Flying High

Carl Schneider, the president of the On Top of the World R/C Flyers, has spent a lifetime in the sky and helping send people to space.

By JoAnn Guidry • Photos by Steve Floethe

On a clear-blue-sky afternoon at the On Top of the World R/C Flyers airfield, two model planes—one orange and white with its signature gas-powered drone and one a silent sleek gray electric—each take their radio-controlled patterns like hawks on a gentle current. Their R/C Flyers owners take turns bringing the planes in for precision landings on the asphalt runway. The model planes taxi in and when they coast to a stop, you half expect the little model pilots inside to disembark.

For Carl Schneider, there’s no better place he’d rather be than spending time at a flying field. If Schneider took a DNA test, the results would definitely show that he inherited the flying gene.

“My father was a barnstormer pilot in the 1920s-30s. He put on flying shows and even owned a flying school,” says Schneider, 76, smiling. “I grew up sitting on his lap in the cockpit of his planes.”

Samuel Schneider, Carl’s father, was also a sought-after training pilot. He was recruited by the Army Air Force to train pilots, including British Royal Air Force cadets, at Riddle Field in Clewiston, Florida, from 1941-1945. Thanks to that assignment, Carl is actually a native Floridian, having been born there.

Samuel Schneider eventually became a flight instructor at nearby Fort Rucker in Dothan, Alabama, the Army Aviation War-Fighting Center. And Carl soon found the inspiration that would shape the rest of his life.

“I was a sophomore in high school and in class on May 5, 1961, when it was announced over the school’s P.A. system that astronaut Alan Shepard had become the first American to be launched into space,” says Schneider. “Well, that was a key moment in my life. It sparked my imagination and made me want to have a career in aerospace. I actually wanted to be an astronaut, but I wore glasses and then you couldn’t be an astronaut if you wore glasses.”

But Schneider didn’t let that setback stop him from having an aerospace career. Not one single bit. While attending the University of Alabama, he became an intern at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville.

“I worked in Werner Von Braun’s organization, designing and hot-fire testing the F-1 Engines used on the Apollo Program’s Saturn V rocket,” says Schneider, who was at Marshall Space Flight Center from 1964-68. “It was an incredible start to my aerospace career.”

Schneider graduated from UA in 1968 with a bachelor’s in aerospace engineering and his career took off, well, like a rocket. He moved to southern California when recruited by Rocketdyne Corporation to develop and improve F-1 rocket engine performance and reliability. In 1971, as an Air Force Contract Management Division representative at Rocketdyne, he participated in the design effort of the NASA’s Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME) at that facility. That was the year Schneider actually learned to fly.

Schneider was 26 when he bought his first plane, a Cessna 172, and then took flying lessons.

“Oh, I loved flying like I knew I would from the very first moment,” says Schneider, grinning. “And besides just enjoying flying for the sake of flying, I also wanted to use flying to do good.”

From 1985-87, and while still living in Los Angeles, Schneider flew his own plane as part of the Flying Samaritans organization.

“I flew medical personnel to remote Mexican villages and helped set up monthly medical clinics,” says Schneider. “Along with the pilots, the top U.S. doctors and dentists volunteered their time.” Another career opportunity in 1988 had Schneider moving back to the East coast. He was recruited by NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., to participate in analyzing the catastrophic 1986 Challenger Space Shuttle explosion.

“The investigation lasted a year with the determination that the O-rings’ integrity had been compromised by the below-freezing temperatures overnight leading up to the Challenger launch,” says Schneider. “After the investigation, our team certified that the Space Shuttle, with several improvements, was safe to fly again. I was invited to a White House Rose Garden ceremony by President Ronald Reagan to recognize the efforts of our investigative team.”

In 1989, Schneider was promoted at NASA Headquarters to Director of Quality Assurance and Reliability in the Mission Assurance Directorate. He remained in that position until his retirement from NASA in 1997.

Schneider and wife Jo Ann, who were married in 1989, moved to Adison, Pennsylvania, where he built his own Federal Aviation Agency-approved air strip on his 60-acre property. Schneider was also a consultant for three years for Penn State University and Honeywell Corporation on NASA-awarded aerospace contracts.

Carl Schneider

“As I got older, I began flying less and that made me a little restless,” says Schneider, who owned six planes in his life. “So from 2002-2007, I worked for Adventure Caravans as a wagon master to lead motorhome caravans for summer tours of Alaska and winter tours of Mexico. We loved it.”

Once fully retired in 2010, the Schneiders moved to St. Augustine, where Carl continued his love affair with flying, but on a decidedly smaller scale.

“I became passionate about building and flying radio-controlled (R/C) model airplanes,” says Schneider. “I created a radio-controlled flying club and, with the approval of the city and city council, turned a local landfill into a flying field. It was sanctioned by the Academy of Model Aeronautics (AMA).”

In 2018, while flipping through an AMA magazine, Schneider came across a full-page OTOW ad, featuring its dedicated R/C flying field.

“We drove down to Ocala to check out OTOW and the flying field,” says Schneider. “We bought in right away and moved in months. I was elected president of the OTOW R/C Flyers in 2019.”

The OTOW R/C Flyers trace back to 1990. A group of seven OTOW residents got permission to fly R/C model planes in a field behind a residential area. Sidney Colen then created the very first OTOW R/C flying field in 1991, with the R/C Flyers becoming the first OTOW club. The current R/C Flyers field is its third, located on 14 acres, complete with adjacent grass and asphalt 50-by-600-foot runways. An on-site weather station allows members to use their cell phones or computers to check the current weather, including wind direction and speed. There is also an 800-square-foot observation pavilion. The flying field is open seven days a week, sunrise to sunset. The R/C Flyers number 170 and are also AMA members.

“Our members have all kinds of model planes, ranging from electric to nitro-methane to gas-powered,” says Schneider, who currently has 12 electric model planes, including three model jets. “Some people still build their model planes from kits, but about 90 percent are now ARF (Almost Ready to Fly) kits, which have fewer parts. They’re almost instant gratification.”

Schneider points out that “most model planes have an average wingspan of four to five feet, including my model jets that can go 100-115 miles per hour.” “We usually have several fly-in events a year, but that has been put on pause because of COVID-19 restrictions. We’re hoping that we’ll be able to resume our events soon,” says Schneider. “There’s a great camaraderie among the flyers, many who moved to OTOW for the same reason that I did. We love flying our model planes and we love the convenience of flying our model planes where we live.”

The flying gene is alive and well.

WANT TO FLY? otowrcflyers.com