My friend Bob and I had a great day at the Florida Jets 2020 on Friday March 13 at the Paradise RC field in Lakeland, Florida. The RC field is located next to the Lakeland Linder International Airport.
This is an annual event sponsored by Frank Tiano Enterprises, many industry companies and the Imperial RC Club. Factory flying teams. Factory tents for many industry suppliers.
Jets can I say Jets!!! There were about 200 planes! All jets! Single engine. Twin engine. Some EDF.
A beautiful sunny day in the 70’s to see the many beautiful scale warbirds, the 200 mph sport planes and believe it or not 2 jet turbine powered sailplanes !!
There were many very large scale planes. The variable wing geometry, canard wing fighters were amazing in detail and flying ability.
There was an entry ticket raffle and the Imperial RC Club did a fund raiser ( I did not win anything !!)
The flying day was broken into sections of: open flying with planes of all types, 3D flying, aerobatics.
2 Korean-era jets did a very nice team flying demonstration. Check out the F-86 size. It was huge (look at the black trash can for size). The B2 was stunning. Carbon fiber everywhere.
There was a 4 meter scale turbine-powered sailplane. The turbine retracted into the fuselage !!
The 5 meter scale sailplane was beautiful with a stuffed animal pilot. These 2 planes did amazing aerobatics. I had no idea !
There was a beautiful scale T-34C turbo-prop 2-seat scale trainer. Outstanding detail. Flew and sounded great. Variable pitch prop.
We spent 6 hours amazed at the flying, talking with pilots, factory reps, other spectators. There was a sausage sub in there somewhere. We had a great day.
As a novice RC pilot I can only imaging how many flight and simulator hours these teams(pilot and spotter) put into this part of the RC airplane hobby. At $20,000 dollars and more this is a big budget hobby.
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