I have just in the last several weeks decided to come back to the hobby I loved so much in my younger days so I could spend some time with my son and have an interest that both of us like. We were golfing but that is a little too much for me right now at 73 with a bad heart.

I started models building when I was around 10 with plastic model planes, boats
and cars. Also early wood stick kits of airplanes and the dime store flying airplanes that are powered with a rubber band.

When I was 15 I bought my first glo engine and made a test stand out of a big wooden box, that commercial sized paper comes in, my aunt, that was in the printing business, left there. The engine was a McCoy 29 that was made before they made the cheap red heads. It ran fine but was lacking in power to fly the Sterling Yak 9 profile body control line plane I bought. I soon upgraded to a Fox 35 stunt engine and the power was there. One thing was the plane was heavy with paint because I didn't know how to put on a proper finish. I just painted the color right on the bare wood and it soaked in and soaked in etc. I finally met a guy at school that flew and he told me about filler after I asked him how he made his models look so good.

I never got lessons how to fly and made a lot of mistakes but learned to fly pretty good and could do most all the stunt pattern in Control Line. I have always been the kind of guy that would try most anything but was always wanting to learn by myself.

One of the first things...Continue Reading