Flying Knights Newsletter

Giant Plane Man 

A few years ago, many of us watched in amazement as a huge DC-3 lumbered down the runway at the Nike Site.

Gracefully, under the expert hand of pilot, Bill Eberhart the giant bird lifted into the air and entered the downwind leg. 

Shortly into the flight, something went wrong and the flight ended prematurely.

Where did this beautiful re-creation of past glory come from?

Basement hanger

To discover more we need to enter the hanger of Bob Rodgers, a life member of the Flying Knights of Hamburg.

Bob is a master builder and has built many of the great aircraft from the classic and war years that we are all familiar with.

Bob began his fascination with aircraft as a young boy in Arizona. His brother and he worked several nights a week at the local bowling alley setting pins, (if any of you are old enough to remember when bowling alleys had to have their pins set).

They then took their earnings and bought the latest in model engines.

Bob recalls that he would build the models with his two older brothers and then his oldest brother would fly the planes and smash them.

This does not sound like a good sibling relationship.

Yet, for those few moments, all of us who watched could reach back into our memories to the world of long ago, when the piston engine was king and the venerable DC-3 was the reigning queen of the 

Bob never lost his attraction for aircraft but somewhere along the way an equal fascination with railroading appeared.

In the rear of his home in