The Richard Pearse Model Aeroplane Club
The Club is based at Pleasant Point about 15 kilometres west of Timaru on Highway 8.
Weather permitting, members meet at the model flying strip at about 10am each Sunday. The strip is situated on the left-hand side of Highway 8 about 3 km west of Pleasant Point.
The landowner requests that persons entering the field follow the instructions on the gate and log in.
The strip is mown and maintained by members, courtesy of the landowners:
Mr and Mrs John Scott.
Richard Pearse
Background
In the mid-1970s, when his sons were of a suitable age, Bill Wright started a model aeroplane club at Kerikeri. In March 1990 he retired from the public service. After touring New Zealand with his wife, Maureen, arrived in Timaru in July. Taking a job with the Timaru Herald, he remained in Timaru for a little under a year before moving to Pleasant Point. During the year in Timaru, he joined the Model Aeroplane Club and served as President.
In Pleasant Point, he was approached by a 12-year-old boy who had been told about his model aeroplanes. The boy, from a single parent family, was soon building and flying models. The association lasted for almost 10 years until the boy left the district.
A consequence was the formation of a Richard Pearse Model Aeroplane Club in 1992. Initially, with the consent of the principal of Pleasant Point High School, Bill Jones, the club used the high school playing field. With a row of mature poplars on the northern boundary and houses to the south, the site proved less than satisfactory.
A founding member, Graham Palmer contacted a farmer friend, John Scott, who allowed the club to use a field on the hill to the south of the township. Among other founding members were: Philip Laughton, Jim Fellows, Ray Niles, and Hugh O’Bryan.
When the club reached the requisite total of five members, it affiliated to the New Zealand Model Aeronautical Association, the national governing body.
After four or five years of flying on the hill site, the owner, John Scott, asked the club to move to a new site, a paddock on the left side of State Highway 8 about 3 km west of the township.
Membership has never been more than about 15, of whom probably 6 to 8 are active and meet and fly on Sunday mornings.
