For more than 40 years Garry Bergen has been building model planes but he has no plans to ever pilot the real thing.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Even his pilot mates ask him why he doesn't just buy a real plane or ultra light given the amount he has spent on building large-scale models that are half the size of an actual plane.
"It doesn't interest me that much. I'm more into the models. I like building," he said.
"Flying a real one is like hopping in a car and driving down the road to me. I'd rather be able to fly this and stand there and be able to watch it.
"I love making models. It takes up a fair bit of my spare time."
Mr Bergen, who is from Gawler in South Australia, has brought his model Waco bi-plane to fly over the weekend at the Warrnambool Model Aircraft Club's fun-fly event at Koroit.
He was just 13 or 14 when he first started building small model aeroplanes but by 16 or 17 he had turned to radio-controlled planes.
About 15 years ago he bought a kit for his large-scale Waco plane but it wasn't until the COVID-19 pandemic hit that he started building it.
"It's just sheets of plans and a big box of wood," he said.
"Then you have to frame it all up and put it together.
"I built this in COVID. It took me two-and-a-half to three years to build it."
Mr Bergen then had to source everything else for the plane such as the engine, radio gear and the pilot which set him back $1000 alone.
"The pilot came from Europe, specially made for the plane," he said.
The plane, he said, was probably worth as much as $40,000 to $50,000 now that it was complete.
"It flies beautiful. It's had 28 flights," Mr Bergen said.
"I enjoy flying it most weekends and taking it to clubs around the place."
To make the plane look the same as the real one in America, he spent three months masking it all up and painting it to look like the real 'Mystery Ship' which was used for aerobatics.
"Some of them do wing walking - they strap them on top of the wings," he said.
"It's not a hard core aerobatic's plane like Pitts planes - you can really throw that around."
About a month ago he started building his next project - a large Pitts plane that is 55 per cent the size of the real thing.
All up he has 11 model planes including jets which he has built over the past 45 years.
The fun-fly event, which is open to the public, will run at 330 Officers Lane, Koroit between 10am and 3pm on Saturday, March 16 and Sunday, March 17.
Katrina Lovell
Katrina Lovell is a senior journalist at The Standard who covers council news and human interest stories.
Katrina Lovell is a senior journalist at The Standard who covers council news and human interest stories.
