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