At 80 years old, I am somewhat of a late starter when it comes to actual flying, having only been doing so for the past 10 years. However, my interest in radio controlled aircraft started many years prior to my actual flying.
Somewhere in the mid-1950s, I built a very basic Control Line airplane after spending many hours watching them flying at my local grade school playground. Sad to say, my attempt at flying this did not end well, and that potentially could have been the end of my flying career. However, in 1958, I was visiting some relatives with my parents, and they gave me a large R/C model when we left to go home. It had no engine or electronics, but I could pretend to be flying it by carrying it around like an airplane, and it ignited my interest once again.
In the mid-1960s, I spent a year working in the Boeing wind tunnel and model shop, 2 years on an aircraft carrier, then another year in the Boeing wind tunnel/model shop. In 1969, I was working for a company called Robertson STOL, helping install STOL conversions on (mostly) Cessna airplanes, and at that time, I purchased a Goldberg Skylane kit and started building it. I planned to put a STOL conversion on it, similar to the conversions Robertson did.
In 1971, the economy in Seattle went south, and since there was no work in the area, I moved to Galveston, Texas, along with the partially built Cessna Skylane. I spent 10 years in the Galveston area, got married, then moved back to Seattle to run my own radiator shop. The Skylane came back with me, not quite done yet but a little farther along.
In 2003, we moved back into the College Station, Texas, area on 2 acres we had purchased while I lived in Texas in the 70s. Along came the Skylane, at least finished by now with the STOL conversion, and a sail plane that I built while working in an office at Microsoft. About four years after we moved into a new house on this property, I heard a model airplane flying around in our neighborhood, and tracked it down to a neighbor that lived nearby on our road. He flew from the road in front of his house on weekends. By this time, I had purchased a Tower trainer 40, and after we had met, he took me over to a field nearby where he also flew occasionally. He got it in the air, handed the transmitter to me, and I flew for about 2 minutes before I got it too far away, lost orientation, and crashed it.
After my rebuild, we went to our local flying field to try again, and somehow it came across the runway, hit a pilot stand on takeoff, and broke again. Not too long after that incident, he passed away, but sometime later, I went out to the flying field one Saturday, met some people there, and the rest is history. I have been a member of the Lauderdale Airpark R/C Flying Club since 2011, and have been really actively flying for about the past 10 years. I purchased a Phoenix flight simulator many years ago and spent a lot of time on that, and maybe, as a result, I never had to fly on a ‘buddy box’. I am still a relative novice, I guess. I can loop, roll, and do some basic maneuvers, but I really just enjoy flying around and landing successfully.
As a result of my Boeing model shop years, I developed a deep love for building, and although the foamies are fun to fly (especially my RV-8), I enjoy flying things that I have built as well. I also take something that a flyer has wrecked and wants to get rid of and rebuild it. I go to a local swap meet yearly and always wind up bringing something home that ‘just looks like it wants some TLC’ and restore it. Sometimes it is something that I probably will never use. For example, I don’t live near any water, but I have a restored Ace Seamaster, courtesy of the swap meet. I guess that’s why I now have a fleet of some 90-plus aircraft (including 8 Piper Cubs of various sizes and a Piper Tri-Pacer), some of which will probably never fly (many high-wing trainers).
I tell everyone that I plan to live to at least 100, so I figure I have at least 20 more good flying years ahead of me. That’s my story, and I am sticking with it.
Bill Perry
Caldwell, Texas
AMA 824308
