AMA Chartered:
Club #2477

The club got off the ground in 1988-89. It grew out of a group of helicopter pilots who hung around RC Models & Supply, a hobby shop owned and operated by Mike Rosanti (no longer  located at 870 Ontario Street in Kenmore). Early members were Mike Rosanti, Larry Grisanti , Dick Hanson, Paul Schwartz, Bob Dreyer, Rich , and Paul Drajem.
The store was a magnet. Folks would stop by on their way to or from a meeting and after flying. It was hard to stop by without seeing some of the club members in the store. For a time, Bob Dreyer offered a monthly "Ground School" evening at the store to teach various techniques to interested members.
Louie, a former member of Wing and Rotor, worked at RC Models before moving over to Hobby Town USA (3332 Sheridan). The group used to get together to fly at Kennedy Field in Tonawanda (Brighton and Colvin, where the jet plane is parked). This attracted lots of new members to the club, but also led to the loss of the field. It was just too close to cemeteries, baseball diamonds, houses and traffic, so as more people got involved, there were more accidents and complaints about noise. The town has clearly marked the field as off-limits to RC aircraft.
Paul Drajem, who has been flying for 17 years, was club president for five years. John McKenna has served for the last two and is beginning his third term as Benevolent Dictator. The composition of the club has shifted. In the beginning, it was almost all helicopter pilots; now it is mostly fixed-wing flyers. Some people say that the group began because the Sunday Flyers wanted nothing to do with helicopters, but the original members deny that story.
There have only been a few women members. Paul remembers E. and her husband. They went through about twenty planes and a couple of helicopters. Apparently, they enjoyed owning the planes more than flying them.
The largest membership so far in the club is 65 members. Members have joined from all over the region: Niagara Falls, Tonawanda, Buffalo, Hamburg, and Grand Island. The full title of the club is "The Wing and Rotor Club of Western New York."
One of the notable characters in the club is Will, also known as "Will Scrap" or "Garbage Can Will." He loves to pick up others' discards and turn them back into flying machines. Once upon a time, E. was flying T.'s new Aerostar 40. While E. was concentrating on the plane, T. circled behind him and de-pantsed him. At that very moment--is there a God in Heaven?--the Aerostar's wings broke in two and the plane bought the farm. T. raked the pieces together and threw them in the garbage. Will retrieved them twenty minutes later, sent them to the manufacturer with a note explaining how much he liked the plane and how sad he was that it fell apart in mid-air (leaving out irrelevant details about who owned the plane and whose equipment was left hanging in the breeze). The manufacturer shipped him a new plane, which Will then sold to T. The depantser got himself depantsed on another occasion when his hands were full of an expensive video camera; it's not clear whether this was payback for what he did to E. or whether E. had started the cycle.
Picnics have apparently played a large role in club history. One favorite was the picnic at which Drajem burned one of his helicopters while doing demos for the families. There were few converts to the joys of RC flying that day. I wish I could have been at last year's picnic; then I wouldn't have to feel guilty during the monthly reminder of how few showed up to eat food enough for fifty. I think we drank the last of the leftover soda at the Christmas party. Perhaps recriminations will die down now that the last of the food has been consumed. People also seem to have fond memories of the Thanksgiving Fun Fly when the temperature dropped to five below zero. Hot dogs were grilled anyway, as if it were the heat of summer.
         At the 1995 Christmas Party, Paul Schwartz presented the following awards:
Hot Stuff Award for the best builder-flier-crasher-fixer: Keith "Sticky Fingers"
Unsung Hero for the man who has dedicated his heart and soul to the club: Paul "Mr. Warmth"
Drajem Screaming Eagle (a.k.a. Duck-and-Pray Brown Stain) Award to the man who insists on flying on the edge at all times: Bill "There Must Be a B on This Keyboard" Knab.
Most Improved Flyer: Gary "I'll Fly Anything" Casano.
Impact of the Year Award: Mark "I Don't Have It Anymore" Rawls.
President's Award: John "I'll Be There Between 4 and 8 PM" McKenna. Others may know him better as "Crash" McKenna.
         I'd be happy to retell your old stories and to organize your old photos in the club scrapbook.
           Everything you say will be held against you and nothing you give me will ever be returned. Happy Landings!
Martin X. Moleski, SJ Canisius College 2001 Main Street Buffalo, New York

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