📖 The PVMAC History
The Pomona Valley Model Airplane Club (PVMAC) was formed in the 1960s by a small group of radio-control aviation enthusiasts whose main concern at the time was simply getting their planes off the ground — landing and retrieving them was very much a secondary issue, and more than a few early planes flew off into the sunset, never to be seen again.
As pilots’ skills grew, so did the club, and its leaders eventually negotiated a lease for a club flying field. But like other model airplane clubs in the area, PVMAC repeatedly lost flying sites to the region’s booming construction of new homes and businesses.
Finding Prado
PVMAC’s leadership was always scouting for a new home when they found the site that would become Prado Airpark — federal land owned by the Army Corps of Engineers and leased to the San Bernardino County Parks & Recreation Department.
Securing it was a long and expensive process. It started with a non-refundable $10,000 Environmental Impact Report, and the county also required PVMAC to incorporate and obtain non-profit status — a process that took roughly 15 years in total. During that stretch, PVMAC lost its previous field on Rochester Ave and, with nowhere to fly, the club went dormant as members scattered to other area clubs, including RC Country.
In 1989, the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors received an inquiry about the Prado site from another interested party. By then PVMAC’s Environmental Impact Report was complete and favorable, and because PVMAC held first right of refusal on the lease, the county reached out to one of its former leaders to see if there was still interest.
The timing lined up: RC Country, which many former PVMAC members had joined, was about to lose its own field, and some of those members now sat on RC Country’s board. After discussion, RC Country agreed that PVMAC — having already met every county requirement and holding first position on the lease — should be re-established to carry the negotiations forward.
PVMAC Today
PVMAC has now flown at Prado for over 50 years of combined history, and we consider it one of the premier flying sites in California. The club has been incorporated in the State of California since 1985 and operates as a 501(c)(7) non-profit, governed by its own bylaws and led by a Board of Directors with decades of combined modeling experience.
PVMAC received AMA charter #0142 in the mid-1960s, making it the 41st RC club to achieve AMA charter status — a charter the club renews every year. The club maintains roughly 400 active members, mostly local San Bernardino County residents, and about half of our membership is 60 or older, making PVMAC an important recreational home for the area’s senior community as well.
Investment in the Field
Getting Prado Airpark built took an initial investment of more than $80,000, covering environmental studies, runway and pit paving, safety fencing, and the parking and picnic areas. In the years since, the club has put in another $100,000+ in maintenance and improvements — weed abatement, tree planting and irrigation, erosion control, sanitation facilities, and road and asphalt repair — not counting the countless volunteer hours members have donated to keep the field flying-ready.
Giving Back
PVMAC has spent years building relationships with local organizations and causes:
- Toys for Tots — an annual fly-in fundraiser at Prado Field for over a decade, donating thousands of dollars in toys to children in need across San Bernardino County
- Cal Poly Aeronautical Department — for seven-plus years, PVMAC provided facilities so students could build RC models to compete at national events at Wright-Patterson Field
- Boy Scouts of America — trainer aircraft and field access to help scouts complete aviation merit badge requirements
- CA Department of Fish and Game — a long-running partnership that has helped protect the Burrowing Owl and a local bird sanctuary near the field
- Wildfire prevention — years of strict weed-abatement compliance that spared Prado Field from recent regional fires
The club also supports member education year-round through pvmac.com and ongoing communication among members.
None of this would exist without the members who had the foresight and persistence to secure Prado in the first place, and it continues today thanks to those still working to keep this 50-plus-year club flying strong for the next generation.
🎬 Watch: Prado Skies — A PVMAC Flying Film
A look at a season of flying at Prado Airpark — trainers, scale warbirds, and everything in between, no narration, just engines and open sky.
✨ Fun Facts About Prado Airpark
🎬 You’re flying on a movie set. The entrance to Cucamonga Ave, right next to the field, was used as the “1955 Lyon Estates” entrance in Back to the Future — the spot where Marty McFly hides the DeLorean behind a billboard for his future neighborhood. Location scouts picked it because the area was open farmland, largely undisturbed — and it still looks almost exactly the same today.
🎬 There’s a second movie connection nearby. The water tower Marty sees on his walk toward “Hill Valley” sits on the grounds of the California Institution for Women, the state prison just up the road.
🥇 Prado hosted the Olympics. The park’s shooting range hosted the shooting events of the 1984 Summer Olympics.
🌊 The park exists because of a flood. Prado Regional Park traces back to the Santa Ana River floods of 1937–38, which led to construction of a flood-control basin — the same open land that gives PVMAC room to fly.
🐦 You’re sharing the sky with an endangered bird. The Prado basin’s riparian habitat, where Chino and Mill Creek meet the Santa Ana River, is a seasonal home for the endangered Least Bell’s Vireo.
🗺️ A four-county crossroads. Prado sits right where San Bernardino, Riverside, Orange, and Los Angeles counties meet.
✈️ Real warbirds nearby. Chino is also home to the Planes of Fame Air Museum and Yanks Air Museum — two of the best flyable WWII-era aircraft collections in the country.