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 The Niagara Region Model
Flying Club in Canada has been in existence since the late '60s and
still has a select few of the original club members active in the club.
One member, Don Prentice, was inducted into the MAAC Hall of Fame a few
years back (MAAC is the governing body for RC in Canada www.maac.ca).
He is an original member of the club. Don has been an R/C pioneer for
over 5 decades - maybe more?). During the '90s, the club operated two
fields, but has since concentrated on one field, and that has worked
well for them. The field is located very close to Brock University and
about a 15-minute drive from Niagara Falls; the shot on the right was
taken by Mike Borfolin from a Cessna 172 piloted by club member Peter
Hildebrandt from about 1000 feet above ground level. The club field is
just about dead centre of the picture.
Niagara Region's current
membership exceeds 80 members, and there is always a very active group
of them at the flying field throughout the week. The field's
proximity to the university generates a lot of interest at the field.
There is always a lot of spectators during the weekends!!
As far as types of models
flown is concerned, the club is very diverse. There are guys ("and some gals, of
course", says web master Mark West) flying pattern planes, hard core aerobatics, scale, and
military aircraft. The Club's web site photo gallery is a good indicator
of the wide range of airplanes (and heli's) that are flown. As evident
almost everywhere now, there is a growing contingent of flyers
experimenting with electric planes.
 Here's
the opening screen of Niagara Region's very smart web site, with a
beautiful piece of computer artwork drawn in 3D by the club's previous
webmaster, Rob MacGregor. Pages on the site are club info,
gallery, events, swap shop, links, maps to the field, flight line and
a page from the web master entitled web guy.
There is a good gallery,
not displaying the usual page full of thumbnails, but a neat list of
picture titles from which you can choose. Including in the list are a
couple of videos and a slide show, which again is a bit unusual.
I have sampled the
gallery, as usual, and you can see a few members' models on photo
gallery. You will note that Mark said that amongst the Niagara
members are "some gals, of course". But 'gals' still appear
rare in this hobby, and we have yet to meet an active lady modeller on ModelFlight,
so how about persuading one to introduce herself with a personal
profile or send us a picture of her model, Mark?
Visit
Niagara region Model Flying Club at www.ont.net
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