Sitting around one day I realized I was now out of the house, and could now begin a hobby that I had wanted to try since I was a kid. I had seen many times, the remote control airplanes hanging from the ceiling of the local hobby supply store. My parents would never allow me to have one though because they were so expensive and I had no means of my own. So my dreams had been put on hold until one day I was sitting around my own apartment and realized that I no longer needed, someone else’s permission to play with remote control airplanes. So I went and got a magazine from the local store and ordered a set of plans for a Scale Piper Cub. Since I originally only wanted to build them not fly them. It seemed appropriate to order plans instead of a kit. That way I could build just a little at a time and it wouldn’t cost me so much all at once. So I began building in 1987. What an undertaking that was I had no idea that they were so complex. This plane in particular was very complex because of the fact that the wing was so big it had to be in two separate sections for transport. The wing was 105” long when it was together and required the use of wing supports underneath the wings. It was pretty big for a first plane, but I was in Texas.

Sometime later that same year my brother Rick decided that it was a great way to kill time and decided to try his hand at it as well. Only he got a kit so he could finish it up and go fly it. His was a much smaller plane. It was an Ace Mfg. Kit that was to be propelled with one of those spastic little Cox .049 engines. I had begun flying real airplanes that same year and money was scarce so I had to stick with my original plan of just building. At least until Christmas of 1988 that is. Sheila (the love of my life) had purchased a remote control transmitter for me and as they say, “the rest is history”. I had to get a much smaller plane to begin with for flying and a much cheaper one as well. I would wind up getting an Ace Mfg. kit just as my brother had done. It was also a spastic little Cox .049 engine powered craft but a different model than that of my brothers. It was called an Ace Wizard and it was only about a $20.00 kit. That was within my budget and it would go together rather quickly. I already had most of the needed tools to build it with but I still had to get the engine and starting equipment. That was another forty or fifty bucks.

Finally ready to fly I just needed to figure out how to do that. Since Rick had started before me I enlisted his help. Rick wasn’t yet an accomplished pilot I found out but he was better than I was, and at least he could figure out how to start the damn engine. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing but I did have a little base knowledge from flying real planes. I found out that base knowledge doesn’t help much. (Words of wisdom………..If you are going to pick this up as a hobby, get an experienced RC pilot to help you get started. They can be found at the local hobby store or the local flying field.) We finally got the little thing started and after a short preflight check of the flight controls I had Rick launch it into the air for me with a running start and a good toss. Well that was both brief and entertaining. When you toss one of these little things in the air like that it seems that all of the fuel goes south and not into the carburetor like you want it to. Needless to say the engine died and it fell to the ground. After a couple of more tries it did go into the sky but I didn’t know what I was doing and that little thing bounced all over the sky. After my first crash landing Rick and I discovered that I had to much movement in the control surfaces so I was over controlling the aircraft. Having figured that out and adjusted the problem I tried again and this time it went much smoother. I still crashed several more times before packing it in for the day. I could not believe the amount of abuse that little plane took and kept on flying. I once brought it down from about two hundred feed under full power strait down into the ground. When I went over to pick it up I had to pull the engine out of the ground. I cleaned the engine out with some fuel and a wrench, straitened out the wing and took off again. That was a great little plane but once I got to where I could take off and land more than once in a row I decided that it was time to lose the trainer and get a good plane in the air.

Brother Rick meanwhile had also moved up to a .20 cc size semi-aerobatic trainer. So the obvious choice was something even better than his plane. I went for a .20cc size scale P-51 Mustang. This one took me about a month to build to perfection. This plane was also a kit and it also cost around twenty bucks but I now had to purchase all new starting equipment. This one required a more serious quick connect batter and a different type of fuel. Swinging a bigger and more stable propeller was also more dangerous for your fingers and got quite scary sometimes, while trying to get it started. Unfortunately I don’t have any pics of this plane. I did get some VHS footage but that won’t upload to this site. It was a beautiful plane and would be my first attempt at taking off from the ground instead of a hand launch. I still wasn’t so good that I felt comfortable flying at the local field in front of other people that know what they are doing. So Rick and I loaded up and went to a local construction site in Dallas where they had roads but no houses and very little traffic. After arriving there we noticed someone else had pulled up and was also unloading an airplane. It turns out we weren’t the only one’s who thought of it. We introduced ourselves and told this unsuspecting person that he might want to keep his plane in the car until I found out whether or not I could handle this one. So this guy offered to hold the cam-corder and record the maiden voyage for me. We got the engine lit and did the preflight check and I began to taxi. There was a really strong head wind, which I decided would work to my advantage since that would require a much shorter ground roll and I hadn’t tried any taxiing work yet. Anyway I pushed up on the throttle and in only brief seconds this thing was in the air. I had no idea just how fast this thing would go. I had never actually been to a local field and seen anyone else fly that knew what they were doing. So this was a whole new thing for me. I would swear that it was going a hundred miles per hour on takeoff. That is until I turned downwind and it really got up the speed. As it turned out I hadn’t anticipated the need for extra bracing and the tail section came apart in flight. In to the ground it went, at about one hundred miles per hour. Scattered pieces over the ground for about 100 feet. The engine was buried six inches into the dirt and the rest of the plane just kept on going dropping pieces of it self here and there as it went. It really was a spectacular crash. Our local spectator the one who was supposed to be filming this had turned off the camera right after takeoff assuming that if it survived that it would be fine. So we missed the crash scene.(Damnit)

Since then I have built and flown so many planes that I lost count. Everything from biplanes to pylon racers, and from sail-planes to pattern planes. It has been a wonderful experience learning to fly them as well as teaching others to fly. Really it is an addicting hobby to get into. It can get expensive or you can keep it cheap it depends on what you want to accomplish. Personally I think that the most fun I have in the air is with just a simple little profile plane. It will gladly take what ever punishment you can offer (in the air) and keep on coming back for more. It is really a lot of fun to go to a local field where no one knows you, and leave the ground with a Lamchavac maneuver or perhaps a snap-roll, and make it look like you are 100% out of control the whole flight and then bring it in for a painted on landing. It is really fun to fool people especially if you are flying an obviously very expensive plane.

So get up off the couch and go and have some fun everyone.