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Not sure why, but my love for flight started pretty much pre-birth!!!! Made paper planes, then the $0.25 balsa gliders, followed by the rubber band airplanes, they cost more :-) Then the Cox .049 Plastic U-Control Christmas presents. A small can of fuel, Battery, glow plug clip ... WOW ... memories there :-)
My very first interest in planes was when I was quite young! Maybe 10 years old! I build quite a few of the Rebal plastic models of many different planes. Then I got interested in the “U” control planes, and started to build a few kits! All I can really remember was that they were called Super Stunt. I built two of them! One quite small, and the other was much larger. This was back in the late 1950s. I did not have any adult supervision, but I tried to fly them, and they both perished on their maiden flights! That discouraged me, and I gave up trying to fly those planes!
My story begins in 1944. I was 5 years old living with my mother, father, brother, grandparents, aunt, and uncle in a 3-story house in Glen Ridge, New Jersey. I had two uncles in the military, one a Marine in the Pacific and one an Army P-40 mechanic in Hawaii. My teenage uncle at home was an avid artist and craftsman who built model airplanes, built a HO train layout, and drew pictures of P-40s. He was my inspiration.
I started flying 1/2A Control Line planes with my dad at about age 10. I built a Controlair MAN 234 proportional radio from a kit when I was a sophomore in high school. My RC aspirations were back-burnered until 1981, when I joined AMA and the Benton County Flying Tigers and learned to fly.
I believe I started with Control Line in about 1961 as a high school kid. There have been some times out for college and the army. Also, about a decade away from the sport when I was flying ultra lights. In about 1975, I taught myself to fly RC with an Ace Hi powered glider with a cox engine. Now I only fly electric and mostly FPV. Despite the occasional hiatus from the sport, I have maintained my membership in AMA nonstop since the early sixties.
My participation in RC model aviation began in 1986. My youngest son was 12 years old at the time and expressed an interest in the hobby. We joined the Salinas Area Modelers (AMA Club #1554) and have been members for 39 years. I had been introduced to the hobby by a friend, but really never got involved until my son expressed interest.
I was introduced to RC modeling while attending Santa Barbara, California, High School in the early 1960s. A classmate and fellow electronics shop student invited me to attend a rudder-only pulse soaring event held at the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Transistors were just becoming employed in RC hobby electronics, and the Controlaire V all-transistor receiver was the hot item. Galloping Ghost was not quite there yet for the average hobbyist, so everyone flew pulse with escapements and some pulse proportional with magnetic actuators.
There is not enough room here for me to go into what I would like to tell you, so I will just start with how I developed the first digital spread spectrum RC system. It was back in 2001, and I was in the small UAV business building autopilots and telemetry systems for small UAVs.
Like many hobbyists, my interest in aviation started at a very young age. It was not until high school, 38 years ago, that I had an interest in radio controlled model aviation. A classmate of mine was speaking to his friend about flying a radio controlled aircraft. From that point on, I needed to know everything I could about them.
I really enjoyed flying remote control airplanes. I’ve been flying remote control airplanes for 25 years now. I’m all grown up with airplanes and helicopters, now I've stepped up with big planes now. I don’t do nitro planes anymore. All gas and turbines now.
