Back in what seems like many years ago, my son and I enjoyed building and flying radio controlled model airplanes with our friends in Delaware and, later, in Houston. Even before that, we started out with rubber band models when my son was very young and then progressed to U-control models at a local school playground. We crashed a Cox, plastic PT-19 so many ways that it was always amazing that we could keep it flying over and over again but we did.

The RC model hobby started late one winter after my son had saved money from his paper route and begged me to buy a model airplane in a magazine. Well, I finally agreed to let him buy the airplane (a 0.40 cu. in. Spitfire made of styrofoam) and I bought the engine, radio, and everything else. I later put it together for him, read up on the subject, talked to some guys and promptly put it away for over a year! I was told in no uncertain terms that this airplane was much too hard for a bunch of beginners to fly - they were so right!

Over the next year or so, I made a succession of trainer planes which were supposedly easy to fly and then got a lot of help from experienced instructors in a model airplane club. In spite of being "easy to fly", my son and I spent many hard, intimate times together in those early days watching planes nose dive into the ground, fly out of sight, smash into trailer houses, mess up because of a radio glitch, or any one of an endless list of sad, unfortunates reasons. We even climbed ivy-covered trees and triangulated crash sites on top of barns to get lost planes back in our clutches! Miraculously, I was almost always able to patch these poor planes back into a flyable condition (although a lot heavier!) and continue our fun flying together another day.

Then, one day for no apparent reason at all, my son began to fly all by himself without crashing, with a minimum of  instructor help, and with only me as the pit crew, taxi driver, and money man. We (he) had now mastered the delicate art of flying radio controlled model airplanes. This includes the exciting (scary?) part when you have to land the thing! The radio controlled model airplane hobby is very exacting and takes no prisoners - either you get it right the first time or you've had it! In those early days, we learned a lot but "bought the farm" many times!

The first real fun plane we had was a Mini 15 which we flew all over the skies in Delaware near our home - loops, rolls, upside down, split S's, Inglemann's, and all the rest. After that fun plane, I built a GLH 049 (the GLH stands for "Goes Like Hell") which was probably the fastest small plane we ever played with except for combat planes (with a pressurized, rubber fuel tanks) and outrageously fast and "squirrelly" flying wings that my son got into later on. With these planes, you launch by hand and then hold on for dear life and hope you don't crash. One challenge is to avoid a crash in spite of the sluggish control surface action at low speed. Once the plane got up to speed, another challenge was to develop a fast enough eye-hand coordination that you could keep the plane from getting out of control.

After this early experience with the Mini 15 and neat little planes like Focke-Wulf 190s, I built larger trainer planes in anticipation of having still more fun with my son and our friends in the model airplane club. One of our favorites was a high winged Trainer 40 which was a very reliable plane because of the Clark-Y airfoil. I built another Great Plains Trainer 40 which was a beautiful, fast airplane but in the process of "getting it into the groove" (i.e., tweaking the airplane control surfaces and tuning the radio controls) early in its life, an aileron torque tube froze up and put this beautiful plane into the ground with a massive "death gripping spiral". This is the only plane I ever built that I put in a plastic bag and dumped in the garbage can when I got home. Sigh!

We must have flown many hundreds of flights on these type planes over the ensuing years. I bought a used 40 sized, pattern airplane from a friend and recovered and repainted it so we could learn acrobatic maneuvers (called pattern flying). After this successful experience, I made similar airplanes like the above (a Firebird 40 and a Great Planes 40) which were very light and fast and we enjoyed these airplanes a whole bunch and flew them at club meets and competitions. I also bought a special plastic/foam kit plane (a Banana Peel 40) which was faster than greased lightening - boy, could this plane move!

But after the successful times with the 40 sized pattern planes, we were ready to move up to the big planes with the big engines and tuned exhaust pipes. Our first was a Great Planes Super 60 pattern plane equipped with an OS Max 61 engine with a tuned pipe. The tuned pipe acts like a supercharger by sucking exhaust gas out of the engine faster thereby allowing the engine to suck in and burn fuel faster. The tuning step on the pipe was quite critical. The increase in power output was very noticeable as was the performance of the plane in maneuvers. Flat out, on-the-deck speed was probably close to 75 mph! Then after this plane, our outright fastest plane ever was a UFO60 with an OS Max 61, retracts and a tuned pipe as above - probably over 100 mph! This was a beautiful, sleek, light, fast plane made with a fiberglass fuselage and foam wings which had a symmetrical airfoil. Whereas many planes fly themselves and are self-correcting, this plane had to be flown with skill and precision. About 16 oz. of fuel would keep this beauty airborne for about 20 min. after which the pilot was wringing wet from the concentrated effort required of him. In flights with maneuvers, a second person would act as spotter and caller so that maneuvers could be stacked on top of one another which made the flight a real show for anyone in the area. Just imagine this plane screeching across the deck at full throttle and then pulling up real hard into a victory roll!

All the while we were having fun with learning and pouring on the speed to keep the adrenaline pumped up, I was gradually learning the art of building scale model planes - ones that can be recognized as a model of another real plane. One of my first attempts (outside of the 40 size foam Spitfire mentioned above) was a PT-19 trainer plane I saw at the Confederate Air Force headquarters in Harlingen, TX on a vacation. Notice the large dihedral angle in the wings - this makes the plane more stable for a beginner and allows it to be turned with rudder only. A nice, gentle plane. Then after this, I purchased a used 60 size Spitfire from a friend and then recovered and repainted it, and used it for practice while I was building my own really nice 60 size Spitfire. The latter Spitfire had flaps and retracts which made this plane so clean and beautiful to look at either on the ground or in the air. Another of my pride and joys was a 60 size Corsair with flaps and ailerons. This plane was heavy (a "flying brick") at almost nine pounds partly because it carried a 24 oz. fuel tank. But it was a joy to fly in the wind as heavy as it was. An engine flame-out at takeoff required an instant landing plan because it came down right now! These scale model planes are not flown especially fast but at scale speeds in order to enjoy the plane as it really was in real life.

One of my life's enormously enjoyable moments was getting up early in the morning and going flying when the air was still, the sun was low in the sky, and no one else was around to interrupt our flying fun. Then, after we finished flying, we would talk to the guys who would start showing up at the field a little later in the morning. My son and I will share these memories forever and they give us claim to the mastering of a demanding, yet rewarding hobby that we enjoyed together for many of his formative years as a young lad.

If you want to see the vast array of model supplies available, order a catalog from Tower Hobbies (Champaign-Urbana, IL) and you'll want to get into this fun hobby right away.