Mike, with your building skills, you could have one framed up in a week!
Thank you Bill but I have slowed down considerably. I cant stand up for any length of time now because of chronic back pain and a lot of things just cant be done to my satisfaction sitting down. I still love to build Bill and I was always a better builder than a pilot. There are few guys in our club that just cannot build for one reason or the other and I have built and given several of my planes to them. I just like to see them have fun with them.
I recently built a Ringmaster 576, a Pat Johnston design, for a really good guy in our club. I really took a lot of pains in building, covering and finishing it for him. It was really pretty when I got through with it. I gave it to him one day at lunch and he absolutely would not fly it until I came to the field and watched him on the maiden flight. Finally we had a pretty day and Iwent to the field and he started it and another fellow launched him. The plane went straight up into a figure 9 and came down nose first into the concrete circle. It just obliterated the model. He was devastated and kept apologizing to me over and over and over . I finally said to him, it is part of flying control line planes. It happens to everybody, even expert fliers who have been flying for decades. I felt so bad for him.
We finally traced the problem down to the crimped lines he was using that came from Brodak. Somehow they grabbed each other when the plane was launched and locked the elevator in the up position.
It just gave me an excuse to build him another one.
Good to hear from you Bill and I hope you are doing good.
Mike