Club Information
Rose City Model Yacht Club was originally founded in the late 1970s by a group of Portland area-based hobbyists who raced radio controlled 1/8-scale models of unlimited hydroplanes that were driven by nitro-powered one cylinder engines and turned speeds of nearly 60 miles per hour.
The club raced in Portland-area, at sites like Force Lake (West Delta Park) and Gresham. When the City of Portland stopped allowing the club to run at Force Lake due to an expansion of the West Delta Park (now Heron Lakes) Golf Course, the club began moving its events to places like Woodland, Wash. (30 miles north of Portland), and Longview, Wash. (50 miles north of Portland).
Around the mid-1980s, Rose City Model Yacht Club began to fall apart, and members started feeling forced to travel far and wide across the Pacific Northwest in other clubs. There were no more opportunities for racing the 1/8-scale hydroplanes in the Portland/Vancouver area.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, some of the former members of Rose City Model Yacht Club - including John Howell, John Earnest, Dave Reiser and Kerry Kjos, along with newbies Mick Shutt and Nelson Holmberg - began talking about renewing the club and finding new race sites for the 1/8-scale nitro boats. One location, in Molalla, Ore., was found, but development of the site lasted for just one race and fell by the wayside.
For more than a decade, all that existed to memorialize RCMYC was a checkbook with a meager balance and a club treasurer who was eager to do something with the money in order to move the club forward and re-inspire its members to go racing together again.
Finally, after sporadic, not-so-serious conversations about moving forward and re-creating the club, the same group, along with local racers Brian Buaas, John Morana and Roger May, got back together again to talk. This time, their intent was behind building the club back with reliance on the smaller, quieter, just-as-fast, electric-powered 1/10-scale unlimited hydroplanes. In the winter of 2007-08, the club was re-formed and reorganized. The 2008 racing season slipped by with not much but organizational work being done, and on March 1, 2009, the club finally held its first formal event - a testing day at the Lake of Tualatin Commons in Tualatin, Ore.
By the end of the summer of 2009, the club had held numerous informal fun runs and three points races. Baby steps on the path to growth of the club.
The history of Rose City Model Yacht Club has some major success, some downtime, and a very bright future.
