Wow, I am now 81 years old and started when I was 7. I loved airplanes and would spend hours in front of the windows at the local hobby shop. I asked my dad to buy me a simple kit, which he did not. Instead, he purchased a propeller and 1/8" sticks, some glue, and tissue, saying that if I build a plane that flies 10 feet, he'll buy me a kit.
I grew up in a small town of about 200 people in northeast Wyoming between two larger towns about 15 miles away. My first venture into model building was when a close friend and I began building from 3-views in comic books, using toothpicks and matches with Lepages glue. We would hang these in our bedroom.
My first flying experience was Control Line with a Cox Corsair, .049. I was a kid in 1959 with no one experienced to learn from, so I just "winged" it. I didn't start RC until many years later. I built and learned how to fly a Goldberg Gentle Lady, eventually building a pod and Black Widow .049 to get up where the birds live. I've built and flown several models since then and still have my Gentle Lady in perfect condition.
In honor of Christina Bhend:
My wife Christina was slow to enter the hobby. After years of watching me build, going to the field and events, and helping me as my pit crew and spotter, one night, she walked into the workshop and said, "You're having WAY too much fun in here. I want to build an airplane." She built a Goldberg Anniversary Cub and that was it. She was hooked.
Growing up in rural Helena, Montana, the only son of a USAF Sabre fighter pilot, I was fascinated with flight from my earliest memories. Dad was in F-86 Sabre training when the Korean armistice was signed. He then moved back to his native Montana to fly with the Montana National Guard for 13 years, while serving as a pilot, then Chief Pilot for the Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks.
In honor of David Poe Sr.'s father:
He passed away on July 30, 2020. He was a longtime member of AMA, from 1970-2020. His original AMA number was 164. He first flew Control Line in the '60s, until 1970 when he got into radio control and taught himself to fly on a Goldberg Falcon 56 MK II with a K&B 35 plain bearing. The radio was a 6-channel Cirrus from Hobby Shack.
I was about 6 or 7 years old when I started building Strombecker models with my dad, and I moved on to balsa and tissue models as soon as I had some money to buy Gillow's kits. I flew Control Line through high school and pretty much left the hobby until 1961 when I got into RC. My first RC model was a polyhedral Free Flight (a Fubar 36) with a rubber band-driven escapement controlling the rudder with a push button radio. Amazing! We could turn the model! I moved up to Pattern planes actually flying at the same field as Phil Kraft in Southern California.
I got into the hobby in 1970 and have been hooked ever since. I learned very quickly and a year later began giving flight training. I started teaching using a buddy box, but my students were banging the sticks around, so I reached over and put my thumb and forefinger underneath the student's thumb on top of the aileron/elevator stick. That ended the stick banging and I could easily monitor what his thumb was doing, and I could easily correct him, not allowing him to make any mistakes. My only purpose is to get more people into the hobby/sport.
I grew up flying with my dad in a 46 Luscombe. After it was sold, I didn't get back to flying until I was 22 and working for Occidental Engineering. I soon got my private pilot license in '77, and then subsequently quit my engineering job and went to Spartan School of Aeronautics in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where I earned my Com/inst, MEL, and CFII/SMEI.
