Blimp’s Run-In With Model Plane Leaves Everybody a Bit Deflated

To the 192-foot-long Goodyear blimp Columbia, the model airplane was little more than a blip in the sky, about as noticeable as a fly buzzing around an elephant.

The pilot and passengers didn’t even see the little, remote-controlled aircraft when it dived into the side of the blimp Sunday afternoon, leaving a foot-square gash.

Columbia pilot L.J. (Nick) Nicolary felt his big airship shudder, but thought nothing of it, assuming it was a sonic boom.

“I just thought the military was doing exercises,” he said. “First hint I had a problem was when I had difficulty maintaining pressure. I didn’t have any idea why.”

It was not until Nicolary brought the Columbia to a safe landing on its home field in Gardena, half a mile away, that his crew pointed out the hole in the “D” of the Goodyear name painted across its silver side.

And it was not until a witness to the sudden encounter of the lumbering dirigible and the radio-controlled Thunder Tiger drove to the airfield and talked to the crew that Nicolary realized a hawk-sized toy had charged into his beloved airship as it cruised at 1,000 feet.

Based on witnesses’ accounts, Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies arrested John William Moyer, 28, of Redondo Beach Sunday night on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon. Although he has not yet been formally charged, sheriff’s investigators say several witnesses to the incident reported that Moyer--from a vacant field in Carson, where model airplane buffs frequently go to fly their sophisticated craft--appeared to guide his little craft deliberately into the Columbia after buzzing it several times

But Moyer’s attorney, William J. MacCabe of Torrance, insists that his client meant no harm.

“He had no desire to shoot the blimp. He knows the blimp flies there,” MacCabe said of Moyer, who is being held in the Carson sheriff’s substation in lieu of $5,000 bail. “He said he had no desire to hit anything. He said he just lost the airplane and had no idea where it was.”

When the Tiger crashed to the ground, MacCabe said Moyer walked over, picked up the damaged craft and drove home, seemingly oblivious that he had just earned a place in blimp history.

“I have to say it’s probably unique,” said Nicolary. “I doubt that anybody in the past 50 years has been attacked by a model airplane.”

Moyer’s neighbors described him as an “excitable” person who likes to drive fast in his classic red Ford Mustang. But his greatest joy, acquaintances said, was to fly the model planes he kept in the Redondo Beach apartment where he lives with an uncle.

“He constantly was flying them,” said Chad Gove, 21, who lives upstairs. “He had, like, five of them. He crashed a couple, too. I’ve seen them out in the trash.”

Members of the Compton Tailspinners, a model airplane club to which Moyer belonged for seven months, said Moyer described himself as an experienced flyer when he joined in 1989.

“But he didn’t exhibit experienced techniques. His flying was a little sloppy,” said Charles Kelley, the club’s past president. The club’s officers tried to teach him better techniques, “but our officers felt that he didn’t like instruction,” Kelley recalled.

Image-conscious hobbyists in the area were outraged at news of the blimp incident and its attendant bad publicity for model airplane buffs. “This is a real black eye,” complained Larry Wolfe, owner of the Jet Hangar hobby shop in Carson. “Everybody who comes into the shop wants to kill (him).”