Soundlessly And Serenely They Sail

They can stay in the air as long as it takes a jet to fly from Spokane to Seattle.

They carry no passengers and are powered by an item found in every office: rubber bands.

In an age when toys seem bigger, louder and faster, a unique group of airplane buffs are using these machines to live the dream of flight.

This week, 34 men are huddled beneath the University of Idaho’s Kibbie Dome at a national rubber-band propelled model airplane competition. It’s a contest so unusual, only a few hundred people in the country are aware it exists.

They came from Texas, Missouri and California to see one thing: Which plane can fly the longest?

Penny planes, so called because they weigh in at under 3.1 grams, the weight of a pre-1974 penny, can fly up to 17 minutes. Larger planes, built to weigh less than 1 gram - the weight of a dollar bill - have been known to fly 45 minutes.

Owners launch the planes by cranking a rubber band and letting go. Then they wait.

“This is a sport of patience,” says Abram Van Dover, of Newport News, Va.

The planes circle slowly to the ceiling and fall. With their transparent wings they resemble winged soap bubbles in an impromptu ballet; all that’s missing is the music.

In fact, there are no spectators and few sounds. No engines, no laughing, little talking.

The silence at first seems eerie, but makes sense after time. These planes are delicate, precise objects made by delicate, precise men.

“You won’t see any high-fives and loud cheering,” said Andrew Tagliafico, 69. “By and large these guys are loners, quiet people with lots of physical and emotional control.”

Steve Brown is the world champion rubber-band plane pilot. He was crowned in 1994, following an international competition in Romanian salt mine, 700 feet underground.> It was 50 degrees and dark and wet - good conditions. Too cold, and the planes slow down. Too windy, they’re thrown off course.

Hence, “modelers protocol”: Don’t walk too fast past a plane; it could shatter in the turbulence. Don’t walk under a flight; it could disturb the pattern.

It’s a lifestyle, of sorts.

“Most of these guys are retired, or they’re ex-pilots and engineers,” Brown says. “A lot of them were part of the golden age of aerospace engineering.”

Gil Coughlin is one.

The 65-year-old built his first model at 6 and spent a career conducting wind-tunnel studies for Boeing. He did work on the go-cart-like Apollo “lunar rover” that is still on the moon.

He remains fascinated by the details of the machines.

An ornithopter, a plane with weird flapping wings that protrude like limbs on a praying mantis, is made from balsa wood that costs $2,200 per board foot. It’s sliced so thin that total plane cost is about $10.

The fuselage is made by molding the wood around a metal rod. Throw it in the oven at 200 degrees for 10 minutes and it hardens into a hollow shaft.

The plane is powered by rubber bands stretched by mechanical devices that add extra tension: A 17-inch rubber band can be wound 2,000 times.

Then there’s the wings.

“When you go to the grocery store and they ask you ‘paper or plastic?’ … it’s that kind of plastic,” he says of one pair of wings.

“Some are made with garbage bag liners,” he says, and gestured with his thumb. “I took a few from those cans last year.”

What good is a plane that travels slower than people walk and takes 45 minutes to go nowhere?

Coughlin takes his collection of 50-or-so planes to elementary school classes. He carries with him a box of thank you letters from teachers.

“The kids love it,” he says. “Every time I make a kid smile, I love it all over again.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Photos (1 color)