243,481.65 raised in 2025. We have reached 60% of our goal.
Help us reach our goal of $400,000!
Aeromodelling is something I started when I was about 10 years old. It challenged me to figure out how to build things, figure out why engines worked or didn't, and to get back to building after a crash. In part, it led me into a fascination with physics, a degree in physics, and a successful career in engineering, where I was a principal engineer at a large semiconductor manufacturer.
I’m a 55-year-old small business owner who focuses on family and occasionally enjoys the sport of modeling. I'm very blessed to have my entire family flying, and our daughter, Skylar Donnelly, not only holds records in electric but is the first junior female world champion in F1B. I’m also a board member for the National Youth Aviation Academy. Thank you for doing what you do and providing help with getting our youth involved.
I’ve been building and flying model aircraft since I was six years old. Saved up all summer and bought my first RC radio at 11 years old. From learning to fly with a sterling fledgling and a Goldberg skyline 62, to building giant scale warbirds for decades, I've flown them all across the US, including Hawaii at major events, and I've competed at Top Gun for 10 years. To say it’s a passion is an understatement!
My love for aircraft began when I was a small child. My father worked for Boeing. He was in charge of the wing sections on the 747. I started out with a Cox Control Line Mustang P51. I quickly jumped to Radio Control with a couple of kits. I am now 60 years old and have been enjoying Radio Control airplanes, helicopters, watercraft, cars, and drones.
My name is Albert Manansala, now 55 years old. I have been RC modeling for 37 years. Right after graduating high school, I worked part-time at Willoughby Hobbies in Guam, which is owned by the late Capt. Dale Willoughby, an AMA HALL OF FAMER known as the FATHER OF SLOPE SOARING of AMERICA. He taught me everything I know about building RC airplanes and showed me how to find and ride the “INVISIBLE WIND” using our RC gliders.
I have been flying model planes since I was a little boy, from the small, rubber-powered stick flyers, to the comet kits, onto the sterling Control Line and Radio Control kits. I was always building something that flew. Today, I'm in my 60s. I not only fly the models but also fly the real thing, and my workbench is cluttered with one being built and one being repaired.
I became aviation-minded as a child of 4-5. I would lie out under a tree in the front yard and watch the DeHavilland Otters and Beavers fly over from the National Guard at the airport 5 miles N of the house. I knew then that someday I wanted to fly.
Doctorate in Educational Administration from Columbia University. Retired special educator and musician. RC pilot for 25 years. Lives in Westlake. Dog lover. Sponsor of St. Jude and Multiple Myeloma Foundation.
I never knew universities helped high school seniors get involved with aviation until this happened to me:
Besides being one of my RC club’s Intro Pilot Instructors, I also volunteer with Horizon Hobby Flight School as one of their instructors. When someone buys one of their Eflite or HobbyZone trainer planes, they can enroll in the flight school, and HH finds a volunteer instructor like me near their zip code. So, HH emailed me contact information for a new student in November 2022. It was quite a story she told me.
My father flew every generation of Radio Control, starting with escapement. I started flying solo at 10 years old in 1966 and flew a ton of hours from then through college, graduating in 1979. From 66 to 79, I feel comfortable saying I flew 2,000 hours or so.
From 1979 until 2015, life happened, and luckily I flew occasionally, enough I didn’t lose my skills completely, but I certainly lost the edge. Early in this period, I got my private pilot's license, which more than kept my interest in aviation alive.
