Amateur Flyers Soar Above Aviation Landmark
Cheered by a crowd of squinting spectators, the prop plane climbed higher and higher toward the late afternoon sun. Its blue and yellow design faded closer to black with every inch of altitude until the glare reduced the plane to a mere silhouette.
Without warning, the high-pitched whine of its engine was suddenly silenced, and for a second or more the plane hung in midair, as if suspended along an invisible clothesline. Going propeller over tail, the plane flipped into a slow loop and plummeted towards the ground, twirling on a vertical axis like a corkscrew.
With only 30 feet until impact, the engine roared back to life, and the plane pulled out of the dive with ease, eliciting a fresh round of “Oohs” and “Aahs” as onlookers showered the pilot with applause for his daring maneuver—a particularly impressive feat given the empty cockpit.
The pilot, Dr. Sam Masyr, 66, is a dentist from Bay Ridge and a member of the Pennsylvania Avenue Radio Control Society. The club boasts 180 members who fly model aircraft at Floyd Bennett Field, a largely vacant former airfield within the Gateway National Recreation Area that juts into Jamaica Bay perpendicular to Flatbush Avenue. With two feet on the tarmac, Masyr uses a remote control to fly an Extra 260, a prop plane that is 42 percent of the size of the fully functional machine after which it is modeled.
