Model airplane fliers find the true spirit of a hobby

Some guys, now at or near retirement, never grew out of flying the balsa-wood airplanes of their boyhood in the 1960s.

Guys like Glenn Louderback.

These days, you're apt to find him playing with radio-controlled model planes on a wide-open field at the south entrance to Valley Forge National Historical Park.

Hobbies aren't what they used to be. How many people do you know who collect stamps? Or play bridge? Or build model railroads? Fewer than in the old days, we'll bet.

Many of the pastimes that used to occupy Americans have been whittled down by the demands of a longer workweek and the competing allures of high-def TV, computer gaming, and myriad other attractions of a 24-hour society.

But Louderback is among more than 180 hobbyists - mostly men in their 50s, or older - who are members of the Valley Forge Signal Seekers, a thriving model-airplane club.

After retiring several years ago from Xerox Corp., Louderback, 64, of Bala Cynwyd, had the time to pursue a hobby.

He had always been interested in model planes, so he enrolled in a class at Main Line School Night taught by a member of the Signal Seekers.

Very quickly, he became entranced with the thrill of hearing the tiny engines revving up, guiding his plastic planes down a bumpy grass runway, and watching them climb into the blue as he holds a remote-control radio transmitter.

"It's a little like driving a car," he said of the skill involved. "At first, you're thinking of every little thing. Gradually, it becomes second nature."

Louderback bought one plane, then two, then three - then six. At a typical cost of several hundred dollars each, they don't come cheaply. Some hobbyists build them from kits; others buy them almost ready to fly.

"You're only held back by the amount of storage space you have at home - and what your wife will put up with," Louderback said. "You pretty much fly them until you wreck them; that's what usually happens in the end."

On a recent dull gray afternoon, with the grass wet from morning rain, Louderback stood on the flying field along Route 252 in a fishing vest, jeans, and ball cap.

He had brought a plane with maybe a three-foot wingspan and an electric motor, a red-and-white replica of a 1930s-era racer.

"I just learned to fly last summer," he said.

"I'm not a 30-year [club member] like these guys," he said - motioning over his shoulder to a half-dozen other club members, one of them a World War II bomber pilot who joined the club in 1960, a year after its formation.

When it was his turn to fly, Louderback did fine with the takeoff. The plane flew high and danced this way and that.

Then, all of a sudden, it dived straight for the ground. It hit with a thump and scattered pieces of the propeller in all directions.

"I think something came loose," he grimaced.

He wasn't happy, but what could he do.

"It happens," he said.

Michael Lebrun, president of the Signal Seekers, said model-airplane flying at the field was open only to club members and their guests.

The National Park Service, Lebrun said, keeps a tight rein on flying activity because of the proximity of the Pennsylvania Turnpike and the high number of bikers and hikers in the park. Membership dues include a significant amount of liability insurance in case a plane crashes in the wrong place.

Membership is open. "We're always trying to attract younger people," Lebrun said.

The club does have some, but not as many as it would like. The obstacle is not so much the cost as competing demands for people's time.

"It's a hobby that consumes a lot of time," Lebrun said.

Lebrun, 62, of Newtown Square, sells instruments to pharmaceutical and biotech companies. But he manages to have two hobbies. He is also a ham radio operator.

The Signal Seekers, who meet as a group at the Valley Forge Presbyterian Church at 8 p.m. on the second Tuesday of each month, are one of several model-airplane clubs in the Philadelphia region. Their website address is vfss.org.

At 88, Joe Weizer of Havertown is the second-longest member of the club - 51 years.

A former manufacturing company owner, he flew B-26 Martin Marauders over "the hump" - the Himalaya Mountains - in the China-Burma-India theater of World War II.

The last time he flew a real plane was several years ago. He has maybe 20 model airplanes - in the basement, in the storage room, wherever he can find a shelf.

"My wife says we don't have a house," he said. "We have an airplane hangar."

Wearing a big cowboy hat and a club jacket, he wasn't flying the other day. Too wet, too nasty, he said.

Like him, most of the original club members were of the World War II generation - men who had grown up amid the wants of the Depression but who had found unexpected middle-class comfort in the go-go era of the postwar period.

They were the first generation of ordinary Americans - not just the idle rich - who had significant leisure time.

"And there wasn't much TV," Weizer said.

For Chuck Keller, 72, a retired DuPont Co. engineer and marketing executive, the appeal of model airplanes is only partly in the flying.

"It's the camaraderie," he said - "commiserating with people after you crash your plane."