The Dean of all model airplane magazine editors, Bill Winter, was also a great and prolific builder. I'm very honored to have counted Bill as not only a close friend and valued mentor in the model magazine world, but also as a trusted counselor for many of life's other challenges. We spoke on the phone quite often back in the late 1970's and early 1980's.
I remember vividly mentioning to Bill that for the first time in my life I was having trouble getting motivated to build a new model. Hey, I had a young family, a new job, and myriad issues that come along with those things; model building just seemed too strenuous at that time.
Bill laughed and told me that he had many times like that in his life, but also that he'd come up with a solution. He told me about what he called the "Purple Project." It seems that whenever Bill got bogged down with life and could not muster the energy or enthusiasm to build, he started a new project and vowed to do at least one thing on it each day. No matter how trivial the chore might be - even to the point of gluing on one piece - Bill would steadfastly keep to his self-imposed vow to work on that model each and every day. Of course, sooner or later the project became an obsession - as all our projects do in time - and he was re-energized and working on it diligently until it was finished. Why "Purple Project?" I have no clue; he never explained that...
With all the stresses involved with life these days it's a wonder that any of us can keep focused on a model building project. Perhaps we should all take a page from Bill Winter's book and just start building a new plane, and vow to keep the project going by focusing whatever smidgen of spare time we have available each day to bring it to fruition.
Another great friend and mentor for me was the great Larry Kruse. Larry is mostly known for his fabulous scale free flight models. Larry was the FF Sport columnist for almost all the 17 years I was the Editor of Flying Models magazine, and he continued on after I left that post to explore video making (The old saying, "Don't quit your day job" quickly became my mantra...). Anyway, Larry and I had this same conversation about getting and keeping a model project going and on track. Larry had a different take on that problem. Now, Larry is a very organized individual. He was the Dean of Admissions at Oklahoma State University in those days, and, obviously that was a very demanding job, requiring organizational and administrative skills to the max. He had virtually no time to build, especially during the enrollment period. His solution to the building problem was to use every available spare second in his home life to work on models. He would put in a few minutes just after returning home from work, a few minutes while his wife was preparing to serve dinner, etc. Like I wrote earlier, Larry was very organized, and he could drop immediately into the job at hand, work a few minutes, leave to do other things, and then return to do a minute or two more work.
We are in the Christmas season now, and building time is at a premium. It mat be almost impossible to focus on your new project during this season, but you could sneak in a minute or two while the water for the hot chocolate is heating up to a boil...
Merry Christmas - Bob Hunt
Topic: The "Purple Project" (Read 2222 times)
