Boy, the memories. Not just my first LHS, but so many others that I went to and got advise, help, and encouragement. Like ACE RC in Higgensville, Mo, where I visited the first time in 1967, found Paul Runge Sr, alone in the office. Introducung myself as TDY down the road at Whiteman, he told me everybody else was out to lunch, took me back to the, I can only say warehouse area, and turned me loose.
I've already mentioned the original bicycle shop, Yurcheck's, Karnack's, Clearview Hobby, Mr. Bart's, Lorain Hobby Shop, and maybe a few others. Another that I can't forget, that was a fantastic aid when I got started in RC was run by the fire chief at the time, Al Nickley. Gentleman not only was conversant in all aspects of model airplanes and boats, but had a 2nd degree commercial FCC ticket, and was able to do legal repairs and tuning on transmitters. His van was not only carrying his planes abd support equipment when he got to the local flying field, but it was also equipped to do light field repairs on radios.
The exposure to the early models, before ARFs, die cut balsa, radios fully functional, plug n' play right out of the box, gave me so much challenge, inspiration and encouragement, that has helped me in every job I ever held, right from picking pop bottles off the street for the deposit, right up to instilling the patience that led me to be a problem solver, whether I was working on the auto assembly line, troubleshooting ground support equipment in the AF, getting stuck with the troublesome intermittent problems as an auto mechanic, or solving some really exotic problems in product development engineering for the last 28 years of my working career.