Your first successful flight!

[piker]

Yes.  It's fun to hear about everyone's modest beginnings.

Hey Andy!  That's the old "club house" in the background of your pictures (aka the ugliest bench in flightline history)

[Andy Hoffer]

Yes.  It's fun to hear about everyone's modest beginnings.

Hey Andy!  That's the old "club house" in the background of your pictures (aka the ugliest bench in flightline history)

I thought you'd like that!  Sure makes one appreciate all the great work Jack et al have done to outfit our field with great assembly tables and pilot stations. 

Andy

[Papa]

Well what a list of unique stories. I love the participation in these little posts.

I started in the hobby about 62 years ago! OK Rob and Andy go for it, take your best shot.

My dad and I built rubber powered Wakefield free flight models. We used kits from Veron and Kiel Kraft. some were printed on balsa sheets and some were diecut. Diecut could be good to awful depending on the sharpness of the blades and the choice of wood. And then there was Ambroid. The only glue available and what a headache the fumes could give you. Dope you mixed your own and became familiar with Amy Nitrate and Banana oil. So one of these was my first flight.

Then life happened.

jack.

[Skyking]

My first models were rubber-powered and scratch built from plans when I was 8 or 9. ( my brother had taught me to read 3 views). They looked good and covering was tight but I couldn't get them to fly. There was nobody that I knew who I could ask for help with it but I continued to build.
In my 30s I was able to afford my first radio and taught myself to fly with a "Piece o Cake"  72 inch .049 powered glider with wheels. It was so forgiving that sometimes it would get lauched with the motor running backwards and it would just settle to the ground in front of my son and I.
I was so excited with my first successful flight that I was jumping up and down!

Ken

[piker]

I don't know about "going for it" but I WAS wondering if you were playing toy airplanes with the Wright kids 

[Andy Hoffer]

Well what a list of unique stories. I love the participation in these little posts.

I started in the hobby about 62 years ago! OK Rob and Andy go for it, take your best shot.

My dad and I built rubber powered Wakefield free flight models. We used kits from Veron and Kiel Kraft. some were printed on balsa sheets and some were diecut. Diecut could be good to awful depending on the sharpness of the blades and the choice of wood. And then there was Ambroid. The only glue available and what a headache the fumes could give you. Dope you mixed your own and became familiar with Amy Nitrate and Banana oil. So one of these was my first flight.

Then life happened.

jack.

A beautiful life Jack!

Andy

[Michael]

I started flying RC electric in the fall of 1981. I don't remember my first specifically successful flight, but it was an evolutionary process, between 1981 and 1983, ranging from instant crashes, to a little bit of flying and then crashing, to a bit longer flights and then crashing, to eventually landing instead of crashing.

My first models were a Kraft (?) foamy ARF Chipmunk with a can 600 motor but no speed control, then an underpowered Cox Sportavia, but soon progressing to a Carl Goldberg Gentle Lady converted to electric with a servo operated on-off switch, a Kyosho Etude ARF (that was a terrific model), and then I started getting better, progressing to an Astro cobalt 05 geared powered kit-built Goldberg Electra and then a Leisure Playboy (cabin version) powered by a geared 05 motor. This model (image below - summer 1984) was built out of die-cut parts and lots of balsa sticks and balsa sheet. The motor was controlled by a 7.2 volt electronic boat speed control, and the model flew very well.

[Ededge2002]

Cute as a button. Oh and the plane too !  LOL