INTRODUCTION ON HOW I STARTED IN RC - MODELLING
Hello Fellow Modellers and Friends,
I have created this site to capture a hobby that has been a passion for me since 1979. It all started for me when my uncle Dale came over to our house in Mooroolbark and flew his 60 size control line model airplane. From this day forward, I had an addiction to flight.
As I was only 12 years old, money was an issue and it seemed that petrol powered planes was such a far reach. I therefore had no choice but to resort to model balsa gliders and tying string to blow flies.
A couple of years later, I was introduced to a man named “Dick Steel” who had a hobby shop in riding distance my my house (some 8K’s away) in Croydon who quickly became my new best friend.
My Brothers, Brian & Danny, who also had an interest (and still do) in the hobby would ride up with me to Dick Steels shop to purchase our control line stick trainers ($2.20 each), we would paint them up in commo colours and power it with our OS15 engines. Combat was our "thing" and had many great times trying to wreck each other’s plane. (and setting each other on fire with a squeeze bottle full of fuel).
Roughly when I turned 16, I met a person called Hans Litjen’s who lived about 1km away from my parents house in Mt Martha. Hans was very successful pilot in competition pattern flying and not to mention was also building a real plane in his garage.
After a short time, Hans, who we assume could see the passion we had for planes (or it might of been that we just pestered him alot?) gave us one of his retired pattern plane for us to drool over. With my addictive nature, I wanted to fly RC planes, and move on from flying around in circles with our control line planes. This is when i came up with a brilliant idea to convert my control line plane into a RC one.
I had a 2ch Sanwa set that I pulled out of my RC Tamia frog and thought that it would go nicely into my 15 size control line mustang and become my first RC plane. I spent countless hours fitting the radio gear in it.
The big day came and I was ready to fly my RC control line plane. I had quite a gathering of family and friends at the top of Mt Martha Hill overlooking the citation oval.
We started the motor and asked my brother to throw it with all his might.
WOW, It was a beautiful sight to see my RC control line plane going FREE. It was like setting a dove free but clipping one of its wings.
The plane had ample power to get altitude, but with this said had heaps of attitude. It barrel rolled like it was spinning at one to one with the propeller and eventually came a crocker down near some houses.
I later found out from Han’s that the probable cause of it rolling so much was the fact that control line planes sometimes have one more RIB on the outer wing to assist with stability when flying with the control line leaving one side of the aircraft with a longer wing. Hmmm
I will be telling more stories and uploading many videos and photos of mine and my friends RC planes, Boats etc over the coming weeks. Please feel free to email me if you have funny stories or remember some of my antics in this hobby.
Note: I would like to personally thank Franz for being such a great mate, and good sport for allowing me to upload some of his videos.
Regards,
Paul
I have created this site to capture a hobby that has been a passion for me since 1979. It all started for me when my uncle Dale came over to our house in Mooroolbark and flew his 60 size control line model airplane. From this day forward, I had an addiction to flight.
As I was only 12 years old, money was an issue and it seemed that petrol powered planes was such a far reach. I therefore had no choice but to resort to model balsa gliders and tying string to blow flies.
A couple of years later, I was introduced to a man named “Dick Steel” who had a hobby shop in riding distance my my house (some 8K’s away) in Croydon who quickly became my new best friend.
My Brothers, Brian & Danny, who also had an interest (and still do) in the hobby would ride up with me to Dick Steels shop to purchase our control line stick trainers ($2.20 each), we would paint them up in commo colours and power it with our OS15 engines. Combat was our "thing" and had many great times trying to wreck each other’s plane. (and setting each other on fire with a squeeze bottle full of fuel).
Roughly when I turned 16, I met a person called Hans Litjen’s who lived about 1km away from my parents house in Mt Martha. Hans was very successful pilot in competition pattern flying and not to mention was also building a real plane in his garage.
After a short time, Hans, who we assume could see the passion we had for planes (or it might of been that we just pestered him alot?) gave us one of his retired pattern plane for us to drool over. With my addictive nature, I wanted to fly RC planes, and move on from flying around in circles with our control line planes. This is when i came up with a brilliant idea to convert my control line plane into a RC one.
I had a 2ch Sanwa set that I pulled out of my RC Tamia frog and thought that it would go nicely into my 15 size control line mustang and become my first RC plane. I spent countless hours fitting the radio gear in it.
The big day came and I was ready to fly my RC control line plane. I had quite a gathering of family and friends at the top of Mt Martha Hill overlooking the citation oval.
We started the motor and asked my brother to throw it with all his might.
WOW, It was a beautiful sight to see my RC control line plane going FREE. It was like setting a dove free but clipping one of its wings.
The plane had ample power to get altitude, but with this said had heaps of attitude. It barrel rolled like it was spinning at one to one with the propeller and eventually came a crocker down near some houses.
I later found out from Han’s that the probable cause of it rolling so much was the fact that control line planes sometimes have one more RIB on the outer wing to assist with stability when flying with the control line leaving one side of the aircraft with a longer wing. Hmmm
I will be telling more stories and uploading many videos and photos of mine and my friends RC planes, Boats etc over the coming weeks. Please feel free to email me if you have funny stories or remember some of my antics in this hobby.
Note: I would like to personally thank Franz for being such a great mate, and good sport for allowing me to upload some of his videos.
Regards,
Paul
