Hi. My intro to this fun sport is similar to many others. It started with my Dad. He enjoyed modeling gliders along with his brothers when he was a kid. He became an airplane mechanic in the Air Force, then spent his career with the monumental airline Pan American Airways. I had a dad I could look up to.
He bought a Cox Control Line plane and brought me out to a nearby school yard, and I easily got hooked on the activity and flying and airplanes altogether. It gave me a lifetime interest. I had a brief career as a pilot myself. It was in my mid-thirties that I decided to take the plunge into model aviation with my first RC trainer and join the local club in Lodi, California.
It has been a steady involvement since then. I have increased my skills as an RC pilot and builder steadily. Even though I'm always excited to go to the flying field in Reno, Nevada, and participate in club events, I consider myself an intermediate flyer and probably always will. I am humbled way too much by crashes to consider myself any higher level than that.
The highest level of joy I get from this sport is when I take the time to build scratch from plans or kits and see it leave the ground successfully! This will be something I plan to do for the rest of my days. I'm 68 now.
Secondly, there is nearly equal satisfaction when I get to train others and observe the same glee that I went through as well.
One more thing is that it's so nice to have the excellent organization, AMA, plus the flying club system that allows the modeling experience to continue!
