MY HOBBY==MODEL AIRPLANES

In my life, the making and flying of model airplanes has played an important role. As a very young lad, perhaps I was four or five, My Uncle Ronald was flying rubber powered free flight models. I remember watching Him and wanting so much to participate. I saved some pennies, and we ordered a small kit from Sears and Roebucks. I don't remember getting it built, just the excitement of getting it. My next memory is of a Motor Court in Phoenix, right across the street from the State Mental Hospital. Some boys, who lived in the court, were playing with model airplanes. It looked like so much fun. I begged my mom and dad to get me one. I prevailed, and Dad brought a kit home, which we tried to build on the kitchen table. We couldn't figure it out, so Dad paid one of the boys to build it. It was a rubber powered, balsa and tissue covered free flight. I think it was yellow. I remember playing with it until it was destroyed in Grandma White's backyard. So began the pattern of my life. Build it, dream about it, and then crash it. Most of these early attempts were during WWII, which began in December 1941 when I was just six years old. It was an exciting time, with reports of the battles on the radio every day, airplanes filling the skies over Mesa with Pilot training at Luke, Willy, and Falcon fields. We ran around the schoolyards with arms outspread, making airplane noise and pretending to shoot down each other in flames. No cowboy and Indian stuff for us. It was Japs and German, American good guys all day long. We collected scrap metal, old rubber tires and even string for the war effort. We bought war bones at school, filling out little stamp books with ten-cent war stamps. Everything bought in the stores was rationed, if you could find it at all. Anyhow, we flew little toss gliders, built model airplanes with cardboard and pinewood parts. Balsa wood was not available, very often. You couldn't get glue, so it was make our own glue using celluloid tooth brush handles and paint thinner. Some model kits came with a set of plans and a block of pinewood to be carved into a model. I also had to walk five miles through deep snow, but that's a different story.

While I was in Grade School I hung out down by old Mesa High School there was a hobby shop across the street. I would watch and listen as the boys ran their engines, talked about airplanes, and just seemed to have a great time. I remember watching as they strapped a Jetex C02 cartridge to a balsa stick and punctured it, aiming high in the sky, something went wrong, and it just fell over into the street, striking the pavement. It swooshed, and took off, heading right down the street. About two blocks away an old man was slowly crossing the street, suddenly spotting the rocket coming at a lethal speed. He jumped up in the air and the rocket went right under him. I'm sure that he was terrified, but to us watching, it was hilarious. I started building little cars, which could run down a string. We convinced the principal at Franklin grade school, to let me use the hall after school, and run my car down the hallway. When I punctured the jet it shot down the string, hit the end, and kept right on going out the door. Like a bullet. That was the end of that, except for the time that I put an ice pick through the shop roof with a Jetex powered airplane. Honestly, I thought an ice pick would make a great nose cone for my rocket airplane. Pursing gentler aspects of the hobby, I purchased my first engine while in High School. It was a .049 Atwood, that I wore out, trying to start it. I remember beating up a neighbor kid pretty badly for stealing the darn thing. When I should have just given him it. I learned to fly U control on a basketball court behind Alma Ward. Not much line length, but I did learn how not to get dizzy. Some of the dates that I had with Lilly, were flying U control model airplanes, I flew a U Control in front to the first little apartment that we lived in after our Marriage. My experiences with model airplanes are mostly about friends, people I would never have known had it not been for my hobby. So, my advice has always been, find something to do outside of your regular circles, and you will find people out there that will make your life so much better and someone to share the Gospel with also. In Biloxi, Mississippi I became friends with Sgt. Kline, Pete Mesmer, Sgt. Howard, and others. Peter and his whole family joined the church, and more many have, that I have not followed. It has just been a great part of my life. My first radio-controlled airplane was made in Biloxi, and m first flight was made in Gulfport, at an abandoned airport. What a thrill it was to see that Cub actually turn as I worked the control stick. My transmitter, receiver, and all that was in the airplane, was homemade, as there was very little commercially available. We would work all week repairing, just to fly that once or twice on Saturday, just to do it all over again. In South Dakota, I still had the Cub, but also designed and made a big Stits Flybaby. I tried to build a new proportional radio system for it, but it never did work right. Using those new fangled transistors, I was trying to go too far, too fast. I went back to what worked, in Arizona, and built a Champ, with single channel, wig-wag pulse proportional. (A system where as you moved the Control stick the rudder would constantly bag back and forth but according to the stick position of the rudder, it would stay more to one side than the other.) We had to cut the wing in half to get it to Japan, so my models went there wagging their tails behind them.
Waiting for my Lilly, I built a Nobler U Control (flown on 60ft wire cables)Kit and really got serious about UC Stunt. I joined the Base Model club, and again made many new friends. I participated in the Far East model championships, in which I flew Radio Control hand launched glider, U-Control stunt speed, including jet at nearly 200 miles an hour. Free flight, and Team Racing. We were after team points, and had to enter as many events as possible. Back at Itazuki, I started flying with a tuned reed Radio Control system to give me up to ten channels different controls we built many airplanes, but my favorite was the Smog Hog. It had a 6ft wide wingspan. And it had a high wing. Our homemade radio equipment didn't work that entire well. That old Smog Hog went in so many times and was rebuilt so many times I was considering cast iron as a building material. So, necessity being the mother of invention, I installed a large parachute in the airplane which could be deployed by radio. Well, the very next time I flew it, it happened. Flying from an athletic field nest the the fence over which was a Japanese village, the airplane headed for the ground. About 50ft above the ground, I hit the switch. I watched as the chute came out and fully deployed just before it hit the ground. I climbed the fence and ran to the plane. There was the poor plane, broken clean in two, not by the ground, but by the shock of the chute opening. Back to the drawing board, but years later, this has become a life saving idea, used on ultra light and other small planes. Just ahead of my time again.
It wasn't until the 1970's that model helicopters became a reality, but again, when I was a junior in High School, I built and flew a jet powered model helicopter free flight, with great success. When I was in Rapid City, I designed and flew a low winged RC airplane, that to my knowledge, was one of the first low winged that I ever heard of. All of these things have left me wondering just what could have happened had I pursued it. Never sell yourself short. Your ideas are actually whisperings of the spirit and should never be sold short. By the time we got back to the US and at old Cape Cod, things were really beginning to happen in the hobby. Multi channel, proportional, commercially available radio systems became available, but very expensive. I remember spending all of a reenlistment bonus for a new radio system. I even borrowed money from the Church building funds to finish paying for a new system and not only repay it, but had to confess it to the Bishop. This taught me to never let your wants lead you down the path that can take you to places that can give you unhappiness, it isn't worth it. I hope my family will forgive me for the second hand clothes, the less than new Christmas and birthday presents caused by my over enthusiastic involvement in my hobby. I have seen some of this same tendency in some of my children and accept responsibility for not teaching you better. Some of these Radio systems were almost worthless, but over the years they are now almost perfect.
In Old Cape Cod, I was a member of a great club, with guys from all over that part of New England. We flew off the frozen Ice Ponds. Our gear in the airplanes required hand warmers wrapped next to the airplane receivers to keep from freezing. I built a cub from my own planes, a P63 King Cobra from a kit, and other short-lived planes I can't remember. On one occasion, a big contest was held at Otis AFB, and I built a Nober UC especially for the contest. With hundreds of people watching, I started the engine, and then ran out to the center of the circle to pick up the control handle. With perfect confidence, like a bullfighter in the ring, I raised my arm and dropped it in a signal to release the plane. It quickly accelerated to take off speed and flew into the air. I gave it up to prepare for my first maneuver/the airplane dove straight into the ground, splattering into a hundred pieces. I had grabbed the handle upside down. Those old contest jitters can sure humble a feller in a hurry.
Another event I entered that day was UC combat, where the object is to cut a crape paper streamer from the tail the other aircraft. Something went wrong with my engine, and it would scream wide open for a few seconds, then sat down to just idle again. As I flew around in the circle, the airplane would streak around, and then practically stop in the air. I'm sure the other pilot thought I did it deliberately, because he didn't have a chance. A little help from above is always appreciated (what you say when your praying for help in a model airplane contest.) Surely, the old man was crazy. Nope, just praying over my crops and fields, like the good book says. Mine just happened to have engines. Anyhow, when we left Cape Cod, I had a pretty good outfit. In New Jersey, I flew off of the Parade grounds at Ft. Monmouth. Along the way, I got Nita's husband, Dale, interested in the hobby, for which he probably still cusses me. When we got to Maryland, I really got into the contests. Concentrating on Scale events, I won many trophies in contest up and down the East Coast. That is where the DC3 was designed and built. It won many contests, and I did a construction article for it in the Magazine, Model Airplanes News. When we left Maryland, I never did get into the Hobby that deeply again. I did enjoy flying, especially with my sons. Each of which learned to fly. Ronald has been my good right hand, enabling me to hold the transmitter even though I can no longer see the planes. It has been a wonderful hobby, a large part of my life.