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 :-)
Mom finally let me have an X-Acto knife and a kit from the hobby shop!!! Least we forget the glue of the day ... Had the motor from crashed plastic airplanes so more U-Control, but now Balsa, no more plastic, buy did they fly better :-) Then in Jr. High I discovered Free Flight!!! They sure were pretty, long wings and all!!!
Got busy with Tennis & Girls in High School, Then Viet Nam called. Went into USAF to begin my Data Processing career!!! After honorable discharge, back to Los Angeles programming for LAPD - very cool!! Enjoyed chasing the crooks with the computer!!!!! Also, had some extra discharge pay, went to the hobby shop and bought my Kraft Radio - Beyond Cool!!!!!
Civil Service work is very slow, so after the BIG project completed, budget monies exhausted, work stopped, I got bored and opened a hobby shop :-)
One of our Distributor Sales guys invited us to a Pylon Race! Spikler Quickie, K&B front rotor .40. I was so nervous the first race I almost dropped my transmitter!!!!! I was holding onto it for dear life :-)
My wife Maureen was and still is my "Caller." We Then moved onto Formula One, the fast stuff!!!! Oh that was so challenging and exciting and fun - WOW!!!! Kids and careers took us away from pylon until we moved to Florida in our retirement years and I re-discovered Pylon - Holy Cow!!!!! Everything was so much faster, serious motors, Nelson's & Jett's, composite aircraft, speeds of 200 mph ... Dove back into the deep end of Pylon!!!!
Since our return, We took command of SEMPRA, became CDs, hosted races and World's Trials, on countless occasions ... and we still enjoy competing to this day!!!! We are now in our late 70's :-) :-)
I so enjoy, when talking to new people to RC and Pylon, telling them ... after all these years and countless loss of aircraft ... to this day, this has been the best monies we have spent!!!!
Scotty & Maureen Smithwick
