The Southern Indiana Flying Eagles remote control model airplane club is sponsoring the ninth Hoosier Scale Fly-In on Thursday, Friday and Saturday in Seymour.

Due to the closure of Airport Road, attendees should use the State Road 11 entrance into Freeman Field Industrial Park and follow the signs to the airfield.

The event is free for spectators, and people will have an opportunity to talk to pilots and club members. Concessions will be available for purchase all three days, and attendees are invited to bring lawn chairs.

Those who fly the model airplanes, in order to finance the event and raise a little bit of money for the club, are asked to pay a $20 landing fee.

Dale Arvin, active flyer, contest director and remote control scale competitor, said the event is primarily for people who fly radio-controlled model airplanes to gather in a social atmosphere.

“We just fly whatever models we choose, when we choose and where we choose,” Arvin said. “They do have to be scale models, which means they are models of real airplanes.”

He said they encourage spectators to come because the members love to talk about their hobby and want to encourage other people to get involved with it.

“Freeman Field is a beautiful old flying field in Seymour, and the place where we fly is one of the taxiways on the north end of the field,” Arvin said. “There, we have a huge area for dry camping, but there will be no facilities there for hookup, so people can bring a generator.”

Arvin started flying model airplanes 65 years ago, and the planes keep getting bigger each year, he said.

“When I flew back then, a ‘big airplane’ would have a wingspan of 18 to 24 inches,” Arvin said. “Now, just the stabilizers are 2 to 3 three feet and the wingspans might be within the 8- to 10-foot range, and they can get huge.”

Arvin said at the fly-in, he will be flying a big World War II biplane, and there will probably be more World War I planes there than anything else. Also, there will be third-scale biplanes that are one-third the actual size of the plane.

“These planes weigh close to 50 pounds, and most of them are run by gasoline engines that are close to seven or eight horsepower, and there could be a few battery-operated models, as well,” he said.

Arvin said the club members usually bring doughnuts and snacks in the morning for the pilots, and during the day, they normally crank up the grill and have hamburgers and hot dogs for purchase.

There will be a lot of people flying Friday, but the bulk of the flying will be Saturday, and some people will be coming from some distance away.

“I really enjoy this hobby and enjoy telling other people about it and teaching youngsters,” Arvin said. “We’re trying really hard to get some young people interested in this since most of us are getting older.”

Daron Fleshman, president of the Southern Indiana Flying Eagles, said the hours of the event are approximately 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day, but pilots are welcome to come at sunrise and stay all day.

“It has just been a fly-in the past three years, so guys and gals will be flying all three days, all day each day,” Fleshman said. “I know I will be.”

He said up until a couple of years ago, it was a qualifier for the U.S. scale masters, but in the past couple of years, they haven’t made it a competition.

“We’ve made it a fly-in so everyone could come and enjoy flying any of their scale model planes,” Fleshman said. “We still have an electric foam plane scale contest, but it’s just for fun and prizes.”

For information, call Fleshman at 812-525-0789 or Arvin at 812-987-2224.