Richard Wolkomir went to Vermont to see some of the planes fly. Slowing my car, I watch three men in a pasture, hunched over a knee-high yellow airplane . . . The plane has only the wingspan of a bald eagle. The Academy of Model Aeronautics, based in Muncie, Indiana, has almost 150,000 members that fly remote-controlled planes just for fun. The Academy sanctions more than 2,000 competitions each year.
Some people make their own planes from kits, others buy the planes already assembled.
Many modelers pride themselves on their exact replicas of World War I planes, or aircraft from the 1930s and 1940s, all reproduced to the exact wing strut, rudder and distinctive identifying markings. Abstract of an article by Richard Wolkomir, originally published in the July 1999 issue of Smithsonian . All rights reserved. All rights reserved.