Any one fly model planes?
I've planted plenty of balsa trees back in the day, but fly?
I got into the hobby way over my head in 1990 or so. The body shop I was working at the time had a customer with a '64ish Ford Falcon ragtop he wanted painted and we got to talking about the PT-40 my GF bought me for Christmas that year. He invited me over to see his collection and buy an engine if I wished. His basement workshop was stuffed with about 17 years of accumulated buying and building. I bought the motor and a few months later he offered his collection to myself and the GF's brother for $600. Roughly 23 planes, 6 radios, 13-14 engines, a boat and all the accumulated tools & materials. Shortly after the GF and I broke up I bought out the brother's share and have been lugging the dwindling collection around ever since. Among the planes were Goldberg Cowboys and a Skylark, a Sig Skybolt, a Rearwin Speedster, a Dirty Birdie pattern plane, 4 or 5 gliders (2 powered with Testors .020s) a couple that were scratch built (one is a float plane) and a few one-off Japanese kits. I got into scale stuff since then and when I have the space for it, I work on a Top Flite Corsair and a Royal FW-190. I also have a new PT-40 to replace the original since I stuffed it 3 times as well as a Kadet 40 and a Cessna 182, manufacturer forgotten. And-I recently picked up a Royal JU-87D. On top of all that, there's a scratch build Albatros B I work on when I can and plans to scratch build a TBD-1 Devastator.
But I haven't flown one for a long time. The guy I bought the stuff from was my instructor and I moved long before my training was complete. The last one I flew was that Kadet 40, which became a float plane when it ended up in a pond. Wouldn't mind picking up flying again but this is an unusually windy place to live (40mph winds gusting to 75 is not an unusual state here) and stuffing more of them isn't really how I want to pursue this farther. But I did make pretty good progress on the Focke Wulf last winter and the Rearwin Speedster is next, when I have the time.
Focke-Wulf FW-190A-8:
Corsair. Plans are to paint it tri-color and let the paint chip naturally ('72 Duster under the car cover in the background, BTW):
Some of it laid out in an unused paint booth where I used to work in NoCal. Some of these were subjected to a flood back in Wisconsin and have since been stripped for usable parts and trashed:
Hanging from the ceiling in the same shop:
And the boat! (Dumas Deep Vee, which I'm getting ready to use with a new OS .25):
There's a lagoon across the street here that I'm planning to tear up as soon as I can get some fuel (Billings, almost 2 hours away). Meanwhile, of course I still enjoy building them. Kits are hard to find these days but plans are everywhere.
Ken
I've planted plenty of balsa trees back in the day, but fly?
I got into the hobby way over my head in 1990 or so. The body shop I was working at the time had a customer with a '64ish Ford Falcon ragtop he wanted painted and we got to talking about the PT-40 my GF bought me for Christmas that year. He invited me over to see his collection and buy an engine if I wished. His basement workshop was stuffed with about 17 years of accumulated buying and building. I bought the motor and a few months later he offered his collection to myself and the GF's brother for $600. Roughly 23 planes, 6 radios, 13-14 engines, a boat and all the accumulated tools & materials. Shortly after the GF and I broke up I bought out the brother's share and have been lugging the dwindling collection around ever since. Among the planes were Goldberg Cowboys and a Skylark, a Sig Skybolt, a Rearwin Speedster, a Dirty Birdie pattern plane, 4 or 5 gliders (2 powered with Testors .020s) a couple that were scratch built (one is a float plane) and a few one-off Japanese kits. I got into scale stuff since then and when I have the space for it, I work on a Top Flite Corsair and a Royal FW-190. I also have a new PT-40 to replace the original since I stuffed it 3 times as well as a Kadet 40 and a Cessna 182, manufacturer forgotten. And-I recently picked up a Royal JU-87D. On top of all that, there's a scratch build Albatros B I work on when I can and plans to scratch build a TBD-1 Devastator.
But I haven't flown one for a long time. The guy I bought the stuff from was my instructor and I moved long before my training was complete. The last one I flew was that Kadet 40, which became a float plane when it ended up in a pond. Wouldn't mind picking up flying again but this is an unusually windy place to live (40mph winds gusting to 75 is not an unusual state here) and stuffing more of them isn't really how I want to pursue this farther. But I did make pretty good progress on the Focke Wulf last winter and the Rearwin Speedster is next, when I have the time.
Focke-Wulf FW-190A-8:
Corsair. Plans are to paint it tri-color and let the paint chip naturally ('72 Duster under the car cover in the background, BTW):
Some of it laid out in an unused paint booth where I used to work in NoCal. Some of these were subjected to a flood back in Wisconsin and have since been stripped for usable parts and trashed:
Hanging from the ceiling in the same shop:
And the boat! (Dumas Deep Vee, which I'm getting ready to use with a new OS .25):
There's a lagoon across the street here that I'm planning to tear up as soon as I can get some fuel (Billings, almost 2 hours away). Meanwhile, of course I still enjoy building them. Kits are hard to find these days but plans are everywhere.
Ken
