Radio Control Jet Pilots

I'd seen my little brother put together model airplanes when we were kids. He hung them from his bedroom ceiling, where they dangled there, mummied in dust and forgotten til my parents sold the house.

So I was expecting some little plastic put-puts when I went out to Brooklyn to see the radio control model jet planes I'd heard were being flown out there. I was wrong. These are giant-sized scale model planes made out of kevlar and carbon fiber and balsa laminates. They have real jet turbine engines and can cost $20,000 and take more than two years to build, if you're a do-it-yourself-er.

I watched as their pilots put them through their paces, doing loop-da-loops and zooming straight up for hundreds of feet to finally tip over and nose-dive back to earth, only pulling up at the last moment to level out and zoom by at 200 mph three feet off the ground.