These five great Radio Control aviation adventures were the first, and remain the best in the genre. Literary fiction for the flying RC hobbyists began with the first story in this book, the basis for the 2008 feature film, SCRAMBLE!
RC aviation fiction begins in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley where seventeen year old heroine, Rapunzel (yes, stuck in a tower, the Air Traffic Control tower), leads her high school radio control air combat team. It is a Young Adult relationship story about a father and daughter who cope with an absent ailing mother. The final and inspiring reconciliation is only reached through difficult personal growth, caring classmates, real team work, and an epic air war. Internal struggles play out in the heavens. Young readers and viewers of the movie asked, “Is there really a school like that? I want to go there.” This is a moving story set in a truly wholesome environment.
In the book’s next story, the world of high school teams building and testing and flying and fighting giant scale model classic warbirds and bombers in student competitions, expands into the jet age. Cold War era planes clash over New Mexico in Sabre Dance. The star airplane here is an F-100 Super Sabre. This novella introduces some of the most endearing characters in all of Rawley’s writing. It is worth noting that the copy editors, who checked these stories, over and again, said they never got tired of reading and re-reading this one and its companion sequel (the next adventure in the collection).
The Chaparral High School friends reunite in Airplane Down for a high-speed thrill ride (closing in on the sound barrier with an XB-70), crashing over the border. It is a traditional Western with cowboys and Indians in the unexplored Copper Canyon region. It’s the sort of young-reader book you could depend upon from the best writers in the 1950’s, and with the airplanes of that age overhead, a warm sense of nostalgia pervades the story. This one you can read aloud in elementary school.
Tropic Teleflight takes the unmanned aerial vehicles into high-dollar high gear and flying robots provide a NASCAR-style spectacle. It’s Pensacola vs. Amelia Island vs. Orlando vs. Miami, with one hundred foot aircraft carriers, World War II fighter planes, and fish and bird dogfights (ornithopters and an ikyopter). There is so much weirdness in the air in this story. Readers learn about carrier landing F-4 Corsairs and the vague shapes of Wing In Ground Effect aircraft (WIGs). It’s an all Florida competition in which the personalities of the cities shape the vehicles.
UCAVs (unmanned combat aerial vehicles) are not the only flying machines in the book. The last story, Caves Of The Crystal Eyes features micro helicopters on a medical research mission exploring the caverns under Mount Roriama in South America. The choppers and a motorglider, traveling underground, are piloted remotely from Charleston, South Carolina by a girl named Salem and her friends, Richmond and Spencer. This story includes side tours of historic Charleston landmarks.
Before the press made them famous as military “drones” and shortly after the pilots stopped calling them “remotely piloted vehicles,” amateur RC hobbyists in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s revolutionized flying model planes. They advanced the technologically that led to operational “unmanned aerial vehicles.” These five stories, told with pathos and humor, showcase the innovation and spirit of invention, and they foretell advances in the sport.
Each story teaches aviation, history, and geography and each is an excellent vocabulary builder.
Each book in the collection has its own beautiful cover, six original works of art, six because one of the five has a cover and a “back cover” image. Visit www.dartans.com if your e-reader lacks full color.
Rapunzel In Control is ideal for homeshcoolers and independent and parochial school students. The stories deal with subjects important to teens and perfect for group di
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