Annual Picnic 2000

The weather person on the television said to make plans for indoor activities, because rain and more rain would deluge the Western Massachusetts area. So the afternoon before the "Fun Fly" the club officers of the PVRCC (Pioneer Valley Radio Control Club) decided to fly one of the club trainers 400 feet into the sky and then point the plane to Mother Earth with all due speed to its final resting place. There the gods could see that PVRCC sacrificed a plane for good flying weather. Whether the sacrifice of the club trainer plane was the trick or the weather people were just plain wrong again, the skies for the Annual PVRCC Fun Fly was perfect for flying.

On July 16th at eleven o-clock in the morning, fifty jubilant kids and ten chaperones came crashing off the bus to be a radio Control Plane "Top Gun".

The participating children were chosen from the New Leadership Charter School and the Martin Luther King Community Center. The kids, attending a two week summer aviation education program, learn with hands on and class room instruction. The program for these kids was actually a five year program that included special math and science courses throughout the school year. The children were introduced to all facets of aviation industry. They started with the principles of flight to weather with hands-on experience of building models to actual flying in a plane. In between all their studies PVRCC was able to arrange a "Fun Fly" to reinforce their classroom studies and hands on model building.

PVRCC members immediately herded the eager beavers to an area where a computer with Dave Browns Flight simulator was running and four club trainer planes were fired up and running.

Needless to say, the 6 clubs instructors had their hands full flying with the enthusiastic kids for the total of twelve hours of flying. Each of the kids in the "Fun Fly" were required to learn some basic fundamentals on a computer flight simulator that Post Computer from Wilbraham, Massachusetts donated for the day. After some basic understanding of the four channel transmitter and a few practice flights on the computer simulator, each kid was designated to one of the six trainers. The Club President, Dan Sears instructed the trainers to pray and eat their Wheaties the morning before the "Fun Fly". The instructors were Chuck Allessio, Bob Ackley, Paul Ethier, Rich Rankin, Gary Egli, and four trainer planes. That combination provided the kids a day of close calls, a little sweat on the brow of all the instructors but after each kid finished flying he or she left pumped up about flying.

After the flying ended and oxygen masks were supplied for the exhausted club instructors, the "Fun Fly" was capped off with hamburgers, hotdogs, fried chicken, pasta salads, chocolate cookies, brownies, vegetable plate and soda for all. Hats off and kudos to the corpulent cooking crew (Paul Ethier, Avery Root and Charlie Rogalski) for their expertise as cuisine cooks of the open flame grills. With a little luck maybe next year the cuisine cooks will cook more than they will eat. "Amen"