By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post

RUSSELL — Sherwin Stielow has flown to great heights without ever leaving the ground.

Stielow, 85, of Russell has been flying RC planes since the late 1960s.

He said the hobby is a combination of the challenge of building the planes, the satisfaction of seeing the something you built fly and the challenge of flying the plane.

Stielow’s love of the skies started when he was a young adult. He and his cousins liked to watch planes at the local airport. They decided to pool their money and buy a  World War II military training airplane.

The cousins first took flying lessons from a former World War II pilot and trainer before finishing their lessons with a pilot in Hays. His two cousins went to work as airplane mechanics. Stielow was hired by the Kansas Highway Patrol as a pilot. He flew traffic enforcement in a Cessna Skylane and often aided in searches before damage to his hearing forced him to retire in 1987.

Stielow said one of his most memorable moments on the KHP was not in the air. He received a call from his superintendent one day in 1970 and he was asked to report to Beloit. When he arrived, the superintendent was there with Neil Armstrong, who was in Kansas to go pheasant hunting.

“Guess what I got to do in full blue highway patrol uniform? I was the bird dog that went down in the weeds. I am not 100 percent sure I got to shake his hand. I think I did,” Stielow said.

He had dreams of flying for an airline, but in those days, work for an airline was not very steady and private pilots made less than he was making as a trooper. He had a family to support. He also had a job offer to work for the Alaska State Police, shortly after Alaska achieved statehood.

“I was going to have to report to Fairbanks on Feb. 15, 1959 in the middle of winter with two children. We couldn’t hardly rub two quarters together,” he said. “Everybody talked me out of that one. But I had a good career. I still bleed blue.”

When Stielow became involved in RC planes in the 1970s, he said he enjoyed building the planes more than flying them.

“It is a challenge to put it together, and then once you have it together to see it in the air flying,” he said. “That is something that you did.”

Stielow related it to working in the oil field when he was a young man.

“I got to driving a bulldozer, building oil field locations,” he said. “The challenge was you go out there into this pasture on a hillside and you level this location and get it almost perfectly level and dig the pits and everything an oil derrick has to have. I did that. That was the challenge and the fun of working there. Just like building the airplane, I put this thing together.”

He started with gas engines, and as the technology progressed, he made the transition to electric engines. He has made planes from kits and from his own designs, from Styrofoam and basal wood.

Planes can take hours to build or they can take months. He worked on the planes during the winter when he couldn’t fly. His largest plane has a wing span of 64 inches. The planes’ top speeds can vary anywhere from 30 to 70 mph. The RC speed record was set in 2017 by a jet that was clocked at 465 mph.

The first gas trainer he built was his favorite — a stick-built high wing, which was followed by a low wing, which was faster and more aerobatic.

“It was easy to handle, but it was a challenge. It was faster and you really had to stay on your toes,” he said. “I’ve still got that airplane.”

He once scaled down plans from a life-size plane to an RC plane when a friend who worked at Beechcraft lent him the specs. He has 13 planes in his basement currently, some ready for flight, others not.

Flying an RC plane is not as easy at it might look.

“People want to learn to do this, but they try to do it on their own,” he said. “They will buy an airplane kit like this, and they will go in the backyard or out in the pasture or out in the field and try to learn to fly it themselves. The odds are against them. It is not going to happen. There are enough variables there. It doesn’t take long to learn to fly, but you need a instructor to teach you how to fly. …”

He gave an example. If the plane is moving away from you, then it is like you are sitting in the plane’s cockpit, but if the plane is coming toward you, you have to reverse the controls.

Stielow admits he has spent hours building planes only to crash them.

Flying is not necessarily a solo hobby. Stielow was part of a club based in Russell and often flew with friends before he constructed his own grass RC plane runway (a mowed strip of grass) on his farm north of Russell. He also attended a couple of large RC plane fly-ins over the years.

His favorite moment in the hobby came at one of these fly-ins. There were thousands of hobbyists at the rally. An announcer came over the loud speaker and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re thrilled. We did not know they were going to show up, but the Blue Angels have agreed to a fly by. If you’ll look to your left …”

Over a group of trees came four blue RC jets tethered together doing all sorts of acrobatics.

Stielow said he has tried flying a drone, although he does not own one of his own. He said it is just not the same as flying an RC plane. With a RC plane, you can do loops and flips. RC planes are challenging to fly.

“When a drone runs out of battery, it will come back to where it took off and land itself,” he said. He waved his hand off dismissively.

Stielow has reached a time in his life he realizes it’s time to start letting go of most of his planes. Replacement knees and hip means it is hard for him to balance when he is flying.

He has listed his planes for sale. His own kids never bought into the hobby and now they’re asking dad, what they are going to do with a basement full of planes when he is gone. He said he would like to pass the planes on to Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts or a 4-H group. He hopes a new generation of flyers will get the same joy out of planes as he did.

“I’d just like to see them go to a good home and some young kids learn to fly,” he said.

If you are interested in purchasing any of Stielow’s planes, you can contact him at 785-942-3275.