Shearwater RC Flyers’ Club

Up in the air with the Shearwater Radio Control Flyers’ Club

By Cpl Brian Watters,
12 Wing Imagery Services

The Shearwater Radio Control Flyers, a military club, held a Fun Fly at the decommissioned runway of 12 Wing Shearwater on the weekend of July 14.

I had an opportunity to capture some video and photos while attending the event, and took a few moments to interview the president of the club, and recently retired Capt Vic Ruzgys.

This is the transcript of his remarks from that interview:

“My name is Vic Ruzgys, I’m the president of the Shearwater Radio Control Flyers. Today is our annual “Fun-Fly. It’s an open event to members of any other radio control clubs, and an opportunity to showcase our club, our flying site, and is also open to any spectators that might be interested in viewing.

This event is actually an annual event, typically held in the middle of July, as opposed to our regular flying which happens here on weekends – every Saturday, Sunday (and holidays), weather permitting, starting typically in May, until the weather gets a little too cold for us in November.

In the wintertime when the outdoor flying comes to a halt, we have the opportunity to use the Shearwater gymnasium to fly indoors. We have special models for that, which are small, lightweight and typically fly slower.

Our annual event is held as an opportunity to get members of different clubs together, and just enjoy a day of flying, as well as the camaraderie of a bunch of RC flyers all in one place at one time. Most RC clubs have an annual Fun-Fly throughout the year, so this is our event here at Shearwater.

We very much encourage new members, whether they be experienced flyers coming from other areas, or anybody who’s never flown before. We have a training program here at the club, as well as training aircraft and qualified instructors that are available to teach people how to fly radio control.

The training system involves two radios connected electronically so that the instructor is basically flying with you and can readily take control if you start to get into trouble. So if you have no flying experience whatsoever, you are still able to learn at a gradual pace, without fear of crashing.

We are a military club, but we are allowed a 50% ratio of non-military members, and we certainly encourage any people interested to contact us.

Transport Canada, in the last year or so, has come down with some fairly rigorous regulations about where and how you can fly radio controlled model aircraft, which means that most areas are now out of bounds for that sort of flying. The benefits of joining a club such as ours, is that we have a sanctioned airfield here, where we are permitted to fly under the auspices of the Model Aeronautics Association of Canada (MAAC). We are therefore not bound by a lot of the restrictions that you would find outside of a sanctioned model airfield.  So that’s the biggest benefit of joining a club.”

For more information on the Shearwater RC Flyers, please visit their Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/groups/shearwaterrcflyers”www.facebook.com/groups/shearwaterrcflyers

The video can be seen at https://youtu.be/D0tukpc6MrQ”https://youtu.be/D0tukpc6MrQ