The spring air outside Tucson is redolent with vaporized castor oil and filled with the whine of single-cylinder engines.
Sunlight glints off steel control lines that trace complex aerobatic maneuvers.
An engineer by trade, Reeves would like to be precise, and this is not just another stunt contest. An apt description of the 11th Annual Vintage Stunt Championships. Despite the leader board, what's really going on here is an outpouring of admiration and devotion to the art of control-line precision model aerobatics, fondly called 'Stunt', whose heyday is four decades gone. Mike Keville, who conceived the VSC in 1989, agrees. Every successful flight is a victory over the ravages of progress, which some control-line pilots will tell you have torn the character out of stunt design.