Mill Creek teen wins World Cup for remote-controlled sail planes

Published 9:31 pm Tuesday, September 7, 2010

MILL CREEK — Keeping a remote-controlled sail plane aloft is pure fun for Brendon Beardsley.

The Jackson High School graduate fell in love with the sport as a young child when his father, David Beardsley,*

introduced him to it.

For two weeks in late July and early August, Beardsley, who just turned 18, and his childhood friends Connor Laurel and Michael Knight, students at Redmond High School, achieved a feat Americans never have. Though United States-based teams have won gold medals, no team has ever won three at the F3J World Cup, the competition held every two years for flying remote-controlled sail planes.

The three friends practiced for hours nearly every day leading up to the competition.

“It’s like anything else, luck comes to those that practice,” said Sherman Knight, Michael Knight’s father.

At the F3J World Cup in eastern France, the teens won both the junior team and individual gold medals in radio-controlled soaring, a sport known well only to dedicated hobbyists.

Beardsley won the individual gold medal in France.

Moments after a closely contested final round with a competitor from Croatia, Beardsley’s individual gold medal was assured — but he didn’t know that for several minutes.

“I told my dad, ‘I don’t know if I won it or not but I know I flew the best that I could,’” Beardsley said.

Remote-controlled airplane enthusiasts can be found around the world. In the United States, the sport has been popular for decades.

Beardsley and his friends, who met flying the planes, are accomplished at a specialized form of remote-controlled airplane flight using engineless glider aircraft made of carbon fiber and Kevlar.

The planes, which range in price from hundreds to thousands of dollars, must be launched using fishing line pulled by people, similar to the way kites are launched.

Once airborne, the pilot uses a special hand-held transmitter to manipulate the aircraft.

In competition, pilots fly their planes within 10- to 15-minute rounds, scoring points by landing the plane as close as possible to a designated area.

Beardsley said he and his friends, the only junior American competitors, had to overcome some obstacles to win.

Beardsley had problems early on during the competition in France.

First, he was penalized 100 points in a preliminary round for flying inside a designated safety area. “We protested that penalty,” he said, to no avail.

Beardsley and Laurel also had a problem with their planes’ tow hooks, which are used to launch the plane.

“When that happens, you basically don’t get a full tow,” Beardsley said. “So you’re not as high as you should be.”

Fifteen gliders sailed through the sky in the individual gold medal round.

On a recommendation, Beardsley launched his plane with a shorter than usual tow, slowly working the plane higher to about 300 feet. At that point, Beardsley’s plane crashed into the Croatian competitor’s plane and both aircraft began spiraling to the ground, entangled.

“So we had to basically separate them as they were falling,” Beardsley said. “I lost a bit of altitude and put quite a bit of damage on the leading edge of my plane.”

Soon, he made a quick recovery with his now broken airplane.

His mother, Gina Kalamen, was there, too.

“It was pretty incredible to watch these boys perform at the level that they did,” she said.

Oscar Halpert: 425-339-3429; ohalpert@heraldnet.com.

* Correction: This article originally used an incorrect name for David Beardsley.