Soaring high with strings attached

: Nineteen-year old Raj Mewar offers a unique take on aviation pioneers Wilbur and Orville Wright, the brothers who made history when they took to the skies 100 years ago. “The second best thing that man has learnt is to fly. The best is to land,” he quips as he starts bringing down the plane he’s been flying for an hour. More interesting is the fact that the gentleman controlling the flying machine is not a pilot.

Mr Mewar, who packs in a couple of hours of flying most days of the week, is actually an aeromodeller — defined as someone who builds and/or flies model flying machines. “Aircrafts fascinate me,” says the Udaipur resident. So much so that when he’s not getting his thrills from making his EXTRA 300 perform aerobatics in the sky, he’s tweaking at the radio, fiddling with the transmitter, cleaning the engine or sourcing methyl alcohol — all integral elements of radio-controlled (RC) flying.

Pune-based IT pro Sunil Rikhye is also passionate about planes. The 34-year old remembers building chuck gliders as a kid and two years ago, bought himself an RC model from the US. He admits to spending close to a lakh of rupees and all his spare time on flying his EXTRA 300 and EdGE 540 planes at the Hadapsar gliding club on the outskirts of Pune.

But not all aeromodelling enthusiasts are into planes. Nineteen-year old engineering student, Puneite Anay Raibagkar says he was “not interested in planes as such”. He got hooked once he saw others fly. And 24-year old Noida-based consultant Aditya Belwal is currently into RC helicopters. “Planes no longer challenge me,” he explains.

What’s common to the 3,000-strong aeromodelling community in India is the thrill of controlling a flying machine, making it scud across the sky, perform aerobatics and also the challenge of designing and building the models. You’ll find them dotted all across the country — in Udaipur, Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore, Pune, Ahmednagar, Ahmedabad and Jaipur — at sundry maidans and flying clubs.

But be warned: aeromodelling may provide an adrenalin rush, almost an addiction, but it’s also “an unforgiving hobby,” says 51-year old modeller Yogendra Jahagirdar, because “One mistake and your plane can be in bits.” And the mistake’s going to be a pretty costly one since the cheapest RC glider costs atleast 10 grand, while a plane — inclusive of the model, engine, radio, transmitter...