General control line discussion > How I got my start in the hobby

I guess somebody has to be the first...

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MarcusCordeiro:
Well, one of my first memories from very little is dad starting one 2.5cc diesel engine he had from his modeling days, and the PBY "Catalina", a plastic model he built that had folding floaters at the wing tips... My old man could build... anything...
So naturally when I was about 5 or 6 I started to show interest and started to assemble little plastic models, then hand-launched models.
I stuck with the plastic models for very long, actually I still build them, rarely, but love them.
So, one day dad said to get ready to go out... and we went to a model shop, the most traditional model shop here in São Paulo, and Brazil.
I was happy, I was going to get a new "kit" (dad bought me kits all the time.... cars, planes, boats...), and that was when he told me he was buying a CL model, a .15-sized trainer semi-scale of the ME 109...
Got bit by the bug.... The problem was dad never had time to build... so after some months of waiting, one day he got home from a business trip and the wing was ready... I had built it... And then some more time to have things happening, and then there was I, flying my third lap by myself, the coach behind me and my line broke, disaster... Built a build-up fuselage model that weighted a ton.... Got my first 35 engine.... Lost first big ship due to sliping hinges...
Due to studying, there was a long break, but I aways had a friend who had a CL model so I would eventually fly sometime...
Mother called sometime ago... Wanted to throwout my model stuff.... Got my things there... The feeling I hdn't had for a while....
I guess you can get theguy out of Control Line, but you can't get the Control Line out of the guy...
Now, at 42, action sports start to get more "difficult" and Drag Racing has become very expensive, I'm 100% controlline.

THanks for Reading

Marcus

dale gleason:
I was about ten when I discovered some older guys, probably teenagers or young college students, hurling OK Cub 14s into fifteen feet of brown, tannic-acid-tinted  D'Arbonne Bayou water.

 (Probably ought to stop reading now)

Dreaming of owning a gas model motor since age five, I sneaked through the sumac, hoping I might snag an errant toss. But they saw me and began hurling beer bottles at me, not Cub 14s. Jaxx, Dixie, and Falstaff, if my memory serves. I had no recourse but to R-U-N-N-O-F-T!

Later that night, I returned to the bridge, stripped, and entered the tepid ooze that was D'Arbonne. I had high hopes of diving to the depths and retrieving my prize from the Louisiana muck. The bayou was teeming with aquatic life, turtles, frogs, gars, nutrias, snakes....I really wanted a gas model motor! But, even pulling myself downward with the aid of Cypress knees, I couldn't get to the bottom...just too deep. On my last dive, head throbbing, I felt an object in the bole of a Cypress knee, and running my fingertips across it, my tactile senses ciphered, "OK".  

(Hey, you had your warning...)

Next day, after a bath and cleaning up the motor, inspection revealed it was really well-used, but it was all there and the glow head was good. I ran the motor in our garage, door closed, of course. (Top Flite 8x6, Testor's "39") Curiously, I still heard clearly the frogs' symphony of the previous night, which continues to this day, some sixty years later.

I built a Guillow's Trixter on which I mounted my Cub 14...my dream was realized...I had a gas model airplane! From that humble beginning, I learned lift (or lack of), drag, power (or lack of) mechanics, electric circuits, First Aid, and tether cars. (Centrifugal force was lacking in this curriculum, and VGs were yet to be discovered, still buried deep in the primordial ooze of Oz, awaiting discovery by someone willing to swim in crocodile- infested waters, but, I digress...)

With left arm raised and eyes lowered, I proffer this treatise,  :)
dale g

Mike Keville:
May as well stop right now, folks.  We couldn't top THAT.  LL~  LL~  LL~

MarcusCordeiro:
Dale

That's a cool story!!!! :)

Marcus

RknRusty:
Great stories all. I love reading them. Thanks for posting.
I can't say I'd have the nerve for noodling glow engines in the bayou though. LL~

Rusty

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