Floyd Bennett Field once played host to the biggest names in early aviation, but now its skies are empty except for a small cadre of flying fanatics.
Cheered by a crowd of squinting spectators, the prop plane climbed higher and higher toward the late afternoon sun. Its blue and yellow design faded closer to black with every inch of altitude until the glare reduced the plane to a mere silhouette.
Without warning, the high-pitched whine of its engine was suddenly silenced, and for a second or more the plane hung in midair, as if suspended along an invisible clothesline. Going propeller over tail, the plane flipped into a slow loop and plummeted towards the ground, twirling on a vertical axis like a corkscrew.
With only 30 feet until impact, the engine roared back to life, and the plane pulled out of the dive with ease, eliciting a fresh round of “Oohs” and “Aahs” as onlookers showered the pilot with applause for his daring maneuver—a particularly impressive feat given the empty cockpit.
The pilot, Dr. Sam Masyr, 66, is a dentist from Bay Ridge and a member of the Pennsylvania Avenue Radio Control Society. The club boasts 180 members who fly model aircraft at Floyd Bennett Field, a largely vacant former airfield within the Gateway National Recreation Area that juts into Jamaica Bay perpendicular to Flatbush Avenue. With two feet on the tarmac, Masyr uses a remote control to fly an Extra 260, a prop plane that is 42 percent of the size of the fully functional machine after which it is modeled.
“Some people play golf,” said Mike Casey, the club’s president. “We fly. This is our hobby.”
On July 4, construction began on Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar’s plans to convert Floyd Bennett Field into the country’s largest urban camping ground, thrusting the space back into the national headlines. But for the last 40 years, tucked away on a 900-foot strip of runway adjacent to the Mill Basin Inlet, the historic site has hosted an airfield in miniature. A windsock dangles from atop a small, wooden control tower, in which spotters track planes and advise their pilots below. Flyers of varied backgrounds—doctors, lawyers, businessmen, civil servants, retirees—lounge in lawn chairs under an awning, chatting or whistling or napping in their makeshift men’s club as they await their turn to takeoff. Wooden workbenches with tools strewn about them line the runway, acting as hangars for maintenance or temporary storage. Spectators can lean against their cars in the parking lot or lie on one of a handful of metal bleachers in order to get the best view of the sky.
Each flyer has his own reason for getting airborne, and each aircraft reflects the aspect of the hobby that attracted its flyer to the club. Some are seduced by speed, flying jets that can set a pace at 200 miles per hour. Others, like Masyr, enjoy honing their technical skills with aerobatics, preferring highly maneuverable models capable of executing loops, turns, spins, rolls, and combinations thereof, like the Cuban-8, Rolling Circle, or Lomcevak. Still others prize realism, ordering or building downsized versions of their favorite makes and models, like Warbirds, replicas of the fiercest fighters from a range of 20th century aerial conflicts. Some veteran flyers of this ilk insert a custom-designed Styrofoam pilot into their cockpits, having commissioned an artist to sculpt their likeness from a photograph. And at least a few like “oddball stuff,” seemingly trying to bestow the gift of flight upon the most unlikely objects just produce a good laugh.
“I’ve seen a flying lawnmower,” said Masyr. “I’ve seen a flying Snoopy sitting atop his doghouse.”
Like most club members, Masyr embraced the activity later in life. He grew up building model airplanes (then comprised of balsa wood and Mylar covers) and frequenting hobby shops, but the steep price tag for such specialized equipment grounds many young beginners. Horizon Hobby, one of the leading manufacturers of radio control products, offers a few beginner models for under $100, but according to Masyr, the typical starter kit includes a trainer aircraft (now composites of fiberglass), motor, propeller, radio transmitter, receiver, and servos (electronic joints that adjust the flight control surfaces), and costs about $700. Add batteries, glow fuel at $35 per gallon, and a flight simulator that plugs directly into a personal computer, and the startup cost enters the thousands. The Academy of Model Aeronautics, the hobby’s national collective with approximately 140,000 members and 2,400 clubs in over 2,000 cities fancies radio control flying as “a pipeline to general aviation,” but despite educational initiatives and scholarship programs, its average member is 58 years old.
“And don’t forget,” said Masyr, “you’re going to have a lot of ‘dumb thumb’ moments and lose a lot of airplanes in the beginning.”
Masyr estimates that he’s crashed at least 15 airplanes since he began flying in 1999. Trainers are replaceable, but money makes all the difference between frustration and devastation. Masyr’s Extra 260 cost him about $8,000, while a top-of-the-line, custom-designed airplane might cost $50,000.
“I’ve seen guys sit down and cry,” said Bruce Roland, 64.
Casey stressed that “safety is paramount,” and all pilots must obtain liability insurance from the Academy of Model Aeronautics, fly with a “qualifier,” or flight instructor, to practice basic skills during a six-month probation period, and adhere to a strict safety code, which limits weight, speed, altitude and specifies that a pilot must maintain a line of sight to the aircraft at all times during flight. Nevertheless, human error and technical failure make accidents inevitable.
“All of these aircraft have expiration dates,” said Masyr. “We just don’t know when they are.”
For Floyd Bennett Field’s flyers, the Pennsylvania Avenue Radio Control Society fuels a passion that borders on obsession. Neither sweltering heat nor bitter cold vacates the runway; only rain grounds a determined flyer, so the club meets every clear day of the year. Masyr stops by only twice a week, but he takes his hobby home with him in more ways than one. His basement is a workshop, his garage a hangar for spares, his van specifically retrofitted for the sole purpose of transporting aircraft. His daughter wrote her college essay about the club (“When the sun is high and the wind is right, I find myself surrounded by old men.”) and desires to become the first female to qualify for PARCS membership (AMA is 99 percent male). But it’s the feeling of escape, however brief, that lingers in his mind and keeps him coming back.
“When I’m flying, I can’t think about anything else,” he said. “It requires 100% of my consciousness, and when I go to sleep that night, I dream about the day I’ve had.”
Founded in 1949, the Pennsylvania Avenue Radio Control Society frequented garbage dumps, empty beaches, and skeet shooting ranges until they found a permanent home at Floyd Bennett Field in the late 1960s. Since then, the club has provided a living link to the past, albeit on a much smaller scale. Floyd Bennett Field opened in 1931 as New York City’s first municipal airport. The same features that attracted the Pennsylvania Avenue Radio Control Society—long, smooth runways and clear flyover areas—once prompted aviation pioneers like Wiley Post, Amelia Earhart, and Howard Hughes, daredevil pilots with aspirations of circumnavigating the globe first or faster than the last, to attempt record-breaking flights to or from the airfield.
But time passed, as did the “Golden Age of Aviation” of the 1930s. Commercial traffic moved across Jamaica Bay to LaGuardia Airport, and in 1971 Floyd Bennett Field fell into the hands of the National Park Service. Many of its original structures still stand today, having merited listings on the National Register of Historic Places for their various contributions to aviation history, but they have lost much of their former grandeur. The seldom-used complex ultimately fell into disrepair, fading with the chops of propellers, and crumbling brick buildings with grime-encrusted windows now dot a tarmac with weeds poking through its cracks.
As Floyd Bennett Field prepares to host a new generation of pioneers, prompting changes to PARCS flight patterns to avoid the urban campers, the Pennsylvania Avenue Radio Control Society fits into a larger conversation about how the historical integrity of the site should be preserved. While volunteers from the Historic Aircraft Restoration Project in Hangar B work to restore Army, Navy, and Coast Guard planes to fighting form and display them for posterity, the Pennsylvania Avenue Radio Control Society celebrates their adopted landlord by keeping its aerial tradition alive.
“This is an airport with a history,” said Casey, “and we’re the only airplanes still flying here.”
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