Ep 101: David Boito, author ”Valley Fliers”

[00:00:10] Hello everyone and welcome to the RC Plane Lab podcast. I’m Ron, I’m Tom. On this episode, we are going to be talking with david boido. David is a script writer and novelist from los angeles.

[00:00:22] California yeah something a little bit different for our listeners to get us some culture a lot.

[00:00:28] Different, actually. So he’s joining us today to talk about his debut novel, the valley flyers. David, welcome to the program and tell us a little bit about yourself before we get into.

[00:00:38] Talking about your book. Sure, thank you guys for having me. The book is called valley flyers and it’s set in an rc airfield based on one that I’ve spent some time at here near my house in the san fernando valley, california. You may be familiar with it’s it’s kind of apollo 11 field and it’s near the van nice airport. There’s a bike path that runs right past the airfield.

[00:01:14] And I frequently ride my bike by there and always in the past have stopped to watch the- the miniature air show, so to speak- and so I was inspired to write a book. I just I felt like this was a great arena for some drama. I’d never really seen any stories done in the rfc.

[00:01:45] Milieu, if you will, and so I. I thought it’d be really great. I’m always looking for stories, so I thought it’d be really great to write a book set in an rc airfield. So the book is about a, a teenager named jay smalley, who is a, an avid rc flyer, and he and a group of his friends are in a, a flying club called the valley flyers that’s run by the guy that runs the airfield- a guy.

[00:02:18] Named kent, who’s sort of an old gruff air force veteran and very much a stickler for discipline in flight. And so, anyway, jay jace notices a new guy comes to the airfield and he’s flying drones.

[00:02:40] And jay is sort of a conspiracy sorry theorist yeah and we’re not a big fan of the quad coppers.

[00:02:49] That’s okay, though they’re understood, and I tried to create a little bit of that tension in the story of the- the rivalry, yeah, between the fixed wing flyers and quad flyers, and I felt it I mean, oh, that’s good, okay, yeah, though that was intentional, yeah.

[00:03:08] It was. So I don’t want to cut you off, I’m sorry, but no, no, no, that’s fine. So I read the book. Before it you had reached out to us to see about doing a guest spot on here and I it. I apologize because it did take me a little bit of time to get back to you. Don’t worry, I wanted to read the book before I got back to you to invite you on or to turn you down, not to sound bad, but you, I don’t want to recommend our listeners read something or do something that I don’t like or that I wouldn’t want to do myself. Yeah, so obviously you’re on, so I enjoyed the book.

[00:03:44] I would recommend it to our listeners. Recommend our listeners read it. But what I? What I like about you? You have the book listed on amazon in print and also on the, the kindle, yeah, so I like to have things kind of go on in the background or for me to listen to when I’m working. Usually it’s tv show, but if I’m working on like airplanes or anything model related, I like to have something in the background.

[00:04:15] To listen to, to kind of keep me focused, right? So, this being on the kindle, you can have your echo dots. I gotta watch what I say because if I say the wrong word around here I have so many things light up, okay, so you can have them read the story to you, which is how I listen to most of the book. But I’m gonna say you can tell it was a good book because half the time I actually caught myself not working on anything and just listening intently to what was going on. Nice, oh, thank you.

[00:04:50] That’s good because I really enjoyed the book and I do think it’s something that everybody should go read just to see like how you incorporated our hobby into such a good suspense kind of thriller. So I just want to say I enjoyed that and I thought you did a very good job on that. Oh, thank you.

[00:05:09] Yeah, I tried to make it a quick read and just hit the action points and not diverge too much into verbosity, so hopefully that pays off when it and it did.

[00:05:27] Like I said, I didn’t feel like anything was drawn out. Yeah, that’s good, there’s a lot of books you read or a lot of movies you watch, to where it’s like, all right, let’s, let’s get through this so we can get to the next thing. And I did not feel that at all: listening and reading- yeah, because I go through.

[00:05:42] That same thing myself now. Sometimes on some of these streaming shows- netflix or whatever you’ll find they have a good idea for a show that probably would make a good movie, like a good two-hour movie, and then they try and string it out into 10 episodes and sometimes, sometimes, yeah, it takes too long to get it going and then it’s just: the idea doesn’t lend.

[00:06:08] Itself to 10 hours of coverage and people like me who have really short attention spans. If you don’t, if you don’t grab our attention within the first five minutes- five minutes or so- I’m turning it off and going on to do something else. So well, it’s funny. My wife is watching.

[00:06:23] A show and she just started, like a few weeks ago and she’s already on season four, and I was like you must really like this. And she said no, it’s terrible, but I want to see what happens. So she fast forwards through almost every episode just to just to get the, the high spots and it’s like, oh my gosh, I don’t know a lot of work. That’s what I thought, but so, like I said, I did not feel that at all with this, so I you did a good job on that and I really enjoyed it. Thank you, cool, hey, david. So before we

[00:06:53] We’ve got a few questions for you about the, about the book and some stuff that is rc related. About the book, but I want to know who david is like. So you said you were a screenwriter and things.

[00:07:03] Like that, like can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Sure, sure, I’ve been writing. Yeah, I went to ucla and studied film there and been writing screenplays for a long time, ever since graduating, and so I’m a big fan of movies and I’m always looking for a good story. That I think would lend itself to a good movie, and I decided so. I actually had the idea.

[00:07:35] For valley flyers as a movie idea first to start and I still think it would make a great film.

[00:07:43] Because so much of it is visual. The first person viewing scenes I think would be really visually stunning and, as some of the, some of the dog fighting and stuff, I think could be really cool on film. But anyway, so I originally started valley flyers as a as a screenplay and actually finished it and sent it around to a few agents and people in the business and they’re always looking for a reason to say no in the movie business because there’s

[00:08:20] Millions and millions of dollars on the line to make a movie, so a lot of there has to be a lot of luck and a lot of confluence of events to get a movie off the ground, sure? So people like the story, they just so far anyway, nobody was interested in investing in making the movie, and so I just love the story and so I wanted to continue with it and so I decided to just write it as a book and go to the

[00:08:52] Readers and, at the very least, this way, people can enjoy the story and envision it in their own minds. So, but, yeah, so, but anyway, my background. So this is my first book. I’ve I’ve written some short stories and other things, but this is my first full, full length novel, and but I plan to do more. I actually have some other movie ideas that are on the page already as screenplays and

[00:09:23] I’m going to turn those into books as well awesome anything else in the rc field or something different.

[00:09:29] Well, there’s always the chance that if the book starts to take off, I could do a sequel. I think that there certainly room for that with jay and going off.

[00:09:46] To fight school. Yeah, yeah, the ending is left open enough to where you could definitely get another two or three or maybe even four books out of it. Really, yeah, I was gonna say I don’t want to talk too much about what it’s about because I don’t want to give a lot of it away. So anything, I appreciate that, yeah. So anything, yeah, anything that you say obviously is okay, but just know, I’m gonna kind of reserve what I say about the book just because of that. See, I’m in good shape because I haven’t read.

[00:10:13] It yet, so I can’t give anything away. Hey, david, I had. I do have one question before we get, before we get really serious about it. Is so you mentioned you’ve done, you’ve done some other short stories and things like that. If somebody wants to like, if they, if they read the valley flyers book and decide that they really like your, your style or whatever, can they, can they look up your name? Or do you use a?

[00:10:34] Surname or do you use a different kind of a pen name? No, they can look up my name. I don’t have a pen name, it’s just david boy. I have a website, david boytocom- perfect, they can go there. They can also follow me. If you go, you can follow me. I have an amazon author page you can follow me. So that way, the next book that comes out, which hopefully will be at the end of this year, you’ll you’ll get the news of that. Sweet, cool. And so when was this one released? This has only been out since the early.

[00:11:12] November of last year. Okay, so it’s a fairly new book, then. Fairly new, yeah, I think it’s pretty new. I’m still in the process of trying to get the word out about it. Yeah, that’s obviously a big factor with things like these is getting people to hear about it. It’s obviously the ideal situation would be for something to go viral. But right, we take what we can get. Yeah, yeah.

[00:11:40] Well I can say I have I have purchased it so it’s on my kindle at home I just need to sit down and.

[00:11:46] Read it and I do plan on doing that because your autograph copy is already in the mail oh awesome thank.

[00:11:52] You very much I cannot wait I can’t wait to get that’ll be awesome so how long does it take.

[00:11:58] You to write a book like this. Well it because the book started out as a screenplay. It was a little bit easier because I already had the plot, so probably took me again. Are you looking for like man hours or just like I write? Only able to write probably two to three hours a day. So, considering that the, the script took probably about a year and then the book took- I actually had a

[00:12:29] Little bit more time, because during the lockdowns my company had sort of shut down, so I was furloughed for a while for my day job, and so I actually had some more time, and so the book probably took me between- between going back and forth with my editor- probably eight or nine months.

[00:12:52] Oh, okay, yeah, yeah, I just I have never written a book, so I have no clue. Like I don’t know if it’s a five-year process or if it’s something to where, if you have everything planned out, you can sit down.

[00:13:03] In six months and do it I just I imagine the process is it probably is different.

[00:13:08] Depending on inspiration and things like that. I bet too correct. So as a screenplay, since it started out as a screenplay, then you had everything like figured before you started write the book. You obviously knew.

[00:13:20] What was going to happen and you kind of had that. Yeah, the difference between a screenplay and a book is that a screenplay is very short on descriptive language. It’s it’s meant to be mostly dialogue driven and with some description, but people that read screenplays, they don’t want to see a lot of words on the page, and so I had to kind of recalibrate myself with the book to really start describing things in detail and so that’s that’s the difference. In the process there’s a lot.

[00:13:55] More description. Okay, here’s the scene, here’s what’s going on, whereas in the screenplay it’s a little bit more dialogue driven and in a in a movie, you cut in and out of scenes quickly, whereas in a book it’s it’s meant to. Each scene or chapter is meant to have more: a, a clear cut, ending, a clear cut, beginning, a middle and an end for a chapter, and so it’s a little bit. It’s a little bit different. So, yeah, hopefully that answers your question.

[00:14:28] Yeah, and that makes sense then. So pretty much when you started writing the book, when you adapted it to a book, you already knew what the characters were. You weren’t really learning about them, like maybe when you wrote the screenplay, or how does that work? That is correct. I knew who the

[00:14:43] Characters were and I pictured them in my mind’s eye and I did flesh them out a little bit more in the book. The other nice thing about writing a book is you can get into a character’s head and talk about what they’re thinking. Obviously, in a, in a movie you’re, it’s all about the visual, it’s about what you’re seeing. You can’t, and in a movie script it’s sort of verboten to discuss what the character is thinking. That’s not done in a movie script. So it’s nice actually to have

[00:15:15] More ability to get into a character’s head with a novel I guess that makes sense I was.

[00:15:22] Gonna say you don’t have the inner monologue that you do in a book. If you’re watching a movie, you, you, you rely more on the facial expressions to show emotion and that kind of stuff, which that’s correct without pictures. You lack that in a book and that’s probably also why a lot of

[00:15:36] People will say oh that was an okay movie but man the book was so much better it’s probably why because.

[00:15:41] You have all that and then you can put your own personal like spin on it. When you’re reading it too, you make it more internal. Yes, no, that’s awesome. We, we talked before. We emailed back and forth david a little bit, and you said that you’re not an rc pilot and you’re really not into rc, which is fine. I mean that’s cool. Yeah, we don’t hold that against you. It’s not that I’m

[00:16:04] Not into it’s just yeah I don’t have the time to invest in really doing it properly at this.

[00:16:11] Point anyway. Well, yeah, you don’t have a lot of experience with actual tinkering with rc airplanes and stuff, correct? How did you come up with the idea of writing a book that relies so heavily on the hobby on rc airplanes, to really tell your story? Well, that’s a very good question I work with.

[00:16:28] A couple guys at my day job and they would always come into work and talk about their weekends on the rc field and they talk about the planes they were flying and they were just so enthusiastic about it. It’s kind of contagious, and so that was part of the inspiration as well. I mean, I well, as well as going over here to the local airfield, part of it was just these couple of friends. That was the water cooler. Talk at work was what. What kind of

[00:17:02] Planes were they flying, where did they fly and what kind of stunts were they doing? One of the guys is a really good helicopter, single rotor helicopter, rc pilot and he would tell me about his. He crashed, crashed the chopper that weekend, had to rebuild, and so I kind

[00:17:23] Of lived vicariously a little bit through them. Sure, and this being an RC airplane podcast me, I’m interested in knowing. So, like Ron mentioned that you, you mentioned a Telemaster in the in the story and some other airplanes that he didn’t want to divulge too much to me because I haven’t read it yet. But like, obviously you must pay attention to these guys that come in and talk about them, because otherwise how would to use the, a Telemaster name or any of others, what I mean?

[00:17:54] That’s correct. Yeah, that was certainly part of it was hearing their dialogue and discussion of what they were flying and the Telemaster. I did also do online research on that. It sounds like it’s really kind of a cool historical airplane that I just thought I just I just thought it’d be cool to include it in the book. That was the one that stood.

[00:18:22] Out to me like it’s funny, because telemasters for Tom and I kind of hold a special place in our hearts. We have one, we have one that we restored, that we affectionately call the trash can Telemaster, because Tom pulled it out of it, literally pulled it out of a- not a dumpster but a giant trash can- yeah, at somebody’s estate sale, and so it was an estate sale, yeah. So I’ll tell the story briefly.

[00:18:47] So, yeah, I went to an estate sale. One of our local modelers passed away and the club was helping the, the widow, get rid of all the stuff that he had accumulated over 30 or 40 years of flying, and the stuff that didn’t sell was relegated to the trash can. So I loaned a table for them to do their setup and sell the stuff yard sale like. So the next day I went to pick up my table and there was this, among other airframes: a fairly complete senior Telemaster.

[00:19:19] From hoppy lobby and I was like: so I went up to the as I was picking up my table I was like, hey, what do you? I mean, what are you going to do with the stuff out in the trash can? She’s like, well, the trash can. So yeah, he’s gonna take it when the trash can guy comes. So I was like, well, would you mind if I take some of those? She’s like, take whatever you want out of there. So yeah, I pulled the trash can Telemaster out of the trash can and a few other airframes. That ended up not saving, but yeah, it kind of holds a special place in and Ron and I, I think

[00:19:50] Our collective rc heart and yeah so to see that mentioned in the book is pretty neat.

[00:19:58] Yeah, I can. I can picture it flying through the air, because we have done that ourselves. This one that came from the trash can is now completely restored and flyable and everything has been gone over and fixed. And yeah, it’s just I. I liked the different planes you mentioned in the book and that was the one that stood out to me. Yeah, I really can’t wait to read it now. The Telemaster- I.

[00:20:17] Assume runs on regular fuel right yeah it runs on gasoline ours is gas powered yeah.

[00:20:25] Depending on the size. You can have electric power, you can have nitro power or gasoline. I don’t like nitro because it’s a pain in the butt, it’s expensive, it’s. There’s a lot that goes into it- and Tom is rolling his eyes at me because he’s a big nitro guy- but I fought him back and forth on what went on that airplane and we settled with a gasoline engine. Well, we settled with a gasoline engine.

[00:20:48] Because we couldn’t get any other engines to run right oh you mean the nitros didn’t run right.

[00:20:53] So there was some experimentation oh yeah it’s a long story yeah it’s a very there was a lot that.

[00:20:59] Went into it. There were four or five motors that went on to that before we found the one that we settled on and, yeah, it was not all smooth sailing, but it turned out okay, yeah, yeah, back to the issue.

[00:21:08] Of the fuel. You’ll. You’ll recall that I won’t go into it too much, but there’s a scene in the book about the LiPo batteries that catch fire. Yeah, and that actually I had a neighbor down the street. His garage caught fire because he was charging. He left unattended a LiPo battery that he was using for a remote-controlled car and his garage literally caught fire. I guess the thing.

[00:21:40] Overcharged. Yeah, that’s, that’s definitely a risk of LiPos, although today, these days, they’re the chargers that we use and all that are so safe that they’re fairly stories like that they.

[00:21:56] Now have sort of a fail safe on them yeah that turns them off but it can still happen yeah so long story.

[00:22:02] Short on LiPos is they’re. They’re made of separate cells and if one cell gets overcharged, which if you’re charging it as one full pack, then that can happen and it can catch on fire and ends not very well, right. But the new chargers we have nowadays are actually balanced chargers that will charge each cell inside of the battery separately. So that really has made it quite a bit safer with LiPos and stuff in the, I’d say, in the last 10 years maybe, or so, yeah, ah, so okay, yeah, a lot of advancements has come to.

[00:22:34] Make things better? Yeah, well, I would think yeah, if things are starting to burn and then people start to work out how to avoid that. Yeah, yeah, maybe I don’t want one of these, yeah.

[00:22:47] David, I have a question for you. So when, when you’re, when you’re writing a book or screenplay and you’re trying to set a particular scene or mood, do you find that- I mean, obviously it’s not easy to do, otherwise everybody would be a writer, correct? I mean, something like that to put into words is not easy to do- I would have to assume I can’t do it. And then and then, kind of to follow on from that, where do you take your inspiration from? When you, when you get into a situation where you’re having a hard

[00:23:15] Time describing a scene, do what I mean. Yeah. Yeah, you’re right, it’s not, it’s not easy, it’s sort of a muscle that has to be exercised, and so I’ve been doing it a while and sort of like any art form, like sculpting or whatever you sort of- start by sketching in.

[00:23:38] Molding a little bit here, a little bit there, sketching something here and there, and then filling it in gradually. That’s kind of how it works with writing as well. You start with the seed of an idea like: wow, this is what would happen at an rc field. If, what, what kind of? What kind of threat could there be that was generated by, and you had these group of rc flyers that they’re the only ones that really know about.

[00:24:10] It, and so you start to build, build on the little seeds that you start with, and you have to kind of listen to your inner voice and not edit it or censor it too much and go, oh that’s no good or this no good. You just sort of write down everything and from there then you can start. Once you get a first draft. It might not even be very good, but you can you, it’s a starting point. From then you can start trimming and molding seams.

[00:24:43] I don’t need this but this is actually really good and how can I accentuate this scene and so that’s.

[00:24:49] That’s kind of how I work anyway. Okay, that makes sense because I have to do a lot of writing for where I work and I noticed that not like a lot of no, no, I mean like memorandums and stuff like that, but they have to be. They’re going to somebody more important than me usually because I’m writing them for that person, because they don’t have the time to do it themselves. So I’ve noticed that a lot of times I’ll write something and then I’ll get away from it for a day or two and then when I open it back up in my, in my microsoft word or whatever, and

[00:25:23] I read it again and I’m like: well, this was terrible. I must have been stoned when I wrote this. This is awful, and I imagine. I imagine writing a book is probably no different. It is, and that’s sort of the

[00:25:34] Trap is to, if you start editing yourself too early, that can. Then you get into things like writer’s block and stuff like that, because you’re you’re stopping your, your inner creative voice before you should. You need to sort of just let the bad stuff come out, and along with that bad stuff there will be good stuff. But if you, if you’re just so worried about writing something, oh this is no good, that’s bad, and so you just stop everything.

[00:26:04] Stops. So it is a fine line and even with your whatever memoranda you’re writing, you have to just do a draft and then, and then come back and trim and edit. Yeah, well, I’m.

[00:26:17] Curious. So, like when I’m building airplanes- because I’ll draw that correlation somehow between airplanes- when I’m building airplanes, I cannot focus on one start to finish. I always have multiple projects going on at once. When you, when you wrote this, was this the only thing you were working on at that time, or did you have other things going on too? That’s a very good question. Yes, I had other.

[00:26:40] Things going on at the same time, and you’re absolutely right, the your analogy is absolutely spot on. It is better to have more than one thing going on, because you need to take a break from one to the other. If you do reach a place where that the ideas aren’t flowing, you can’t put it down for a day or two, work on this other thing and kind of keep juggling them, and it actually is very effective that way. That way you don’t get stuck into this tunnel vision of this. Oh,

[00:27:11] My god I’ve got to make this only one story work and it and it just it’s it’s sort of.

[00:27:17] Self-defeating. If you get into that mindset, yeah, I find myself able to make myself work on things more if I can bounce from one to another. If it’s one thing, especially if I get to a spot where I don’t want to do what I have to do next, like sanding a frame down before I cover it or something like that, yeah, it’s hard to find the motivation to start working on anything if I know that’s all I can do. But knowing I have other things and it’s easier to kind of work your way up to doing that part that you don’t want to do, yeah. So yeah, I can understand that completely, but like that’s a, that’s a whole.

[00:27:50] That’s a whole left brain right thing. Right, because some people are good at that and some people, like me, I’m not good at that. Like I have to. I have to finish this thing that I’ve started before I can allow myself to move on. It’s like a almost like a reward. Right, like I have to finish this project before I can open up the box on this next project or whatever it is. So I imagine there’s probably different processes for different. There are. Now there’s something to be said.

[00:28:17] Certainly for completing one thing before going on to the next. It’s just sometimes, creatively for me anyway, I just it’s. It helps to take a break with the one thing and that way there’s just not this absolute necessity to this, this anvil held over your head that I have to finish this thing or else I have nothing else. Yeah, Ron and I are both taking our head. Yes,

[00:28:47] Yeah I agree so like the characters in your book were they based on people you knew.

[00:28:53] Or know, or was that just kind of pulled out of left field? No, they are sort of they’re. They’re a combination or a combination of people that I know. Each character you take, you meet people and they inspire you to include certain traits in the, in the characters, and then you meet somebody else. You think, oh, and I could throw that in as well, and so

[00:29:26] Yeah, like for the kent character, my, I have some people in my family that are involved in the american legion and so I kind of knew about that whole world, veterans and so yeah so I included little bits and pieces of people that I met into some of the characters and

[00:29:52] That’s. That’s kind of what keeps you moving forward, as being able to refer to people in real life, but changing them so that there’s not too much similarity. This isn’t completely based on.

[00:30:05] You, yeah, right, only the good parts. Right, right, right. That’s awesome, one of the I. I don’t want to get too much into it because, like I said, I don’t want to give it away, but one of the things that.

[00:30:19] Plays a big role in this book is the drone light show. I find that very interesting because so after I read this book, I watched tesla opened up their manufacturing plant down in austin and they had a. They had a drone light show on that, which was awesome. But the whole time I was watching that all I was thinking about was your book and how that plays out and in there and what it actually encompasses to be done, and I, like I said, I just I wanted you to know that.

[00:30:49] Yeah I’ve kind of taken the book with me and other thoughts when I’m going wow that’s great.

[00:30:55] Yeah, the whole. That’s I. I just I thought that really hadn’t been depicted much in any of the stories that I’ve encountered and I wanted to include that because of it’s sort of a new, it’s a new revolution: the fireworks. The days of fireworks may be going away to a certain degree- I mean, we’ll see how it all plays out- but you had that big drone light show at the super bowl and more and more places are doing them, and so I wanted to.

[00:31:26] Include that as an aspect of the story. Yeah, it was very unique and since I don’t watch sports, I’d never actually seen one before. Yeah. So, like I said when, when they did that thing in austin, I was blown away by it because I’d never seen it. And then it actually kind of filled in a lot of what I was missing visually by not knowing what it was when I read your book. So wow, that’s great, that’s really cool. So I thought it was a, like I said, it was an interesting book and I it’s hard not to talk about.

[00:31:58] The different things that happen. That, yeah, but go read it yourself. Yeah, I’m going to. I’m not just talking to you. Well, you looked at me when you said that, so I took that to heart and

[00:32:07] I’m gonna read it, but, david, I’m so Ron and I have talked so in. As with any hobby- and I imagine writing is no different- you, there are distractions in life. Right, we have kids, we have jobs, we have all these other little things that we do, and Ron and I have talked on the show before about what distracts us from doing what we love. What does what kind of

[00:32:33] Things distract you and what do you do to overcome them? Well, that’s a great question. Certainly all the things you mentioned can come up, and sometimes to write is a nice distraction from some of the heavier aspects of reality, and because writing them one of the cool things about is you are kind of going into this other world of your own creation and fiddling around with these characters, and so that in a certain sense, I mean that’s part of the joy of

[00:33:04] Writing. But as far as distractions from writing other than big life events, one thing I find that’s a bit of a distraction that I really have to discipline myself from is like emails coming in and a new breaking news story pops up on your browser, yeah, and I have to turn all that stuff off because it’s just a creativity killer once you start getting into.

[00:33:36] Returning emails. So sometimes what I’ll do is I’ll try and get all my writing done for the day before even turning on the internet, which is not always, it’s sometimes easier said than done, but I find it works better- is to sort of, in the morning, try and keep all, even the, even the radio news or whatever, keep the tvs off, the radio news off, just kind of try and keep yourself on kind of purified from the outside world until you’ve gotten your pages done for the day. Cool, yeah, it’s good.

[00:34:12] To stay unplugged sometimes so you don’t have all the distractions that can easily take you away from.

[00:34:17] What you need to be doing. Yeah, well, that’s that actually. That actually brings me to my, to my last question. Yeah, it ties in perfectly, because here in the hobby we’re not connected to a computer to actually play with our airplanes- not really right. So when you’re writing, so in my mind writing means pen and ink on a piece of paper with no distractions. Obviously it’s not done that way these days, so typewriters now shut up. I’m not that old, but I assume most of your writing

[00:34:51] Is probably done on some sort of an information technology system. Yeah, correct, it is microsoft word. So that’s why, yeah, no, the nice thing about what you’re talking about is, yeah, you don’t have to turn on the computer, and so that is kind of a pure time for you. You don’t have to turn on the radio while you’re doing it. Yep, that’s exactly right, and that’s why always that, yeah, there’s always that temptation, with the computer on, to switch over to yahoo news or whatever, and that’s.

[00:35:27] Usually a really bad idea. Yeah, just click this or just click that, which is why I mean you mentioned having something on in the background, and a lot of our listeners have us on in the background while they’re while they’re doing their hobby, so I can imagine we’re not much of a distraction then.

[00:35:42] No nobody listens it’s just background.

[00:35:46] All five of our listeners can’t wait to read you always do oh god I’m just teasing I know.

[00:35:54] Ron, you’ve done, believe it or not. There’s. There’s some writers, I know, that use. There’s some kind of app that you can get that will turn off, that will literally lock out all of the outside world off your computer until you need. It’s like a timer and you have to go through all these elaborate password steps to get it to come back on and if the time has not elapsed, and they use this to sort of keep themselves focused. It’s kind of funny, I mean I try and just use personal discipline.

[00:36:23] But yeah, some of us aren’t as good at that- though I, I will admit, I’m probably not. Maybe, instead of time, they should have a tour. You have to write like 4 000 words, yeah, yeah, right, wait, but then that puts:

[00:36:34] That whole pressure of, like he mentioned, having the anvil over your head. I didn’t say they had to be good words. You don’t want to kill the creativity, so yeah. One final question for me: has writing the book and getting that insight made you want to get into the hobby?

[00:36:52] It, it, it’s. I’ve actually had some, some, some offers to train my me on some flight lessons and I would love to do it. I just having to get some of these books out and so forth is sort of my first priority. So I am eager to, I’m eager to do it, but I’m also a little reticent because I don’t want to crash any planes. So I would definitely have

[00:37:24] To be on a buddy box for a bit and I would definitely need a spotter and all that stuff.

[00:37:30] Yeah, so with a buddy box, you don’t have to worry about crashing at all, because if something happens it’s not your fault. That means the person that’s training you did not do their job well, because they should always be in control when it needs to be in control. So I, I mean, I would recommend spending an hour or two at the field, the your local field, there and just say, hey, sign me up with an instructor and let’s see how this goes. For an afternoon just, or borrow a flight.

[00:37:57] Simulator. Oh, there you go. I forgot about real flight or whatever. Since you’re already working on your computer, is that the best way to start with a simulator before it’s a good way? I mean, it’s not.

[00:38:06] A terrible way to start. I think it depends what you’re coming in, as if you have somebody that can teach you. I think in person at the field is probably better than a simulator. But simulators are nice because you can hone your skills. Yeah, and if you crash something, it doesn’t matter, you reset it and

[00:38:23] You go again, you’re not out anything, right, yeah, right, a lot of that depends on what floats your boat for me. I, I’m, I’m not a computer. I’m not a computer guy, obviously right, but I, I like doing stuff with my hands. So the physical aspect of it is what kind of draws me away from the, from the flight simulators. But if flying is really all your, you want to want to get into a simulator is a great way to do that. I think yeah, yeah. So I’m just curious, do you?

[00:38:52] Guys do any first person viewing or is that more so you said more quadracopter thing than it is a fixed.

[00:38:58] Wing, yeah, so we’ve talked about that before and it makes me sick to my stomach. I can’t do it like physically that having the goggles on and not having that, that actual frame of reference in the periphery, makes me dizzy, yeah, and then I get sick to my stomach so I can’t. But yeah, I’m the same.

[00:39:13] Way, unfortunately, but we do have friends that do fpv with fixed wing. I just like I would love to be able to do it. Yeah, I really would. Yeah, but I can handle about six or seven seconds and then I’m ready to throw up and be done for the rest of the day. Yeah, yeah, some guys say that sitting down.

[00:39:30] Helps. I’ve I’ve tried sitting down. I’ve tried saying I mean, I just I haven’t tried sitting, maybe I’ll try that I. So the one time I tried it not to get off the rails here, but I was sitting down in a lawn chair and I do the lean like what I’m saying, yeah, and I about fell out of the chair because I was leaning so hard and so, yeah, it’s just not for me. I wish I’d have been there for

[00:39:52] That I’m sure you would have loved it that’s funny well obviously if it takes the fun out of it then.

[00:39:58] There’s no point, right, exactly, yeah. So, like I said, I if I could do it without getting sick, I would love it. Yeah, but maybe I’ll take some dramamine or something and try it again and maybe rub ginger behind your ear or something. Is that one of the things you’re supposed to do? Or chew on?

[00:40:13] I’ve heard of there’s a bunch of different things but you guys have cameras on your planes or some of.

[00:40:18] Them we have for recording yeah for recording episodes for youtube it’s just as good you.

[00:40:23] Record the flight and you enjoy it when you’re sitting down yeah it’s weird because I can.

[00:40:29] I can handle that, no problem. But I think it’s just having the goggles right on my head, yeah, right close to where I don’t have any peripheral vision of anything else. I’m completely blocked out. That it makes me, makes me nauseous, but it would be neat to be able to control it.

[00:40:44] In real time while I’m playing. Maybe if they put like a window, like on the side of the goggles, so you at least have some reference to outside, maybe that would be better. I don’t know. They have screens.

[00:40:55] Maybe I could do a screen instead of having the goggles. I could just look at this. Yeah, there you go. Maybe that might work. That might work. So anyway, yeah, we’re getting off the rails here, okay, well, david, thank you very much for coming on. Like I said, the book is valley flyers. How do you? How?

[00:41:10] Do you find it? Where do you find the book is available on amazon. It’s available at barnes and noble. You can pretty much just look it up online and it’s it’s available most online retailers. Yep, unfortunately there’s not too many actual physical bookstores left. Yeah, we.

[00:41:32] Have one in town now yeah we have yeah we still have a barnes and noble but that’s about all yeah.

[00:41:38] So it’s available there. You probably you might have to order it from them. They might not keep it in stock, okay, but yeah, please, that would be great. If people are interested, please, please read it, and I’d love to hear feedback from anybody in the rc community, for sure, and I’m just going to say the

[00:41:58] Same thing. Any of our listeners that read it reach out to us, yeah, and let us know what you thought about it. And yeah, I will. If we get any information back from them, I will pass that on to you.

[00:42:06] That’d be great and also amazon reviews are always most appreciated as well oh I should do that I.

[00:42:12] Haven’t done that yet. So there you go. I will do that because it’s a good book, so I look forward to hopefully having some other books in the series, perhaps a sequel, a sequel and a third, and

[00:42:24] A fourth that would be. That would be great. I’m all for it. I just got to see how much readership we get. Yeah, well, like I said, it was a good book and certainly helps. Yeah, like I said, it was a.

[00:42:38] Good book and a worthwhile read so cool well david like I said before thank you for being.

[00:42:45] On and yeah this was cool there’s something different but I actually really enjoyed this.

[00:42:49] Yeah and I’m gonna read the book I promise okay Tom and you are thank both of you guys for having me.

[00:42:55] I, I really, really appreciate it. Yeah, not a problem, you are more than welcome to come back on when the sequel comes out. No pressure, no pressure. I’ll make a note of that for sure. All right, thanks, david. Well, thank you everybody for listening. Until next time. I’m Ron and I’m Tom and you, I’m david boito. Author of.

[00:43:15] Valley flyers. Thanks for listening, good night. Good night. We hope you enjoyed this episode of the RC Plane Lab podcast. For topic suggestions, to ask questions or to give any feedback, connect with us at rcplanelab.com or email us direct at either Ron at rcplanelab.com or Tom at rcplanelab.com. You can also text us or leave us a voicemail at 818-351-9846. Please subscribe, rate and review us on your favorite podcast app. Until next time, may your landings be gentle.