I started flying U-control with my father when I was eight or nine years old. My dad would build the model and we would go over to the local school yard. He would handle all the engine and launch tasks leaving me to fly. Over the years, as my dad got older and stopped taking me, I picked up rudimentary radio control just after transmitters had become proportional.
My first radio control plane was a little high wing trainer I built (after assisting my dad for many years) with a .049 Cox motor, rubber band wings and a Cox 2 channel transmitter (rudder and elevator). I took it to the school yard and taught myself to fly doing multiple loops until I got the hang of the elevator. The dihedral of the wings allowed the plane to turn with rudder input and I was hooked.
After entering college, I dove head first into radio control building planes that I flew at an abandoned military training base. The base was basically a mile square pad of concrete which allowed cadets to take off into the wind whichever direction it was blowing. It was currently unused except by almond farmers (lots of almond orchards in the immediate area of my college) who dumped the shells of harvest almonds onto the pad. The became quite large mountains and I figured I could always "crash" my plane into a pile, if I lost control, rather than hitting the concrete. After college, my building took a nosedive as a career and eventually, family, took most of my time. During college, I started dabbling in the Pattern category building a Super Kaos and then a Perky Turkey. My final Pattern plane was a Curare with a rear piped K&B motor. I soon became bored with Pattern as I felt the planes all looked the same and Pattern meets had us all flying the same maneuvers.
This caused me to start looking a scale World War II warbirds. This quickly became my passion and it still is some 40 plus years later! I started with 1/8 scale warbirds like Spitfires, Mustangs, Zeros and slowly moved into 1/5 scale. I liked the way the bigger planes flew as they appeared more realistic than the "flitty" 1/8 models. Plus, I could put more detail into them. As I moved from kit to kit, I realized many of the models I was really interested in building and flying were not offered so I started "scratch-building." My first was a 1/5 scale Japanese Ki-100 with retractable landing gear. This was a challenge making the cowl and canopy molds but I loved it and never built from a kit again. I found plan-building was a perfect solution to my "too little time, too many airplanes" problem since true scratch-building took me 3 plus years to build a single model. Since then, I have built (all 1/5 scale) several Spitfires from multiple plans (early Mks are my favorite), a couple Mosquitos, a Hurricane from Vailly Plans, A couple Russian La7's, a scratch-built (found plans online with heavy modifications) Russian LaGG 3 E-power (really nice flier) a couple of Russian La5's with 4-stroke Gas engine, a Heinkel 100 from Jerry Bates Plans, a 1/4 scale Ki 44 Tojo scratch-built (which weighed 52 pounds and was powered by a DA 100 twin), a Fiat G55 E-powered from plans located on the internet (1/5 scale), and my crowning achievement: a Westland Whirlwind twin E-Powered from Vanguard Plans. This plane was an enormous challenge to build as the designer, Vance Mosher, was dying of cancer and his plans had a number of highly questionable engineering issues which I (and another builder) worked through as we went. Unfortunately, one major engineering problem I initially saw but decided wasn't fatal, proved to be fatal as the wing folded a few seconds into the flight. I had spent five years building this airplane. I have a second Whirlwind (components except the wing and horizontal stab) waiting for a set of landing gear (the gear I had designed and built for the first one was destroyed) designed and machined by a professional machinist. I will start this one once I have the landing gear as the wing has to be built around the gear. At nearly 70 years of age, I am no longer thinking about multiple planes still to build but focusing on one at a time. There is something so satisfying seeing something I built fly by my own control (I fly all my planes including the maiden).
