They take turns.

In the bright sunlight in the middle of a grass field near Junction City, each control-line model plane pilot steps into the center dirt circle. Their planes already have been started, most of them running on what’s called “glow fuel,” a mixture of alcohol, Caster oil and nitromethane. Their 70-foot lines have been placed just so, stretching across the grass to reach the circle. And when the pilot picks up the handle, it’s go time, a helper releasing the plane for takeoff.

“People who do control-line like the fact that we’re in touch with the airplane,” says John Thompson, a retired newspaper journalist and the current treasurer for the Eugene Prop Spinners, a local club of control-line flying enthusiasts. “And it’s kind of exciting in a way because that plane is never more than 70 feet off the ground.”

On this Saturday morning, Thompson is giving one of his old-timers — that’s pre 1952, but it has a modern engine — a workout, going through a set routine in an Old Time Stunt Pattern. Thompson competes in control-line flying competitions at the expert level, so practice is part of his routine.

“He does a set of maneuvers in the exact order,” explains 84-year-old Floyd Carter, another control-line pilot who has been flying since he was 11. Carter details the different maneuvers, from level flight first to things as complicated as a vertical climb and dive and figure eights, both vertical and overhead. As Thompson spins in the inner circle, his plane climbing and pulling, the lines never slack, one can’t help thinking that he must be getting dizzy. After all, it’s dizzying trying to track the plane’s flight path as it buzzes overhead. But he looks comfortable going through the motions. He’s probably done these maneuvers hundreds and hundreds of times. “The last one is called a square loop,” Carter says. “Watch this.”

Thompson’s plane cuts a square complete with corners in the sky, and then all that’s left is the landing. “You get points for a smooth landing. You don’t get very many points for bouncing,” Carter quips as Thompson’s plane connects to the ground with a judder before rolling to a stop. “But it’s hard to do on grass.”

Combat training

Control-line model planes were invented back in the 1930s. Fliers like to build the planes from the ground up, designing the body, installing motors, hooking up the thin wire lines and then seeing what works, what doesn’t. Some builders enjoy making more modern aircraft, while others like to build vintage aircraft, like that World War II P-39 Aircobra parked on the edge of the field.

There’s a lot of tinkering, and the pilots’ portable tool boxes are filled with mini drivers, glue, lubricant, whatever is needed to keep the planes running. Many fliers just come out for the fun of it, but several members of the Eugene-based club compete regularly in precision aerobatics and in combat.

In combat, two fliers stand in the center circle and dogfight, their planes dodging at high speeds until one or the other pilot cuts the opponent’s streamer trailing from the plane’s tail.

Russ Hester of Florence, for one, has brought his new plane, simple and lightweight, made from polystyrene Styrofoam, to test its new motor ahead of a fast combat competition he will attend in Seattle in September. This is one of six planes he plans to take with him, if they last. “I had to build different planes because these motors are so fast that the planes have to be much stronger.”

At takeoff, Hester has his hands full, but in a way that no doubt is sending a thrill through him as he tries to get the upper hand. Buzzing like an angry hornet, the plane is whipping around the sky at 100 miles per hour, but Hester keeps it in check long enough to see it safely to the ground. He does the same thing the second time the mini beast is let loose in the sky.

“I was so nervous starting,” Hester admits as the sweat pours from his forehead and down his cheeks. “These motors to me are intimidating. I’m used to the smaller motors. The other motor class I run in goes at 80 miles per hour. They run really fast, too, but they don’t pull as hard.”

Crashing is part of the experience, as is tangling lines, especially in combat flying. “We all have several planes and often have to rebuild,” Thompson says. “It just goes with the territory. You’re going to crash.”

Case in point, when club member Dave La Fever steps up to the circle to fly Old Time maneuvers with that pretty olive green Aircobra, he has a pretty good run for a bit until the aircraft dives toward the earth as if shot out of the sky. It lands with a sickening thud, its nose crumpled. There is a collective gasp, but La Fever shakes it off. “Oh well,” he says, shrugging as he sets it aside for later rebuilding.

For people interested in trying control-line flying, the club has a couple of trainer planes “that we keep in our trailer here that somebody can give a try. No risk there. They’re ones that can’t be hurt,” Thompson says. “It’s a slow process of learning how to fly level, then how to fly upside down, and then how to do the maneuvers. You just learn one thing at a time.”

The joy of flying

Carter comes regularly to the field just to fly and to watch his fellow fliers. At 84 he can’t do some of the maneuvers he used to, but he still looks forward to the joy of flying. He patiently waits on the sidelines beside his plane, the Pied Piper. “That’s my design,” he says. “It’s one I drew up.” He named it the Pied Piper because of its exhaust pipe cleverly located in front of the cockpit.

“It’s kind of a throwback,” Thompson says of Carter’s plane. “It’s a modern airplane, but he’s put the engine upright. That’s not modern; that’s an old way of doing it. The typical modern engine is tucked away. He just decided he liked to do it that way.”

In his professional days, Carter was an electrical engineer working for NASA. He worked on the space shuttle and on the Hubble telescope, little facts to make the jaw drop. He surveys the group, picks up his plane and a wooden wheel he’s built with pegs to keep his lines from tangling as he unrolls them for a go.

“Well, nobody else is going,” Carter says, “so maybe I will.”