When Joe Costa of Vineyard Haven was seven years old, he saw an airplane flying overhead and something went off inside of him – he was hooked. He went home and made his first model plane, a simple wooden model with a square fuselage and a propeller powered by a rubber band. Joe would let the plane go from one side of his living room, run to the other side and catch it, and then do it all over, again and again.

Joe is now eighty-one and he’s still hooked. He has more than thirty model planes scattered throughout his house: B25 Mitchell bombers, Focke-Wulfs, de Havilland Mosquitoes, Mitsubishi Zeros. It’s like walking through an aeronautical museum.

As a young man, Joe joined the US Air Force and became a jet engine specialist. But even while he was working on the real things, he still had a passion for models. He remembers meeting someone in the service who had built a model with a jet engine. It would actually melt the tar on the runway. Joe volunteered to test it out. He held on to the control wire attached to the plane, and it spun him around several times and nearly pulled his arms off.

When Joe got out of the Air Force, he got his pilot’s license and continued to build models; he’s built hundreds over his lifetime.

Back in the early days, all the models were flown with control wires; you stood in one place and held on to the wire as the plane flew circles around you. For the most part these were wooden planes that you would assemble from a kit, although Joe has created many of his own designs as well. And back then the models were primarily powered by glow-plug engines that ran on a mixture of castor oil, methanol, and nitro methane. They sounded like angry little chain saws.

Today’s models are far more sophisticated. They are radio-controlled, so no more hanging on to a control wire, spinning around in circles and screwing yourself into the ground. They’re extremely light, made primarily from Styrofoam, and come pre-assembled, complete with a transmitter and an electric engine. One of the advantages of such a light fuselage is that, in the event of a crash, it seldom does much damage. Joe recently acquired a Senior Telemaster by Hobby Lobby; despite its eight-foot wingspan, ultralight balsa construction keeps the total weight at eight pounds. The prices for model planes can run from around fifty dollars to well over a thousand.

These days, you can also hone your flying skills on the computer. There are model-airplane flight-simulation programs that allow you to re-create the flying experience using the actual joystick from your model plane.

About six years ago, Joe became involved with a new club called the Martha’s Vineyard Model Flying Club. For several years Joe trained fledgling pilots and has watched the club grow to more than thirty members of all ages. The club has its own airstrip right next to the new high school baseball field. It’s a great way for enthusiasts to share their hobby and for novices to get instruction. Club members even visit Island schools to give demonstrations and teach kids how to fly model planes.

“It’s amazing how many pilots get their start flying model planes,” says Joe. “It’s just a great hobby – it’s fun, you get the gratification of building something you can fly, you even learn a little bit about history. It’s definitely in my blood.”

For more information on the Martha’s Vineyard Model Flying Club, call Carl Watt at 508-627-3145.