How did you get your start in the hobby?

[Avaiojet]

All of us have different stories as to how we got our start in the hobby.

Here's my story, now tell me yours.

CB

At age five my parents abandoned me. Fortunately they left me at small local airport with a grass strip.

Plenty of places to hide out at small strips and you'd be surprised at how much food is left in airplanes. Thank goodness pilots are wasteful.

Luckily, a bunch of CL and R/C guys would fly there on weekends. I let them believe I lived local except for one R/C guy I thought I could trust. I spent the next ten years captive building this guys scale stuff. Finally, I used his model tools to escape.

I surfaced well as a young man and finally an adult, but the kid in me could never stop building. Maybe it was the smell of balsa in the morning?

Anyway, I'll always remember that R/C guy who gave me my start. He made a good peanut butter and jelly too.

Charles

[Tim Wescott]

If you go on the AMA website and read Walt Musciano's biography, you'll find that he ran away from an orphanage because they wouldn't let him build model airplanes.  From age ten or so to around 12, he lived in a stairwell with a suitcase that contained all his possessions -- half clothing, half model airplane building supplies.  Now there's a kid with his priorities straight!

[Paul Taylor]

WoW! I don't think I could top either one of those stories.

But I started twice..... once when I was around 10, then again when my son was about 10.

[Matt Colan]

My grandfather had been building model airplanes since the 50s when he was a kid.  He stopped in the late 50s and mid 70s-late 80s but is still going strong now. When I was a baby, I used to just sit in the workshop and watch him build I've been told.  He used to also bring me to the flying field on a very regular basis, and I have some vague memories of those times. I officially got started flying RC in 2003.  In September 2005, I was converted to CL and I've flown an RC airplane once since then, at a CL meet    That one flight in RC I was doing stuff I wouldn't ever dream of doing back in 2004 and 5.  I even pulled off a 4 leaf clover and a square loop!  Ask Joe Gilbert and Tim Stagg about it, they were standing next to me as I did all that stuff (assuming they remember it)

[John Stiles]

My dad stuck me in Little League baseball.....and one day some fellows fired up combat planes and were having themselves a large time. Right about then is when the baseball bounced off me and everybody started screaming "get the ball...get the ball"! Boy when the game was over I got a real chew-in. Good thing it was only a practice game...as we got on our bikes to leave, I saw that them combat guys were still over there....so I made a big circle back. I sat and watched in total oblivion.....then one of the guys came over and handed me a plane that was pretty ragged, but all there, minus the motor. It was amazing to look at....I took it to the hardware store, and the guy sold me a bottle of black dope and gave me some tissue paper...told me what to do. After that i was hooked.

[Tim Wescott]

Whoa -- you're much more of a natural athlete than I am, John.  I never needed the presence of actual model airplanes to distract me from a ball game!

My dad liked flying the little North Pacific airplanes around -- I can never remember when there wasn't a "Skeeter" or a "Sky Streak" around the house.  Sometimes there were twins and trimotors, too.  We were out in the semi-boonies, but the local dime store carried just about every Comet kit in production it seemed, as well as Testors wood cement and itty bitty bottles of dope.  I never did get one of those to fly right, so it's a mystery why I kept at it -- but keep at it I did.

Then around 12 or 13 I discovered Sig Manufacturing -- they had a modeling "how to" poster that you could get for a self-addressed, stamped envelope, and it told how to get a catalog!  Oh joy!  Suddenly I started getting really interested in working for my dad, for pay.  I swept the parking lot, painted steel, changed the spark plugs in his '59 El Camino (changing the left rear spark plug on a small-block V-8 in a 59 Chevy is easy -- if you have two elbows on your right arm), and whatever other intellectually challenging job (like ditch-digging in a rainstorm) came along.  That money pretty much went to Sig, then to Aero-Sports Hobby and Toy once I had a driver's license.  I think at one point I had enough different Sig things in my room that I could have called myself a stocking distributor.

So, other than quitting the hobby about half way through college (it was pure lack of dedication -- I should have gone ahead and failed college!) and taking a couple of decades to get cranked back up, that's it.

[Louis Keller, Jr.]

I grew up near a small airport. All types of aircraft were coming and going all day. At night in bed I could hear them doing there thing and that just fired my imagination. They always seemed so serenely and peacefully doing their duty. My world as a teenager was full of the usual teen drama plus the burden of intergrating schools. At that time (late '60s) everything on terra firma was trauma and drama. But when I looked up there was always a plane in the air. Away from it all and peaceful. I wanted that peace. Like most things in life, it was a struggle to get there but getting there sure made it all worth it. My getting there was through c/l stunt. I find that peace every time I take my plane up.

[Marvin Denny]

  My modeling career started wwwwaaaayyyy back when!!!  We lived off the plains of Texas, down in the breaks about 6 miles from town. (small town) On the farm, there was nothing to do in ones spare time.  What with only the routine "farm chores" all kids my age had to do, like gathering eggs, chopping cotton (or other crops) feeding chickens and slopping the hogs, i didn't have anything to do in my spare time. (We worked from around 6AM to 6PM).   My folks would give me and my brother 25 cents to go spend on whatever we wanted once a week.  My brother was 4 years older than I.  We would go to the local variety store (Perry Bros. 5-10-25-50 &$1.00 store and buy a Megow rubber power model each and the following week build them, fly them and break them, then the next week do it all over again.  AAAAHHHH  them was the days.  Perry Bros----  there is another story in my background involving that store that had a MUCH better ending --- but for another time. I graduated from rubber power to gas to glow, FF to CL, to RC, back to CL.  and am still in CL.  
  I would ride my bike to town (6 miles one way) to fly with other modelers at a ball park, then ride home.   Boy!!  Was I happy when I got my brother's old car (hand me down) so I  could get to the field easier.  AAAHHH--- Perry Bros. Five and dime store  whatta place.

   Bigiron

[Marvin Denny]

  Wrong guess Ty.  Far as I know that was some sort of local chain and they went out of business  in 1955 or 56 I think.
  BUT--I'll give you a B+ for getting close.

  Bigiron

[don Burke]

My parents (mom, dad was in Europe) got all three of us Stromberg solid models to build during WWII.  I bought my first balsa kit at age 8 at the Montgomery Wards in Junction City, Kansas, Comet Fokker DRVII.  Printed balsa parts, cut out with mom's best scissors (BOY was she mad)  pine strips for the structure.  Been hooked ever since.

[Terrence Durrill]

Hey, how about some actual, true stories about how you got into this hobby that seems to become an addiction and lasts forever......................      

[Tim Wescott]

Hey -- mine was true!!

[Marvin Denny]

so is mine
  Bigiron

[John Stiles]

Same here!

[jim ivey]

well I saw this kid in 1951 ( who later became my best friend trying to fly something with a wing-ding that kept having problems with a broken prop. I sisn't understand any of it, but when i saw it make a couple of laps I knew I wanted one . it was a musicano scientific "wing ding" powered by an anderson .045 "spitfire"   dad bought me an " aeromite" never could fly that thing. few years later I dug it out and flew it. It was easy then. I actually learned on a " bill warner "strato-cat" <------- big hollow log. OnR 29 blue head. we flew thar thing bare balsa testors fast-dry glue I even taught my best friend to fly it.1952 following year I became friends with bob. with his help I progressed rapidly won my first contetest 1953 with a "chief" see bill I as 12 then.     jim

[john e. holliday]

Hey, how about some actual, true stories about how you got into this hobby that seems to become an addiction and lasts forever......................      

Hey, I am doing good to remember what I did today, let alone almost 60+ years ago.   

[Bill Little]

For the REAL story, I was about 7 when I received a Wen Mac Bonanza complete with ,008 wires and a pint of fuel.  The fellow next to us had actually flown it.  Not much more until we moved about age 12.  Met two guys (Brothers) and their Dad while they were flying at the local ball park.  The Dad had flown in some contests in the early '50s.  I got to fly a .19 powered trainer, did loops and finally inverted.  I never have "quit" the hobby, but there have been some slack times.  That all changed when my oldest son was about 10 or 11.  Momma bought him a Cox PT 19, unbeknownst to me, for Christmas.......  Finally flew in an actual contest around 1989-1990.
Took #1 son to the NATS in '93 and '96.  Will be doing this for as long as the Good Lord allows.   The people I have met through this hobby are some of the best people around!

Bill

[Randy Powell]

I just suddenly appeared in the hobby. No history (the marshals get upset if you talk about your history).

[John Stiles]

And the rest of my story: After my mom saw the result of my efforts on the injured combat plane, and dad took it away from me because I got a lower grade in math than he thought I was capable of............Mom got me a firebaby for xmas! Crashed it enough times that it was totaled.. And next year after that I got a "stick" built up fuse[don't make me conjure up the name, I can't] kit complete with Gilbert engine...almost finished that one, before I got the ultimate bad grade in math.....that plane and parts disappeared also. The next xmas, Mom gave me a Cox. plastic Mustang ready to fly with all the trimmings...she covered by getting my younger brother the Cox Stuka!  

[FLOYD CARTER]

In 1942 or 1943, the War Department was encouraging people to build solid "recognition models" for use by local Civil Defense Spotters in Los Angeles.  Well, it turns out that L.A. was never attacked by Japanese planes.  But the locals were supposed to be able to recognize any plane flying over.  These little solid models were for training purposes.  My neighbor was building several of them.  He gave me a "kit" for a Japanese plane of about 8" wingspan.  The "kit" consisted of some blocks of pine wood, or maybe it was bass (Linden).  The instructions said to paint it entirely black, which I did.

My first flying (?) model was a Comet 10-cent kit that I won at my Cub Scout meeting.  I built the fuselage side over the plan, but the wood stuck fast!.  So I just cut around the framework, and the plan became the covering for one half of the fuselage.  The same thing happened building the wing.  Instructions said to use waxed paper, but I didn't have any.  Guess what? It didn't fly worth a hoot!

In the mid-40's, Joe Ott came out with kits with "Otto-Formers" for the fuselage.  These were paper card stock, and they produced a round fuselage having longitudinal sticks.  This was my first model that actually looked like a real plane.

Floyd