NEW GLOUCESTER — Kneeling beside his Extra 260 fixed-wing airplane last Saturday, Carl Jackson hand-cranked the propeller, spinning it until the gas engine roared to life.

He then went to the rear of the plane, lifted the tail section and walked the bright yellow and white aircraft out to the 650-foot grassy runway at the SkyStreakers field off Bald Hill Road in New Gloucester.

Jackson, 32, of Minot, isn’t an aircraft powerlifter. He’s a radio-control modeler who builds and flies giant scale aerobatic planes, jets and helicopters for sport. He also pilots actual full-scale aircraft for a hobby.

Additionally, Jackson is a flight instructor and president of the SkyStreakers R/C Club, which held its second-annual Open House on Saturday, June 9, attracting a large crowd of all ages.

“I’m an aviation nut,” Jackson said. “I went to school for flying. I love flying models. It’s a great hobby. I love building, flying and instructing.”

For 22 years, Jackson’s been flying radio control aircraft, a competition sport/ hobby that can easily cost thousands of dollars.

“It used to be a hobby about 20 years ago,” he said, then laughed aloud. “Actually, no, I can’t say that. It turned into a sport about five years ago. That’s when things got really big.”

Big, being the operative word.

At 40-percent scale, his Extra 260 has a 9-foot-long fuselage nose to tail and 118-inch wingspan.

After walking the plane into position for take-off, Jackson returned to the piloting area, then worked the transmitter, launching the model into the air.

He took it straight up and into 3-D aerobatics, which are extreme maneuvers performed when the aircraft is in a stalled position.

It hovered like a helicopter, only the nose was straight up and the tail straight down. The plane is kept airborne this way with thrust from its propeller rather than lift from its wings.

Using stick controls on the transmitter, Jackson controlled servos attached to the plane’s moving parts, putting the craft through a series of sick-looking G-force acceleration maneuvers afterward. He said his planes can fly at 30 Gs.

Servos are remote control devices that move the control surfaces of an aircraft in response to the transmitter sticks, longtime SkyStreakers club member Tom Chabot said.

“The trick is coordination and orientation,” said Jackson, who works for Maine Air Power Inc. in Auburn.

“It’s easy to get disoriented. It happens to all of us. It’s just a matter of recognizing it.”

Radio-control aircraft can fly faster than 200 mph, but the club’s Academy of Model Aeronautics safety codes limit speed to 200 mph.

Jackson declined to say how much his Extra 260 cost; Chabot, who also has one of the high-performance Extra 260s, gave an inkling.

“A lot of lawns have been mowed to get this,” Chabot said. “This is sort of the higher end of the R/C scale for competition planes.”

Chabot, a design engineer from Yarmouth, builds R/C scale models professionally for other people as a part-time job to finance his R/C addiction of 25 years.

“Most of us are just out here to have fun,” helicopter flier Adam Courtemanche of Portland said.

This is his third summer flying radio control helicopters. He’s addicted to the noise they make.

“It takes forever to learn it,” he said. “Guys that are really, really good (can fly) 125 mph Hurricanes 20 feet from your face.”

Courtemanche, who was holding what he called a “90-size” T-Rex 700, said he enjoys flying Align 550E and 700E helicopters. He also flies quad helicopters, which means they have four rotors.

Courtemanche, who is a member of the Southern Maine R/C Helicopter Association, said the radio control helicopter hobby costs as much as the fixed-wing variety.

Justin Packard of Gray, a 2007 Dirigo High School graduate, agreed.

“I just started last week and spent $650 so far,” said Packard, who recalled flying smaller R/C models when he was younger.

An ad on television rekindled that interest, drawing him to Ray and Robin’s Hobby Center in Falmouth.

“It’s super addicting,” said Packard, an Air Force veteran. “I’m in trouble, that’s for sure. I like precision stuff. I like being able to hone my skills, you know, I’m a military guy. “

Unlike fixed-wing airplanes, R/C helicopters can fly any which way, forwards or backwards, super fast.

With his T-Rex 700E copter, Courtemanche demonstrated his 3-D aerobatic prowess, quickly attracting and wowing a crowd of fixed-wing enthusiasts who applauded loudly when he finished the flight.

“He’s good,” Jackson said.

That brought up the obvious question: Can one mow the lawn by flying a radio-control helicopter upside down?

“I wish,” Jackson said. “It would save us a lot of money.”

tkarkos@sunjournal.com

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