“Looking for an interesting and exciting day out in Llanelli this weekend, well why not take a trip to the Llanelli Model Flying Club in Pembrey and get to see a range of fantastic flying machines take to the air or even get the chance to try your hand at flying one yourself.

After driving through the main entrance to the Pembrey Race Course and along the road we came across a sign indicating we were on the right track. We then stopped to watch a model airplane being flown by one of the club members, the plane was performing back flips and rolls before climbing high into the sky then diving straight down to the ground, pulling back up only at the very last moment. After our first tantalising taster we eagerly continued driving and as we turned the corner, we were amazed by all the different model aircraft laid out on display along one side of a landing strip with the club members all busy helping each other to get the aircraft ready for flight.

We quickly parked our car in the visitor’s and club members parking area then headed off over to where all the action was taking place. We were immediately greeted by Alan Beor a club member who then introduced us to Geoffrey Harper one of the safety officer’s, Allan Stark the club president and then the rest of the club members that were present that day.

Fantastic selection of model aircraft:
Enthusiastically showing us around the diverse array of aircraft, ranging from small electric powered jet fighters, petrol stunt and replica military helicopters, twin engine WW2 bombers the list was endless, one member even has a model aircraft that is powered by a scale version of a real jet turbine engine. We were soon all chatting like we had been involved in the club for years.

Here’s one for all the gadget fans:
We found ourselves drawn over to a box with wire’s coming out of it sitting on a table, upon peering into this box we were shocked to see a birds eye view from one of the planes in flight above us, Jonathan Davies then explained to us that he had a miniature camera mounted on his plane and it was transmitting live video back down to the ground, he then proceeded to take what looked at first glance like a pair of sun glasses out of a box, it turned out that these actually had miniature video screens in them, Jonathan asked me to put them on and I was amazed to get a first person on board view from the plane, he then demonstrated how he could actually fly the plane with just these glasses on.

The flying bug was most definitely starting to bite by this point:
Geoff and Allan explained to us that the club likes to encourage any one that might be interested in taking up the sport, on having some free test flights using one of the training planes they had available, nervously as Ken (the Llanellilife editor) looked at the petrol powered four foot wide training plane he agreed to take them up on their offer, Ken’s nerves were quickly calmed as Geoff and Allan demonstrated the controls and explained the “buddy system” they use for training new flyer’s. This comprised of two sets of controls, the main controller held by the qualified Instructor that was connected to the second set used by the learner, this allowed the Instructor to take off and then hand over control to the learner, in the event of the learner getting into any difficulty the Instructor can quickly and safely regain control of the plane at the flick of a switch.”

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