As a big fan of airplanes and aviation, including everything that involves flying!, one of my hobbies is flying remote controlled airplane models. My father used to be an aviation fan as well and he also flew air models. He is the one who introduced me to this hobby when I was 7 years old. Back then the remote control equipment was on its early steps and it was very expensive. We didn’t own one!
My dad and I had to start practicing this hobby starting with the basic air models which were not remote controlled.
My first model was an airplane made on balsa wood; it consisted of one square stick (fuselage), a rectangular board of 1/32” thick as a wing and 2 small boards of the same thickness glued on an inverted “T” forming the stabilizer and rudder. We added some fishing weight on the nose and that’s how we made a very fun “Throw plane”
Latter on my dad taught me how to build another airplane model. It was bigger, now the wings had some ribs, the fuselage had volume and structure too! Wow! I just learned the basic aerodynamics and also found out how this helped improve the flying time! I was amazed with all this stuff!
Rapidly my creativity and curiosity increased and I started working on how to make those planes fly higher and higher. Dad Provided me with some techniques, he taught me about the “Thermals” ascending currents of hot air (when usually buzzer’s fly in circles) and some launching tools like catapults made with surgical tubes and/ or rubber and also motors. This worked really good, I was able to get really high but I also lost many airplanes. My dad gave me very important tips and equipment that could make the plane glide down in circles after a programmed time. This is a very old technique named FREE FLIGHT.
It was really fun but I wanted to have more control over the model; and once again dad had the answer to this. When I was 8, we built my first “Control Line” model. This is a more solid airplane with a bigger engine and attached to a handle with two strings connected into a bell crank that control the elevator with the movement of the wrist. Control line planes were really fun and acrobatic but the technique made me feel a little dizzy and the plane had very low altitude due to the strings.
I used to work on work on my summer and winter vacations and when I was 12 years old I had saved enough money to buy a very basic remote control airplane. I built the plane from scratch and a friend of mine taught me how to fly it!
Remote control air models are really cool and fun. Now a days, I continue practicing this amazing hobby and one day I want to pass it to my kids. This is a very fun way to develop many abilities like creativity, analysis, and it also teaches you that if things don’t work the way they suppose to or the way you want, there is always a way to improve them. It also teaches you that if you crash instead of feeling regret or frustration, you know you can just start over!
I can say that I am a remote control air model pilot and the sky is the limit!!!
