LONE TREE

A couple of weeks ago, Roger Weber came into our office looking for me. A member of the Lone Tree Flyers RC Club, he wanted to talk about the 4th Annual Fun Fly event the club is hosting June 7 and 8 at the Lone Tree airfield so that I could write a newspaper story about it.

Well, that’s what I thought, anyway. Instead, he invited me to the club’s weekly meeting on Wednesday night, where instructors John Biondo and Gary Kleinmeyer were willing to teach me how to fly a plane. That sounded like an opportunity too good to pass up. How often do you get the opportunity to fly a remote-controlled aircraft?

We aren’t talking about kids’ toys here. RC planes come in a diverse range of sizes and models; on average, they might have a wingspan as broad as I am tall. Their cost also varies; an inexpensive model might be around $100, but hundreds or thousands of dollars is common too.

I was a little worried about wrecking a plane.

Roger assured me I need not be concerned. First of all, they were not going to hand me controls to a $6,000 Skymaster. Second, instructors use something called a Buddy Box; both student and teacher have a controller, but the teacher is able to switch control between the boxes. If I were to get a plane in trouble, the instructor would flip control of the plane from my box to his and save the plane.

Assured I would not be liable for something that cost more than my old Subaru, I showed up for club night at the Lone Tree airfield.

I had been to the airfield before when I attended the club’s Fun Fly in 2023, but as I turned into the Lone Tree Cemetery entrance, I had doubts that I was in the right place. But in fact, I was; at the end of the lane I could see the airfield’s signage, pavilion, and orange safety fencing stretched out in front of me.

The airfield was a labor of love on behalf of the club, spearheaded by Gary, who is the club’s Field Marshal. What was now flat, open greenspace stretched out in front of me had been a field where Lone Tree residents were told to leave their debris following clean-up from a derecho in 1998. There had been a mound of trees and brush, in addition to assorted household appliances, marring the landscape.

Back then, Gary was a member of the Iowa City Aerohawks RC club looking for a place to fly closer to home. The field flanked by the cemetery and American Legion seemed like a great place, it just needed to be cleaned up. He approached the city council, and they agreed to remove the trees and trash; he brought out a bulldozer and leveled the earth.

Other local RC enthusiasts helped him out with the grounds, and in 2010 they officially became a club registered with the AMA (Academy of Model Aeronautics). The city granted them permission to use the field as long as they maintained it, an agreement that stretches far into the future.

In more recent years they have made a lot of improvements: the runways and shelter, for example. In 2020, they achieved the Gold Leader standard with the AMA; in 2023, they were granted FRIA (FAA Recognized Identified Area) status, which allow RC pilots to take their aircraft up to 1,200 feet above ground level, an uncommon privilege.

I walked out to meet Roger, who introduced me to other members of the club: Phil Eason, Bruce Lohaus, Bruce Gardner, and Rick Williams, as well as John and Gary, all of whom had planes and helicopters on the ground ready to fly.

We chatted a bit about the indoor flying they do on Sunday nights at the Lone Tree Wellness Center, which has involved flying drones down hallways and flying paper airplanes using a phone app. It sounded like good fun.

John asked if I wanted to try out the flight simulator before flying a real plane. Yes. So at a picnic table under the pavilion, John opened up his laptop and waited for RealFlight 9.5S to load.

“This is a great way to learn. You can crash all you want,” he said.

The video game was surprisingly realistic. John selected a plane like the one I would actually be flying from the huge list of options, and then it appeared on screen on a runway exactly like the real one in front of me. He showed me how the two-handed control box basically worked – the same type of control box I would be using with the real plane. Then I practiced flying the simulated plane.

John gave me some instruction. “You can keep it straight, and then the idea is just to gently pull back on that elevator as you start to gain speed,” he said. “Give it more power. Go back this way.”

I tried to follow instructions, but the controller wasn’t intuitive for me.

“Nosedive! Oh, I broke it!” I exclaimed, my virtual plane in bits on the ground.

“That was spectacular!” John said.

We hit reset and John made some corrections to the flaps. I took the plane up again.

“I think I lost my plane and crashed it in the field,” I said.

Reset.

“It seems hard to keep it in the sky for some reason,” I said.

Reset.

“We’ll get you on the Buddy Box,” John said. My failure at the simulation meant it was time to try the real thing.

We went out to the actual runway where Gary was trying to get a red plane with ‘16’ on the side running. It was a little testy; the men talked about the carburetor and added some fuel. I asked about how RC planes are powered, and John explained most are a lot like cars, with both battery and fuel.

Gary got the plane up into the air and flew it around the airfield. Although the evening sky was a cloudless blue and the temperature pleasantly in the 60s, there was enough wind to affect the plane’s flight. Gary transferred control to me a few times, but I felt tentative about flying the real plane. I accidently rolled it; at another point it started a death spiral. For some reason when the instructors told me to go left (which was a lot), I got my directions mixed up.

But Gary always switched control back to himself when I got the plane in trouble and seemed to effortlessly bring it back into smooth flight.

For some reason learning to fly reminded me of learning to drive; I wasn’t a natural at that either. My parents were so frightened of me, they wouldn’t ride with me, which meant I didn’t get any practice outside of Driver’s Ed. And once in Driver’s Ed, the instructors frequently had to use their own version of the Buddy Box – the brake pedal on the passenger side of the car. It took me a while to grasp the concept of yielding, both at yield signs and when making left turns at lights. But the instructors stomped the brake and no one was harmed.

With practice, I could learn to fly. With once or twice weekly sessions, I might be proficient in four months, Gary told me. Then I might have a new hobby to enjoy, or even a lifetime passion.

After my flight time was up, the other club members took their turns flying their aircraft. Then, as the moon began to rise, we sat down together and talked about the Fun Fly coming up on June 7-8.

“We call it a Fun Fly because there’s just a variety of airplanes,” John said. He explained that some RC events are specific to certain types of planes, and others are about competition. But in Lone Tree, “We just kind of left this open so that it attracts a variety of people,” he said.

John’s wife, Lisa Biondo, the club’s treasurer, has been tracking registration for the event, and the club is excited to welcome flyers from around the Midwest, including a father and son from Colorado who have attended in past years. They’ve also been working on their hospitality, which includes the availability of concessions, a specially designed t-shirt that will be for sale, and a dinner on Saturday night.

The club hopes to attract spectators as well. Aircraft will take off as early as dawn on Friday and Saturday, a nod to wartime practices. Pilots will fly all day, continuing to dusk, when daytime winds die down and the sky glows. Spectators are welcome at all times; Roger says that last year, folks came from all over and spent the day.

John says they’ll even have the Buddy Box available for those who would like to try flying for themselves.

“When I was learning to fly, the Buddy Box was a confidence booster,” Rick said. “It really helps people get started and then continue. . . because they know there’s a savior out there until they’re comfortable to slowly but surely do it on their own.”

One of the goals of the Fun Fly is to attract new people to the sport. The club members get so much out of flying planes, helicopters, and jets, they want to share that joy with others. It’s a great activity for families to enjoy together, as well as a great way to meet new people who often become lifelong friends.

In fact, that’s exactly what happened to Phil; his flying took him to events around the state, and he and other flyers from Iowa started calling themselves the FBI – Fly Boys of Iowa. They made shirts and bumper stickers; they get recognized when they travel to surrounding states.

“I’m looking forward to seeing a lot of people that I haven’t seen for a while [at Fun Fly],” Phil said. “Hopefully they can make it. If not, it’s always a great opportunity to meet new people that are like minded.”

In the end, “It takes an army to do something like this,” Gary says of the Lone Tree airfield, the club’s organization, and the Fun Fly event. “The ultimate goal of the whole thing is to come out and fly and have fun.”

The Lone Tree Flyers hope you will join them at the Lone Tree airfield, 300 N. Devoe St., Lone Tree on Friday June 7 and Saturday June 8. Enjoy watching pilots perform amazing acrobatics, complete with smoke trails, and consider giving flying a try for yourself. The instructors literally won’t let you down, and that is a delightful gift.