My AMA Story
In the early 1970s, my uncle gave me a small (049) Control Line airplane. Knowing nothing about the hobby at the time, we followed the instructions for set-up and fired up the engine. Once it was tuned for peak performance, my brother let go of the little plane. Within seconds, possibly one or two, I was picking up pieces. I meticulously glued all the parts back together. We rechecked the instructions to see if we had missed something. The only obvious thing to do was to adjust the controls to minimize surface deflections.
The next flight was little better, so it was back to the glue bottle. After so many attempts without a single successful flight, I stopped putting it back together. At some point later, we (my brothers and I) purchased a Cox PT-19 Flight Trainer. Given our experiences with the little green pile of plastic, the PT-19 was easy to fly, having success on the very first flight. WOW, that was fun. We flew in the lot next to our house many an evening until the sun went down or the neighbors came over an asked for some peace and quiet.
You know how the story goes; I grew up and my interests evolved. I stopped flying, as did my younger brother. My older brother never gave up on the hobby, moving on in the late 70s or early 80s into Radio Control planes. As we got older, he always invited me to come fly with him. Alas, I lived in Washington state living a busy life, working at a large aerospace company, and he lived in Montana. It just wasn’t in the cards at that time.
Sometime in the early 2000s, I attempted to learn to fly electric radio-controlled planes, though I had limited success. I knew the drill though. Fly, crash, glue, fly, rinse and repeat. I never got good, but I did get to the point that I could keep my plane in the air and land with minimal damage. Once again, life got busy and the plane went back on the shelf.
My grandson was born in 2008, and he is a curious child, interested in so many things. As he grew, he saw the airplane on my wall and asked if we could go fly. Eventually, he wore me down and I took him flying. Unfortunately, by that time, any skills I had developed had atrophied and I was right back in the my ‘routine.’ He was of course undaunted, as this was a new experience for him. So, he continued to beg to keep flying.
By this time, the plane was so heavy from glue and tape that it barely had enough thrust to keep in the air. However, I now knew people in my area that were skilled pilots and trainers. I approached my friend and he provided recommendations for a new plane with current technology (SAFE) and offered to teach us. I approached my grandson, who was now 10 years old, and suggested that if he was willing to split the cost of a new ready-to-fly (RTF) system and was willing to take lessons, we would go shopping. He jumped on that idea like a rabbit.
Our first purchase was the RTF Carbon Cub. We put it together and headed to the field to meet with our trainer. We started with the basics, as my friend checked out the plane setup for pre-flight. Once he was sure it was configured properly and was safe to fly, he took it for the maiden flight.
Next, he set us up with a wireless trainer configuration. We were off to the races. We took turns for a couple of hours, soaking in the experience. I was reminded how much fun it was, remembering the hours and hours as a kid going around in circles with that PT-19. My grandson was hooked. After only a couple of days, he was cleared to fly without our trainer. I, unfortunately, required several more days with the trainer before I was cleared to fly by myself.
Bringing his story up to date. Between my grandson and I, we now have somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 flightworthy airplanes, drones, and helicopters in our hangar. And more are on the way, as he is building a kit Cherokee, and we just acquired a couple of kits from Flight Test being built for our club competition. It is rare that a week goes by without getting in a flight or two. We are members of AMA sanctioned clubs in Washington and Montana, where we get to fly with my brother from time to time.
