Episode 48 · Originally released December 19, 2020 · Hosts: Ron, Tom, and Brian Burcar
Ron and Tom visit Dynamic Balsa for a wide-ranging conversation with owner Brian Burcar about his decades in the hobby and business.
In this episode
Episode Topics
Connect with RC Plane Lab
Chapters
00:38 — Meeting Brian at Dynamic Balsa
13:16 — Brian's start in the RC hobby
26:33 — From cutting balsa to running the business
39:49 — Designing detailed cockpit kits
53:05 — Top Gun projects and craftsmanship
66:22 — Advice, future plans, and closing
Episode Topics
Meeting Brian at Dynamic Balsa
Brian's start in the RC hobby
From cutting balsa to running the business
Designing detailed cockpit kits
Top Gun projects and craftsmanship
Advice, future plans, and closing
Key Takeaways
The episode combines practical RC airplane experience with firsthand workshop discussion.
The hosts explain not only what they did, but the reasoning and lessons behind it.
Listeners can use the chapter list to jump directly to the subjects that interest them.
Episode 48 Transcript
This transcript has been lightly edited for readability. Timestamps are retained.
Read the full transcript
[0:00] Hello and welcome to RC Plane Lab, a podcast for anyone interested in RC airplanes. We'll share tips and tricks on how to build models and talk about successful flights, epic crashes, and everything in between. Visit us at rcplanelab.com to sign up for our email list and to ask us questions. You can also text us or leave us a voicemail at 818-351-9846. Visit us at rcplanelab.com to sign up for our email list and to ask us questions.
[0:29] You can also text us or leave us a voicemail at 818-351-9846. Please help us out by rating and reviewing us in your favorite podcast app. Thanks for spending time with us today. Now here are your hosts, Ron and Tom. Hello everyone and welcome to the RC Plane Lab podcast. I'm Ron. And I'm Tom. So today we made a special trip up to leonore illinois
[0:54] and our recording with our friend brian from Dynamic Balsa our favorite hobby shop it is by far an amazing hobby shop to come to well worth the drive two hour drive to get here but they have everything you want yeah listeners have probably heard us talk about the shop a few times but they have everything you want. Yeah, listeners have probably heard us talk about the shop a few times over the course of our podcast career thus far. That's where we buy all of our falcata.
[1:10] You guys have heard us talk about that kind of stuff. We've had pretty good results with that, cutting it with a laser. So welcome, Brian, to the show. It's good to have you. Yeah, glad to be here. We'll start. Have you just tell us a little bit about yourself, and then we'll ask some of the questions we think our listeners want answers to. Well, I've been an RC flyer since about 1985. My wife bought me an airplane for Christmas, and I guess the rest is history. It's quite a
[1:37] history. Yeah. Well, as most flyers, I kept moving on to bigger and bigger airplanes, and they were getting more expensive. So I started doing RC-related stuff to help support my airplane habit, and now I have a hobby shop. That's awesome. Well, and you don't just have a hobby shop. Well, no. I have a lot of scale accessories for airplanes that I have developed over the years as cockpits and gun sights and dummy guns, canopy rails and a lot of other stuff.
[2:12] Which by the way congratulations on your Top Gun win again another dynamic ball so a cockpit kit in the winner's circle. Yes that's really good I've had several over the years four years in a row I, I've had a cockpit in first place at Top Gun at one of the categories. So that's always nice. Very cool. Yep. Very cool. So you said you started in 1985. I'll start with the questions. Do you remember your first airplane? Sure. It was a blue and white Falcon 56. Goldberg?
[2:42] Sure. It was a blue and white Falcon 56. Goldberg? Goldberg, yeah. Oh, yeah. And I didn't build it. My wife bought it ready to fly, pretty much, and had a lot of fun with it. It didn't survive the summer. Oh, no. Yeah. So was this also your first crash? Yes, that was my first crash. And, I mean, I fixed it a few times. And eventually, as I moved on to SIG Cadet after that, it was whatever I could find. And eventually, I did learn to fly.
[3:17] So what kept you coming back into the hobby? Oh, I'd always been an airplane enthusiast. I mean, I had been to oshkosh numerous times and i just never really knew anybody i mean i've been out to the flying field that watched him fly but i never knew anybody that flew and eventually i met some people and and so i mentioned to the wife about flying and. And she bought me an airplane, and I've always had one. And now I have quite a few.
[3:50] Can you put a number on that? My personal airplane is probably about 30. Oh, that's a lot less than I would have thought. Yeah, I mean, I have a lot of airplanes here in the hobby shop for sale. But most of them are 30-giant-scale planes. I don't fly too much small stuff anymore. Yeah, to sort of set the mood and the view for our listeners, we're actually in Brian's hobby shop surrounded by airplanes. Yeah, I can probably count 15 right now.
[4:22] Oh, yeah, there's easily 300 airplanes in the in the shop so to to hear brian say he has 30 airplanes is somewhat misleading well 30 giant scale oh okay so we're not talking 40 size right nothing like what we're used to flying he's talking real yeah expensive nice airplanes right exactly right i mean well i don't crash as many as i used to and well that's good there's a lot of airplanes i buy and sell and trade a lot of
[4:49] airplanes so i get first dibs on what comes in the door yeah so there's always something comes in the door catches my eye and says ah that's a good position to be in right yeah i'd like to fly that one so in addition to the to the hobby shop and the scale accessories businesses, you're also a machine shop owner. I do. And just this morning in our conversation before this, I discovered that you also do a catering business. Yeah, my wife has a catering business. I do help her out.
[5:19] So Brian is a very busy man. What I love, though, so as we were getting this stuff set up, we were talking about, Tom and I are building the Duelists by Dave Platt. He's the one that designed it and stuff. And just down the middle of Brian's like, oh, yeah, I know Dave. I mean, he knows everybody. Yeah, I talked to Dave last year at Toledo. I mean, yeah, Brian is well connected in the industry. Well, I've been going to the RC shows since the early 90s okay as of as exhibitor
[5:47] and vendor and stuff so you started with the chicago shows there or actually my no my first rc show was in l.a oh oh wow yeah new york and and then toledo and have you always been anchored here and yes i've always been here in leonard okay and uhanor. Okay. And so I've been to a lot of shows. And, you get to know quite a few people year after year. You see them and see them at various flying events. So it's always a lot of fun.
[6:17] Well, and you mentioned before we started recording that it's a small community. Even though it's, in my opinion, a big hobby, it is kind of a small community. And when you've been in the hobby, as long as you have, you do make those contacts and know those people. And you probably keep contact with a lot of those people who were very influential in the hobby, like Dave Platt or Nick Zeroli was another name that came up.
[6:46] Which is really kind of what prompted us to want to sit down with you because you've been in the hobby long enough. all these ins and outs. You've had your hands in so many of the businesses that I got in the hobby, like I said in our first show back in 1980. So I'm familiar with a lot of the companies that you've actually had a hand either in running or owning briefly or advising. And to me, it's just a, it makes for a great conversation.
[7:13] Yeah, and I'm new to all this, so I'm still learning. Well, and it's interesting, I think, because I think when Ron and I were up here a couple months ago, you were nice enough to have lunch with us, which is what prompted this whole thing. And I believe we were talking about the wing manufacturing company. And we were talking about, I think we were just kind of talking about the twin project and the subject of their B-25, I think, came up.
[7:40] And you said that you had had some involvement with the wing manufacturing company. Yeah. when I started, my first RC business was I actually cut balsa wood. I bought a company out in California and moved it here to Illinois, started cutting balsa wood, which was working out really well. And I happened to be in New York at the Ram Show, and I run into a guy that had a company called Pack Models,
[8:06] and he had several kits that he manufactured so i bought his business and started making some kits and he had all the way up to a third scale cherokee and he had a lot most of his were 40 60 size what i did is i took one of the 40-size airplanes, and it was 42 inches, and we doubled it up. Because at the time, there was a lot of bigger airplanes were coming out. And this was a low-wing sport plane. It looked really nice.
[8:35] So we took and doubled it up, and I thought, it'd be really nice if we just get a foam wing and not have to build up a wing and design all the ribs and everything. and not have to build up a wing and design all the ribs and everything. So I went over to see Ralph over at Wing Manufacturing, Ralph Andre at the time, and he got to talking, and he goes, how'd you like to be in the wing business? And next thing I'm hauling it home.
[9:07] And, I mean, I cut wings almost every day for the next 15 years and eventually over the course that time I did pick up Avco and I was doing the cockpit kits and I have since I have and a lot of these places are just going under and I buy them because I don't want them to disappear. Exactly. Yeah. And so then I bought a company called Pinkett recently, about three, four years ago, and doing pinking tape. And also a company called C-Temp. And again, he was retiring.
[9:37] And I just thought I'd, maybe save the business, when you still have the stuff available. Right. Because there's so much things in the RC world have disappeared that they were really good items and they're gone and then you're done then yeah when they're gone they're gone yeah ron and i have commented numerous times on the on the show a tool that isn't made anymore or an airplane that isn't made
[10:01] and it's a shame but yeah you cover right covering irons and oh yeah that is such a shame i i bought all i could buy at the hobby shop and then they were out of them and now there's no more and they were like the best yeah i think last time we were up here we bought the rest of them you bought all of my head yeah yeah because you never know when they're saying exactly you never know when they're gonna die or something you need a backup
[10:23] i know and once in a while i get one in in. As I trade in, somebody just comes in and quits flying or whatever, and I buy all their stuff. But yeah, it's just sad that the only one out there is this really cheapo that they have available now. And it's too bad they got rid of the good one and yeah keeping the junk one yeah and they have the best one in the world and then they're taken and getting rid of it now we were talking last week
[10:51] is coverite still in business coverite is not in business okay we weren't sure i kind of assumed that but weren't sure the only fabric i know i can get is oratex yeah and that's the stuff from germany that's from germany i have that yeah there's ultra code of course which is really oracover yeah yeah so that's made in germany too and i have no idea where MonoKote is made if it's made in the same place
[11:16] or not you found yourself coming home with a with a wing manufacturing company yes so how many rc companies would you say you've either owned or and had a hand running yeah oh maybe six can you name seven so manufacturing that's one yeah yeah there was well there was the balsa business and wing manufacturing of course i mentioned pinkett avco c-temp and i own top gun aircraft for a while and i've since sold that no kidding so and again it just i i would have would
[11:56] like to have kept doing it but i just there's only so many hours in the day well yeah and it was a lot a lot of work yeah i've've pretty much tried to start slowing down a little bit. And the hobby shop has been really busy, which has been really good. That is good, because that's good for us. Yeah, it is. It's good for the modelers, and it allows me to… The downside is a lot of other people, like Hobby is gone and Hobby Co. is gone.
[12:25] And it's really tough for a hobby shop to get a lot of stuff they used to get because, Horizon don't have everything and they don't really promote the building world very good. And that's what Ron and I are single-handedly trying to bring back. Or double-handedly. Or double. Believe it or not, I have a lot of customers that are builders. And I mean, I try and support the builders a lot. I mean, I buy a lot of building stuff. I have a lot of tools here, odds and ends.
[12:58] But it's getting thin as far as people that make them and how to get a hold of them and that. Which is sad. It is sad. Especially with me just getting into it. It's like I'm finding something and listen to some of the people that have been in it for so long that know the tools that are available or were available. And then trying to come across them and find them. It's disheartening that you can't get what you used to be able to get yeah i mean really well in in balsa even right now
[13:30] balsa you cannot get i mean it's it's coming like like sig i called sig up to order some airplanes and they have no balsa at the time there's some coming in and i cannot i literally other than balsa usa which is more larger kits i mean they got a few smaller ones but mostly there's those larger kits and other than them there's some chinese companies that do some balsa kits but they're so expensive by the time you get them in
[13:58] and shipping is just crazy these days yeah as you can imagine right and crazy these days as you can imagine right and I I used to have a quite a few sick kids on the shelf just either trade-ins or ones I just bought just to put on the shelf and I have since sold them all I mean I have a few other types of kids but my kit line is getting pretty thin there right at the moment
[14:22] too yeah cuz if you can't find them. Yeah, fewer and fewer companies make them. Yeah. Which I'm sure has something to do with demand, which is then if there's less demand, there's going to be less development. So there's going to be fewer kits to build. So there's even more or less demand. So it's a vicious cycle that we're trying to break. Yeah. It's a lot of work to build kits. It is. Now, of course, the lasers make it a lot easier.
[14:46] You can just have them laser cut, and it sure beats buying a set of dies and having a machine to die cut them. Right. Or die crush them, whatever. Die crush them. Yeah. And so, in one way, it's easier to produce kits now than it used to be because of that. But still, you've got to be able to design an airplane. Right, and develop it and make sure it flies good and change it after you discover that it doesn't fly good. Yes, correct. So, yeah, it takes time and money, unfortunately. Yes.
[15:20] And if there's not a market out there to sell it to, then… Yeah, I mean, you'd like to make… I'm sure if you're making kitsch, you'd like to do 1,000 or 500, not just 15 or 20. Right. Yeah. And I've noticed that there's a few small companies like Mustache Model Works. Yep. There's a couple of other ones out there that are really small, kind of focusing on maybe just one airplane, which is fine. But then what if you want to build something that's not that airplane?
[15:47] what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. So can you remember the last kit you built? I know you're a busy guy. The last kit I built was probably a nose in Mr. Mulligan. Okay. Which you can still get, I think. I think you can still buy nose in kits. Don't kid you. I thought I saw somewhere online you could find them. Oh, maybe somebody's making them again. I guess there is somebody starting to… Triple C, maybe? Carolina Custom kits, maybe? No, I know that… Well, I heard that I think
[16:15] it might be those guys are starting to make the old Top Flight kits available again. Oh, well, that's fun. So, 60 size, I think. 60 size warbird kits yeah very popular maybe maybe larger i i haven't really checked them out somebody just told me that the other day man you can always build his roll a kit from plans i guess yeah yes yeah there are plenty of plans out there you can find yeah but if you've never done it before it's hard to do it straight from
[16:40] plans without really having the the background to know what you're doing. Yeah, if you haven't already built a ball site airplane from a kit, building it from a plan is a little bit more challenging, but it can be done. I mean, like for instance, a Zeroli plans, you get maybe three or four drawings and you'll get one typewritten page with some little hints in that and some help. And there's some help written on
[17:05] the plans, but overall, Zerolis are pretty easy to build as far as if you'd never built a giant scale plane before, as opposed to a Hosteller plans would be a much tougher build for somebody that's never built before. Hosteller being more detailed? Well, they're detailed, but he just built it in a different way and is probably maybe more scale. And maybe some of it is just even the choice of the airplanes he does. But
[17:31] I just know from experience that some of his planes are just tougher to build than Zeroli's. Overall, Zeroli uses a crutch and it's a pretty easy setup to do. Jerry Bates, I think, builds his in top half and bottom half, and then you glue them together, which isn't too bad either. Yeah, building them in halves like that gives you a datum that you can put flat on the table and then come back and join them, which is fun.
[17:54] That's a good way to do it. And if anybody, I mean, I have hundreds of sets of plans here. So if anybody has an inkling to build an airplane, you're welcome to come over and look through the plans and find one you want to take home with you i mean i normally sell them pretty cheap yeah and and we can help you out with the building stuff right here too yeah yeah and the tools and
[18:14] everything that you're going to need covering all the way down line and the great thing about having a fully stocked hobby shop is it's a fully stocked hobby shop yeah anything you need hardware fuel tanks which we're gonna have to go shopping later yeah i actually have a list of things i need to is, well, it's a fully stocked hobby shop. Yeah. Anything you need, hardware, fuel tanks, which we're going to have to go shopping later. Yeah, I actually have a list of things
[18:27] I need to take home with me today, so. So, Brian, over your many years of being in the hobby, what would you say, and I know it probably changes over time, but what would you say your favorite aspect of the hobby is? And maybe how has it changed over time? Probably scale modeling. Okay. As far as changing, I mean, the radios have gotten much better. Oh, sure. A lot more channels and a lot cheaper. And, of course, engines have been, I mean, when I started modeling,
[18:53] Quadras and Sonomas were about it other than a few oddball engines. And now there's so many choices for engines. And they're powerful. They're easy to start. That's probably the two biggest ones yeah i mean as far as the wood goes balsa wood's pretty much still the same glues they had ca back then it's probably maybe a little better but for a scale modeler things are really pretty nice i mean the covering has gotten really good with the of course we had cover right
[19:22] back then then and of course you can't find it anymore but man that was some nice stuff to work with yeah yeah i have i have a few rolls of the coverite the the painted fabric stuff still oh okay i'm saving for a favorite for your camel project no no the camel is going to get soaking dope oh that's right i forgot about that if it ever gets done yeah it'll get done just It's just one of those long projects. I want it to be right when it's done. No, that's a decade-long project.
[19:49] That's okay, right? That's okay. You cut wings for other companies too, right? Not just the wing manufacturing company. I did. I cut wings for other companies. at the time, back then, shipping wasn't so bad. You could do that. I mean, I used to cut wings for radical rc dave thacker thatcher i'm familiar with that he's over in dayton okay dayton ohio and then i used to cut wings for jack stafford models he makes a really cool b24 by the way yes i cut 100 sets
[20:20] of b24 wings for him i used to build one of, when I cut the wings for that, I used to run seven wires in one pass to cut the wings. Seven wires? Yeah. In one pass. Yep. I'm trying to figure that one out. All at different angles then? There was different angles. It was one block of foam. I used to have, there was one wire cut in half four wires cut the airfoils and then two wires trimmed down the block of foam so it fit in the box better oh all at one time and then I did
[20:55] secondary cuts on it so what kind of foam did you use on that was that like it was a it was a bead or c bead geez I think it was c bead foam. No, it was one pound density. One pound. Okay. Yeah, but it's very close. I mean, you almost got to look really close to see the beads. It's great stuff. That's interesting. Yeah, when you sheet them with ball sandpaper. And the nice thing about it is the foam come out of Michigan, and there was somebody that close by that used a lot of foam.
[21:24] So I just called him up, and I'd come to work in the morning and there'd be like six blocks of four by eight by or two by four by eight foot long sitting outside on the sidewalk outside the hobby shop here. And it's like, oh, my foam's here, and I guess you don't have to worry about anybody carrying it away. Looks like I'm going to be busy today.
[21:42] i guess you don't have to worry about anybody carrying it away it looks like i'm going to be busy today yeah and yeah so i mean i always kept several of them in stock because you're supposed to make them you're supposed to leave them for a few weeks and let them age yeah i did not know that yeah there's actually so the company i work for makes foam blocks and we do one pound two pound three pounds oh okay and four actually i think it's 49 inch by 49 inch by 16
[22:04] foot long like huge blocks and yeah they age for like i think three or four weeks before you can even touch them yeah because they're water you have to let the water i mean they use steam when they to expand the beads oh yeah so it's an amazing process they put them in a they put them in a steel mold and then they put in so many pounds of this beads and then you put them in a steel mold, and then they put in so many pounds of these beads,
[22:27] and then you put steam in there, and it expands the beads and fuses them all together. But you have to let the water out. Okay. So that's why they have to sit. I'll be darned. Yeah. See, I learned something today. So, yeah, I was to the factory a couple times and watched them make them. That's an interesting process yeah yeah geez i can't remember how much i used to pay for them at the time maybe a couple hundred
[22:50] pounds or a couple hundred dollars a block but these are big blocks yeah two by four by eight foot yeah they were but it was about 65 70 pounds it's amazing the heat i mean you i i kept them in unheated part of the building. It might be zero out. You go up, as soon as you touch that block, it's warm, which is amazing. Most of the time, I'm handling steel if I wasn't handling foam. The steel, of course, that never gets warm. It went zero out.
[23:22] It was pretty interesting, the foam. The heat would just you'd be right there it would be warm did you ever did you ever get involved in the pattern in the pattern i used to cut pattern wings okay and i cut a lot of custom wings and i mean i probably cut there's probably people over the years that i would want 10 sets of wings for this or five sets for that, stuff like that. Did you ever cut for craft air or northeast aerodynamics or anything like that?
[23:53] Do you remember those? No. Because I had a craft air checkmate as a kid. And surprisingly, there's very little information about that airplane on the internet, which is surprising because it's such a good flying pattern airplane from the 70s. Yeah. But I've wanted to build one of those for a long time since and can't find… No parts, nothing. Yeah, no plans. I can't find plans anywhere. I can't find anybody that's got like maybe an
[24:14] old set of cores or anything like that. And the stab was cores, I think, too, on that. Craft Air Checkmate? Well, if I run across one, I'll let. You never know. Well, if anybody's going to run across one, it would be you. Exactly. I got a pattern airplane over the weekend. It's in the back room that came in. Oh, yeah? Yeah, and I can't think of the name of it. It's one I never heard of before. Really? Yeah. You said we have room in the truck to bring something home, Tom.
[24:38] You said you were buying an airplane today. Maybe. We'll see. I got a beautiful- ultra sport 60 those are good flying airports sportsters sportster 60 or ultra sport 60 in the back room too that is the guy did an amazing job on the covering yeah yeah it's ready to fly other than a receiver that's one of the things i need to buy today by the way is receiver yeah there you go so you talked you you got in the hobby in 85. When did you actually become a business owner in the hobby?
[25:10] Probably around 92. So that didn't take long at all. No. Seven years? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I bought my first giant scale airplane, which was a Mr. Mulligan in 91. I flew it all summer long and i had a quadra 42 in it and it was built really light and it flew great and had a lot of fun with it and tried flying it below the ground and it just didn't work with the time i like that i've never heard that before yeah yeah so eventually i ended up building another
[25:43] one and that's how you started in in a hobby related business, Mr. Morgan? Yes. I mean, yeah, that was my venture into giant scale. And, I think at the time I paid $700 for it, which was a lot of money 30 years ago. Oh, yeah. That's a lot of money now, if you ask me. Yeah. So it was quite a bit. I thought, well, if I'm going to have more of these big ones, I'm going to have to find a way to pay for them. And the first business was? The Cutting the Balsamwood.
[26:11] Cutting the Balsamwood. Yep. And then one thing kind of led to another. And then you'd meet people who were getting out of the business and you wanted to try to save them and you'd buy their business. Yeah. A lot of times people called me just because they knew I was in a similar business. I knew a lot of people from going to all the shows. So, that kind of worked hand in hand. I mean, and these weren't multi-thousand dollar business.
[26:35] I mean, most of them were just a few thousand dollars. Well, still. Yeah. I mean, cottage, kind of a cottage industry thing,. Small community. Yes. Like you said. But there's so much neat RC stuff that's just built in the basement, and people just sell them. Now it's easy with Facebook and YouTube and stuff like that that you can sell stuff pretty cheap. I mean, it kind of evens the playing field against a big manufacturer when you don't have a giant advertising budget.
[27:06] Yeah. Oh, yeah. That is true. Do you have a moment that sort of sticks out above all others in your time in the hobby? Like, do you have that one defining moment in the RC hobby that you'll always remember and maybe might even say that that helped guide you to doing what you're doing today. I'll think about that. Usually everybody has a story that they always go to. I have several. Ron? Well, I will say one. Back about 1994, I had just bought Avco cockpits.
[27:41] And, a guy by the name of Mike Cook, he had it for sale. And it was for sale for a long time and a friend of mine who taught me to fly he was building a yellow aircraft p-47 and he needed a cockpit for it so he called up mike and mike says i'm done i'm not doing any more cockpits i am i am finished with cockpits so he called me up. He says, hey, Brian, he says, you should call this guy. He's for companies for sale. And I'm thinking, oh my gosh. So I just put
[28:11] it off. Two months later, my buddy calls me again. He goes, hey, he says, you call this guy Mike yet? And I says, no, I haven't. He says, you should call him. It's still for sale. Nobody's buying it. you should call him it's still for sale nobody's buying it at the time all his cockpits were very basic 20 cockpits two side walls a dash a seat maybe a rear wall and then he had some optional gun sights a couple of them it was very very small i mean he had maybe 30 items total and i
[28:41] finally give mike a call this probably in December, probably 94 or something like that. And we talked about it. And, I had never, ever built a cockpit. I mean, I'd seen them, but I'd never, ever built one or knew anything about it or anything. And I called him up and we arrived at a price I thought was pretty fair with everything that I was getting. So my uncle and I, we hopped in my minivan and drove
[29:07] down to, yeah, yeah, Sury Astro at the time, drove down to Blendora, Texas, and I bought the business, brought it home, and I called up Nick Zeroli, and I had known him. And I called him up, and I says, hey, Nick. And I knew his next airplane was the SBD. I says, Nick, do you have the plans done? I says, I'd like to do a cockpit for the SBD. And he thought that'd be a pretty good idea. And he says, well, I can send you the cockpit plans. He says, they're
[29:45] pretty much all finished anyway. He was still, and it's only two months. I mean, at this time, it's probably first of the year already. And, cause I was kind of looking things over and seeing what I could do. And so it was only three months before Toledo, Nick said he would, he'd send me some plans. So Nick sent me the plans for this airplane. And, well, I called up Wayne Yeager at Toledo, and he was the director of the event. And he says, there's no booths available.
[30:19] And I thought, oh, my gosh, back in the day, now, the last, I don't know if anybody was there at the last one, but, it was only half an arena full. back in 94, there was no booths available. It was a waiting, waiting line. So he says, I'll put you on the list. So I said, okay, I was kind of dejected about that because I really wanted to be at Toledo
[30:36] there. Anyhow, nothing happened for about a month, about first of February, Wayne calls me up. He says, somebody dropped out. The booth is yours if you want it. I says, okay. In the meantime, I got my plans. And my friend who talked me into buying this company, he said he'd make the fuse section and he'll put it together if I made the parts. So I took and I had never, ever designed parts for a cockpit. I was looking over my molds I just got for the vacuform parts.
[31:06] And, again, they were very minimal, a couple of sidewalls, a dash and everything. And I thought, well, this SPD is going to be great. It's got a giant cockpit. And I was thinking that it should have a deserving interior to go with it. So I started with the floors, and made one piece after another and i would take a couple pieces over to him and then i next night i'd make one or two more
[31:31] and design a couple more and eventually we finished with it and nick got the i got the canopy for from nick on wednesday morning and i was leaving for Toledo on Thursday morning. And my buddy had the rest of the airplane all done, the fuse section all done. And he stayed up all night and finished it all. And I picked it up at 5 a.m. on Thursday morning, heading for Toledo. And it was all finished and looked like a million bucks and in the meantime i put 10 kits
[32:06] together with all these parts and writing instructions in between making all these things because i still have my day job to do and right so all these other businesses yeah it was a lot of work because it was it was all new to me and so i had gotten it all done and and i put a price tag on them i think think it was $225 because I thought, well, if I'm going to do interiors, I mean, I had hundreds of hours on doing this one.
[32:33] And I thought, well, you can't sell it for $20. Now, so for the SBD, this was a front and rear cockpit. A front and rear cockpit with the guns and everything, yes. And so I thought, well, up to this date, most of the cockpits around were only 20, 30 bucks, maybe $40. And I thought, well, I'm going to see if it flies because, I put a price on it at $225. And of course I had that cockpit section sitting
[32:58] there, which looked really awesome. And I sold out the first day at toledo i sold all 10 of them the first day wow that's so i thought well that's pretty cool i mean i think i should keep going with this then yeah yeah i mean if i'd brought all 10 on back home i don't know if i'd still be in the cockpit business what i mean okay yeah and but he was he was selling they were flying the the plans were flying off the
[33:25] shelves too yeah i mean it was a and it was a very nice flying airplane and there's to this day it's probably one of my best-selling interiors i now have probably three of them i have a quarter scale jerry bates spd and the jerry bates has a fifth scale also. And then there's also a Jerry Bates 85-inch SBD. And there's also an ESM SBD, I think. So I have a lot of different Dauntless interiors. Not to get away from the point, which was memorable RC moment.
[33:56] That would be memorable. Whether you sell 10 cockpit kits determining the future of a company or not, that's pretty memorable. But would you say it's easy, like on an SBD, let's say, is it easy to scale one cockpit from one size to the next, or is it a complete review? Yes. I mean, well, once you have all the basics down, yeah, it's pretty easy for me to… A lot of times I'll do, like just recently, probably a couple of years ago, maybe I came out with Sea Furies.
[34:23] Jerry Bates has three different ones, and then Valley Aviation has one. And they're all a little different. And I just did all four of them at the same time. Sometimes you can use the same pieces in both, two of them that are close. You got an 85-inch and a 92-inch or something. It's not that much difference in the interior. But there's a lot of pieces I had to make doubles and triples of and stuff, but,
[34:48] it's pretty easy. Cause you have one there already. You just make another one a little bigger, a little smaller. And so it was easy. I mean, I basically came out with all of them in the, in about a month, of each other. I mean, it was a lot of work for the four or five months before that, but I'm sure. Yeah. sure yeah i mean yeah because i don't do the interiors because i'm i i mean i have fun doing them i i don't do them because i'm getting rich
[35:11] off of them i mean it sounds like a lot of money 225 for an interior but it's a lot of pieces and a lot of work and you invest a lot of hours up front oh yeah and you slowly you hope to make it back well i mean to to come up with one of those, you have to build a scale interior at some point to model it from. You have to build a fuse section, yeah. That's why you'll notice there's lots of fuse sections laying around here everywhere.
[35:33] They're stuck on all the shelves and everything, and I have a lot more at my other shop down the street. And, I mean, I have a hundred, probably, fuse sections laying around with interiors in them. Right. Well, but then you have to build the interior to be able to make right oh yeah yeah you want to make it work and yeah a lot of time and then yeah and then you got to write the instruction manual and
[35:54] and put all that together so there's just a it's just a lot of work but worthwhile but yeah i have fun doing it and you learn a lot about the airplanes. And I know friends that have warbirds and stuff. So, they say, hey, I need to measure this,. And I'm like, ah, climb in there and take some measurements or whatever,. That's awesome. Yeah, and so which is pretty nice that I've been able to do that and get to meet a lot of interesting people along the way.
[36:22] Without getting too specific, how can we get more people building airplanes instead of these throwaway things that they get from these other companies? Well, I'm doing my best, but it seems like these generations now, everybody wants to do everything right away. I get kids coming in here, and I don't say kids. I'm saying 20s and 30s. Sure. Well, they're kids to us. Yeah, yeah, right. And they want a jet. It's like, what do you fly now? He goes, well, I don't fly.
[36:55] It's like, well, you need to have a trainer. You need to be able to fly before you can fly a jet.
[37:08] Well, but now with the things like Ron and I have talked about before with these tools that are available, like AS3X and safe technologies, people can go out and fly these things. You almost can, yes. And then what happens when that technology fails? They get discouraged because they don't know how to fly. Yeah, but you still got to have some basics.
[37:21] Like, I mean, when you're, when it's coming away from you or going towards you, which way do you turn, to go left? It's, to go left it's and yeah that was the hardest part for me is is realizing controls are backwards when it's coming at you once you get that you're pretty good yeah yeah because because you might have to make that decision in split second oh yeah if you make it wrong yeah you make it wrong you get
[37:39] a pile of foam yeah yeah they don't look anything like an airplane yeah so and so I mean we help them out with the simulators they got today and that it's it's pretty good and you can actually transition from flying a trainer to a jet a lot faster than you could 30 years ago oh yeah you can I mean I flew ducted fans for 10 years and had a great time doing it but back in the day you had to build one i mean it
[38:05] was a long process now you can just come in here to the hobby shop pick you up a really nice rc jet for 250 bind it and go 100 mile an hour with your hair on fire and yeah and have some and look cool doing it yeah yeah without all the hundreds of hours of work putting this thing
[38:23] together yep so that is pretty nice yeah i built the family fans back in the day too yeah yeah without all the hundreds of hours of work putting this thing together yep so that is pretty nice yeah i built the fans back in the day too yeah oh there you go yeah you're right you remember that movie right firefox yeah with yeah see he remembers yeah okay i'm sorry i didn't know he's never seen the movie oh a youngster huh
[38:48] he's never seen the movie oh youngster huh yeah i am okay there we go i wasn't gonna bring it so i built i built one of those as a when i was younger oh did you as a ducted fan and never flew but it sure looked cool there you go that was one of his first plans or not plans built but scratch scratch built yeah okay i built a fire. I scratch built a scale fictional airplane. Okay, yeah. By going to the movies, like, what, 20 times? Oh, quite a few times, yeah.
[39:11] And drawing it over and over. Oh, is that how you did it? Yeah, you went to the movie and drew it. That's pretty good. And the, the posters, the preview posters. Yeah, I use that a lot. That's pretty good. Yeah. Hey, back then you had to do what you had to do. Yeah, you were, what, 14, 13, something there? Yeah, in that range. Yeah. Yeah. But then you had to do what you had to do. Yeah. Yeah. You were, what, 14, 13, something there? Yeah, in that range. Yeah. Yeah.
[39:27] But did you try and fly it? Oh, yeah. Several times. But it just wouldn't fly. Just wouldn't fly. Yeah. Well, you probably didn't know enough aerodynamically to. Yeah. I knew nothing about. But it looked cool, right? But it did. It looked cool. It sounded really cool because it was a ducted fan. Yeah. I think it had. Electric? No, no, no. No, this is back in the day nitro yeah like os91 i think it had a kmb82 in it oh okay all right with a dynamax yeah it was either a dynamax or
[39:55] a crest oh crash i think it was a crest oh okay yeah it might have been a byron fan unit i don't know it was so long ago oh byron that would have been a six inch fan unit. I don't know. It was so long ago. Oh, a Byron. That would have been a six-inch. That would be a pretty good-sized airplane. Yeah, it probably wasn't a Byron. Because I think the wingspan came out around 48 inches or something. Oh, okay. Yeah, it was probably a Crest, probably. That's even a little small for a Dynamax.
[40:17] I mean, a little small for a Dynamax, even. Anyway. Yep. I tell you, I mean, a few other things. you're asking about moments that maybe… Well, I decided to open the hobby shop in 08, and I already had the building. I just used it for storage, and I'd owned it for probably 10 years almost before I decided. And I had a building I had at my machine shop, which I used for making the interiors and the foam wings and
[40:45] stuff at the time. And I thought all the area hobby shops had closed and people knew that I had balsa wood and I had some glue. I kept glue and some other stuff. So people were coming, give me a call, wanting to come down and buy stuff and that. So I thought, well, maybe I should open a hobby shop up. In a time where all these other hobby shops are closing, I'm going to open up a hobby shop. I mean, the nearest hobby shop was Chicago or Rockford.
[41:10] I mean, it was 100 miles to the nearest hobby shop. So I thought, well, I told the wife, and she goes, what do you think? I says, and she said, well, go for it if you want. I said, okay, well, I called up Great Plains and Horizon, and they go, well, you got to have 30,000 inventory to open a hobby shop with us. And I thought, oh my gosh. I says, I didn't have 30,000. I mean,
[41:31] I had the building, but I didn't have the 30,000 to invest in stuff. So I did have a friend of mine that had one of the hobby shops that closed. He had some odds and ends laying around there and some empty boxes and that, and I had a bunch of empty RC plane boxes and that. So I took it. I mean, he had some racks. I put the racks in the front room there. And I put a lot of empty boxes on the walls and I made it look full. And I sent the pictures in to the distributors.
[42:03] And they said, all right, that's fine. You're good to go. So as I started selling stuff, I would replace empty boxes with full ones. Right. And eventually, I ended up with a hobby shop full. But there were days in the first year or two where I had Saturdays, I never had one customer, which is pretty crazy. I mean, and I'm thinking, man, did I do the wrong thing? I mean, luckily I owned the building and I
[42:34] worked pretty cheap. So yeah, as most modelers, and eventually it got busier and busier and I didn't have to close the doors but thank goodness i was i was i was wondering there for a while if i had made the wrong decision yeah because i put a lot of time in here and there's a lot of times like i said i never had a customers a whole day well okay i was gonna say the nice thing though about this place is the way
[43:00] we found it too the way we found it was because you have a lot of stuff in stock that's new old stock that you can't buy anywhere else. You can't find in any other hobby shop. Yeah. Tom was looking for, it was an antenna for your DX8, right? Yep. And I'll let you tell the story, but didn't you put a post or something on? Yeah. So on RZ Groups, I put a wanted ad out
[43:20] there saying, hey, listen, if anybody's got a spare DX8 antenna they want to sell, mine's broke. I would like to replace mine. And I'd have to go back and look at the post, but somebody locally here said, hey, you should give Brian at Dynamic Balls a shot. Probably. I'm like, who? Like down where we live, I don't know, the modelers that we talk to, I guess they're keeping it a secret or something, because I had never heard of this hobby shop up here.
[43:48] And boy, what a game changer it would have been if I had known this place was here five years ago or ten years ago. Well, and the timing worked out great because it was just a couple months before that that our local hobby shop closed. We actually had one, a friend of ours had one. He closed it down. And then there was another guy that bought, it was a different hobby shop business, but it was a, I mean,
[44:10] it was a fully stocked hobby shop. There was a lot of stuff in there, but he just couldn't support it. I mean, the building was huge. The inventory was all brand new stuff. Yeah, the overhead was high. Very high. Yeah. I mean, there profit margin at a hobby shop is very minimal compared to most other businesses. Yeah. Well, because modelers are cheap. Yeah. I mean, I've seen it. And even in here, I've seen customers come in and they try to beat you up on the price and whatnot.
[44:40] I'm used to it. I mean, it don't bother me any. Yeah, you can't take it personally. No, no, no. I don't to it. I mean, it don't bother me any. Yeah, you can't take it personally. No, no, no. I don't take it personally. As a general rule of thumb, we are tightwads. Yeah. I mean, we want to get something as cheap as we can. And if it was someplace cheaper to get it, that's what we do, unfortunately. And somebody can make an offer, and I can always say no.
[45:04] I mean, normally we come to a point in the middle, and the sale's made. I mean, that's what usually happens. But you've got to start somewhere. When someone walks into the shop, I mean, they will very obviously right from the get-go see that a lot of your business appears to be buying and selling used and pre-built airplanes. How did you get into that?
[45:30] Like, how did you first discover that, hey, I might be able to maybe make a little bit of a business out of buying and selling used airplanes? Well, and sorry, to add on to that, how can you sell them? Like, if I had all these sitting in my house, I'd be like, nah, you add on to that. Yeah, how can you sell them? Like if I had all we get so attached to them In my house, I'd be like mad. You don't need that. That's mine. Well, I have several here that I don't sell
[45:53] Yeah, I mean if you noticed you've walked around here I mean you may be vast about a few and yeah, and they just says that's a not-for-sale Yeah, I've seen you point those out this this whole section over here. You can look but that's not going out that's a not for sale yeah i've seen you point those out this this whole section over here you can look but that's not going out the door yeah yep and but yeah there's there's some i probably
[46:09] regretted selling but there isn't time to fly them all i've then there's there's a there's a lot of them i'd there's a few of them i probably would love to fly that i have sold but a lot of times i'll fly maybe just fly them just for a summer and then just move them on and something new will come in the door. But as far as the kids, when I first opened the airplane store here, or the hobby shop, somebody came in.
[46:37] They says, are you going to be selling the airplanes on consignment? And I said, well, I haven't really thought about it. I said, I'll get back to you. So I thought about it. I said, I'll get back to you. So I thought about it, and I thought, here's the deal, is that I've been to other hobby shops where I actually seen an airplane. I thought, man, I really love to own that airplane. It's really cool. So I call, I mean, I asked the guy in the hobby shop,
[46:59] and he goes, oh, well, that's Fred's airplane. And, he had a price on it, let's say $600. And I says, I'd give him $450 for it. And so being a modeler, I mean, you always got to hang a little bit. Oh, yeah. Right? So he's going, well, I don't know. Let me call him. So he tries to call him. I'm 100 miles from home. And he tries to call Fred and can't get through and eventually nobody could
[47:28] get a hold of him see if he wanted was interested in dealing a little bit with the airplane and so eventually i went home without the airplane and the next time i got around there it had already been sold and so i thought well i'm gonna own every airplane in here. And then if somebody wants to trade one for an RC car, or if you want to trade it for another airplane or for money or whatever, I says, we'll be able to do that. And I can just tell you right away how it's going to go down.
[48:01] And so that's why if you've got an airplane in here there's no consignment i'll just buy it from you right then and there if you want to sell it we can work out a deal yeah if not you can always take it back home or take it to a swap meet or something sure and i've found that that he's very fair by the way yeah you've gotten rid of some of your stuff some of my stuff is in
[48:20] the shop here somewhere and i feel like it was a very fair so and you brought more stuff home and i brought more stuff home i've tried i mean i had one guy one day drove up from missouri with a pickup truck full of airplanes i mean he had a lot he probably had 20 in the back of a pickup truck and some in the back seat him and his son come up i bought those from him and he ended up buying an airplane trailer from me and he filled up the trailer
[48:46] and took him back home okay and when he got home his wife said i told you get rid of all of them and he said these are all different so it doesn't count exactly yeah i did get rid of those yeah he comes up here on a regular basis and we do some dealing and trading and that yeah awesome and you've done a good job as far as dynamic boss is on facebook yeah and you post stuff on on there i'm assuming it's you somebody's posting stuff
[49:11] on there all the time about new stuff that that comes into the shop and you do a really good job of that i don't know how you find the time to do that but i know that you do a lot of traveling and and you're trading and swapping and selling too and yeah it's amazing to me how you find the time to not only go get these airplanes but then take pictures of them and put them on the on the website for people that might be interested in buying them sometimes it takes
[49:34] me a while to get it all get it all going i mean i just just this summer i recently elderly gentleman he was he was been modeling since he was 16 and he was 80 and he was moving to florida to an apartment down there and he was he was from illinois here and northern illinois so he was selling his whole what 65 years worth of airplanes and he had flown around the midwest
[50:01] this guy in addition to rc he flew full scale and his job let him fly around the Midwest. This guy, in addition to RC, he flew full scale. And his job let him fly around the country. He had a Cessna Cardinal, and he used to fly around the central states here for his job. So he would try and coincide that with different SWAT meets, too. So he would fly over to Ohio and do his job on Friday. And then
[50:25] Saturday he would go to the swap meet and then come home with the plane load airplanes. And so he had a lot of different airplanes and I ended up buying three. I had to go up there three times, three loads of airplanes from, oh my gosh, it was just a lot of airplanes. I thought, it didn't look like that many airplanes, but my gosh, they just a lot of airplane i thought it didn't look like that many airplanes
[50:45] but my gosh they just kept coming out of the basement in the garage it's like man and he was happy we arrived at a price when i got there we talked about it arrived at a price and and so i loaded up everything brought it back here took me a while to sort some stuff out obviously there's always some stuff that, like an oddball wing or something. It's like, what are you going
[51:07] to do with this? So some stuff, I mean, most of the stuff I didn't end up throwing anything away. I think I just give away a lot of stuff if I, I figure it's probably just oddball here and there, but there's a lot of, a lot of builders that could just take a wing and adapt it to an airplane or whatever. And, and buying stuff from individuals, I mean, you don't stop there. Like when, let's say, Top Flight has a closeout, they're going to get out of this part of the business,
[51:35] you'll sometimes maybe go buy out the remaining inventory. Yeah, right. I mean, I've had people that just call me up and, for instance, I did, like you mentioned, Top Flight. I mean, it was HobbyCo. I bought all their airplanes that they used to take to the trade shows and for demoing and stuff. And, I mean, I just got a call out of the blue one day because they just didn't want to sell them piecemeal. It's just too much hassle. Yeah. They just want to sell us one lump sum.
[52:04] Be done with it. Yeah, be done with it and that. So, and they let me do the piecemeal it's just too much hassle yeah they just want to sell as one lump sum done with it yeah be done with it and then and that so and they let me do the piecemeal and i mean i've gone out of state i mean i bought oh my gosh i probably bought 300 airplanes from a guy in minnesota one time and it was several several trips to minnesota yeah most of them are all giant
[52:22] scale oh my god and stuff. Yeah. Maybe 250. It was a lot of airplanes. It was a lot of airplanes. So on an average day in the hobby shop here, how many planes in inventory for sale do you have roughly? Oh, I honestly do not know, but I'd say there's probably at least 250, I would say. I'd say that's conservative. I would too. Especially when you walk upstairs. I mean, the first time you walk up those stairs, you don't know what to expect. Right.
[52:54] And then you walk up there and it's just like, oh my. It's like heaven. Yeah. Not to change the subject, but I was interested in knowing, like, he asked, how many airplanes on a given day would you say you have? Has the whole COVID thing, like, what is the impact? Has that really had an impact on the business? And if so, has it been a big impact? Oh, I would say it has been a big impact, but in a positive way.
[53:21] Okay. but in a positive way okay there is definitely more people building and i'd say just the overall even my scale accessories has been busier than heck i mean cockpit wise than that that doesn't surprise me because a lot of small businesses like for instance bike shops which i ride bicycles a lot yeah they're they've been busy too and they've had a hard time filling the shop with bikes because everybody's commuting via bike and trying to do their social
[53:50] distancing and not commuting via car and so which is good to hear i'm glad that it's been good hopefully that people have come back to the hobby who maybe who had gotten out of it or maybe the time at home building airplanes has introduced somebody to a really great part of the hobby and they'll stay in it yeah i mean there's there's been quite a few youngsters that have are flying i mean we've got a
[54:16] few in the club not as many as i'd like to see but right youngsters they just have a lot more options than when we were kids well today's youth they youth, they don't get out of a club what we used to get out of a club. Because, I mean, for me, joining the club was, I mean, obviously it was about the RC airplanes, but it was also about hanging out with friends and doing stuff with other people. But today's youth, they're not in, hate to generalize,
[54:46] but that's not how they socially interact. They do it with headsets and computer screens and a lot. So how do you overcome that? How do you get past the challenge of talking to today's youth so that we'll have a hobby in 20 years how do we get them involved yeah well that is a that is a really good question obviously most of the kids i i see in here jets are probably the first thing that catches their eye
[55:18] sure they're not looking to fly a cub around yeah which is really fun unfortunately they don't understand yeah until they've done it yeah yeah and flying scale i mean i have a great time i fly mostly scale and but i've had lots of smaller airplanes i think i went through nine sig cougars i mean i built lots of those favorite airplanes and put a 60 on it with a tune pipe and you could do three rolls a second and man it was just a fun airplane
[55:45] to fly but eventually you get dumb and on the control sticks the next thing you're building another one build another one yeah yeah and and stuff like that but I've but since I I mean I fly mostly scale now and and I just do my best to it's always a challenge to make it fly in a scale manner and every time I go out there I try and try and fly to scale manner as best I can and you don't always work out that way yeah
[56:14] but the kids don't think that's cool yeah they want to go like you said oh yeah hunter mile an hour with their hair on fire oh yeah I think a lot of that has to do it's just the mentality of once again generalization but of kids. They'll grow up, and they'll grow into something more fun. One would hope so. I mean, that's how I did it. I mean, when I was in high school, it was all about fast cars and all this kind of stuff, and now I don't even want to drive a stick.
[56:37] back then you wanted the stick shift and all that, and now I just want comfort. So I don't think it's necessarily lost that kids aren't into it yet that's it's something you can discover later so yeah i mean it's a but i've overall though i've had a few a few more people coming in and a lot of middle age people are maybe the kids are now finally grown up yeah and they're going well
[57:03] back in the day i used to fly with my dad or my grandpa or whatever and i just had too much life getting in the way and now i got some time on my hands and we've been staying pretty steady as far as members at rc club and and which i find it great yeah so what's the local club around here like how many do you have well we have about three clubs within about 20 miles of the hobby shop wow that's a lot that is yeah we have a
[57:31] hobby shop to support them that's true and two of them have about 30 members give or take and then one of them has about maybe 10 to 15 members now when you say 30 members you mean like active members or active members yeah Yeah, active members. Usually there's a certain percentage of members that are members, but they don't really… I would say in the two clubs with the 30 members, there's probably 12 to 15 of us that actively fly a lot. And then
[57:58] there's actually some members I've never ever seen fly. But they enjoy the club. They pay the dues. They help cut the grass grass and if they want to hang out and have a good time i'm not against that sure yeah i mean one of these days eventually they'll probably pick up a transmitter and fly and then they'll be hooked and then they'll be hooked. Yep. And that is for sure. Yeah. So we have a, we have a club also. We used
[58:29] to have three clubs, but over the time, they've dissolved or merged or whatever. But the challenge this year was with COVID, we usually have an open house every year and then, or a fly in breakfast or, to try to get exposure to new hopefully new modelers with coven none of that happened this year but hopefully next year we can do the clubs around here kind of do the same sort of thing try to get exposure now we oh oh yeah
[58:57] we usually have at least one or two flying events at most of the clubs we have a at streeter we didn't have our spring show we ended up having our warbird event and we have a 700 foot flight line everybody was spacing and we just asked use some common sense and that with all the stuff going on and i never heard of anything kobe related that happened from that. But it's pretty little breezy out there. There's a lot of space to distance yourselves.
[59:37] And I went to a couple other events this year, but that was about it. I know a lot of events were canceled. Hopefully next year we'll be able to get back into them. I'm looking forward to it. I'm looking forward to it. I think we're all getting a little stir-crazy. Yeah, definitely. I'm a homebody, and if I'm stir-crazy, then it's getting bad. Well, I prefer to stay at home most of the time, too, and I'm ready to go out and do stuff.
[59:55] I'm getting some time to work on some airplanes, so that's good. Well, that's not a bad thing. We have definitely done that. Oh, man. So that is nice. Yeah. done that yeah oh man so that is nice yeah that i i picked me up a quarter scale desert wind me 109 so just about got it finished that's awesome so so you're building something well it needed some tlc oh i got and it's already built but it needed a little tlc and it's i'm dressing up the cockpit a little bit.
[1:00:25] Of course. And I got the radio system in it, and it needed a little help on the rudder and some other stuff. So I just about got it finished. So looking forward to flying that. Fly it on January 1st when we're flying our duos. Probably not. Too much work still? No, no, no. It'll be ready to fly by then, but that's probably a summer plane. Okay. All right. Yeah, so our goal for the duelists, which Tom has pulled out ahead of me a lot recently. Oh, yeah.
[1:00:56] I'm so far ahead of you now that it's… You're covering. It's no contest. Well, I still have a lot of work after covering. I still have to install the gear, do all the plumbing and tests and run the engines together for the first time. But, yeah, I'm ahead of you. At least you admit it now. But our goal for those planes, January 1st, we always go out to the field. Okay. And that's when we want to maiden them. Yeah. Yeah, we'll see.
[1:01:18] I have the week of Christmas off, so it might still happen. We do have, at IVRC, we do have a january first flying event they bring some chili and and we actually we have a hanger out there we somebody brings a heater and puts in there and so oh that's nice we don't do that it's just well this really isn't a club sponsored it's just a few of us four or five members together every january 1st and fly something
[1:01:41] well normally try to get the year started off right. Normally, there'll be maybe eight or 10 of us out there. Oh, yeah. Perfect. We're usually out for 10 minutes and then think, this is stupid. Let's go. Yeah, why are we here? It's so cold. Yeah, too cold. And some years, it's just ridiculously, like, 40 mile an hour winds. Yeah. You got to fly, though. Snowing, yeah. Try it. Some years, I have flown in that. A lot of times, I just go up and hang out
[1:02:06] just because most of my airplanes are just not really suited to just a quick flight and it's it's a lot of work after they've been sitting on the shelf for three months to get one ready for one flight yeah yeah we're not talking about giant scales so no no i know i know you're talking like a sick cougar type yeah easy, easy throw, Barry. Or a contender. I could probably find something here to take out to the field for a day. I might be able to. I'd have a hard time picking just one.
[1:02:31] I might be able to. Well, you should come down and fly with us one of those days. Oh, there you go. If you'd like to. Sure, I'd like that. Funny January 1st story. Like hell or high water, we fly on January 1st. And I have a story. Dave Taylor and I did this one year. It's been some years back. It was snow on the ground, quite a bit of snow. And, we obviously don't plow the fields, because of the snow.
[1:02:55] So we drug a, I think it was a card table behind his truck up and down our runway to pack the snow down because we didn't have anything on skis so that I could fly my contender that day. And you did it. And I did. Dave flew, I think he flew something scale that day. Oh, good. So one more question for me. In all the years that you've had the shop, since 08, is there anything that has come through the shop that has been so unique that you would like to talk about?
[1:03:24] Like something really just out of this world or bizarre that's come through the hub shop that you wouldn't mind talking about you just don't see very often airplane airplane wise no doubt airplane i mean mostly airplanes so i mean i'm for people that have been here it's about probably 80 airplanes maybe 15 18 cars and then a little bit of boats and odds and ends you've got some
[1:03:46] really neat nostalgia stuff in there too yeah i mean i have i do have a display case where i have old engines old radios which i get a kick out of maybe some manuals stuff like that i mean i had something come in here not too long ago that it was a a winner a race winner from madura and 94 and 95 it took first place in the t6 unlimited class or the i don't know if they call it unlimited but it was a gold
[1:04:12] class it was a but it was a it's like a spec class yeah g62 powered yeah it was all their whole race plane i mean it was amazing airplane not very heavy but they did have a minimum i mean you had to be so much weight i mean you couldn't build them like paper light and but the thing i mean it was a byron t6 and the thing that was most amazing was the fact that the fuse on that byron was i mean my gosh you could have stood on it and you wouldn't have moved it
[1:04:41] i mean it was it was very light but it was solid i mean it was honeycombed somebody had honeycomb the whole thing with this honeycomb special stuff all the way to the tail and back i mean and g62 and and eventually a guy came in here and bought it and he just loves that thing he was just in here the other day has like probably 40 50 flights on it now oh yeah, he's flying it. That's wonderful. Oh, he's flying the heck out of it.
[1:05:07] And it had some kind of a, the landing gear was unlike anything I've ever seen. It looked robot, except that it was way heavier duty than, like, if you just called him up and wanted landing gear for a 100-inch T6, it was way heavier duty. It was a pretty cool-looking landing gear. And he has flown with friends of his that have a stock T6 with a G62 in it, and he runs circles around. That's awesome. Yeah. I think I saw a picture of that on the website. So that's kind of unique.
[1:05:41] Yeah, it was up on the website when it came in here for sale. And he said it is loud. You'd it coming and it gets your attention yeah and so you can imagine maybe four or five of those racing at madura how crazy it would have been so yeah historically significant it's a race winner oh yeah that's something that's definitely going to be memorable and so and i mean it hadn't flown for probably 20 years i i would imagine and no flaps but he said it's not a
[1:06:14] problem he has no trouble flying it landing it he has he has dinged it up a little bit and it was actually on takeoff where he just kind of lost his train of thought for a second and he just got a little slow and it and it bounced in or something and it it didn't really tear up a lot it tore gear out or something had to put it back in or something like that but i mean he said it's been a great airplane so that's always nice to hear some other stuff
[1:06:42] i picked up but i mean i i have a bloomingumenvoss HA-132, which you're probably wondering, what is that? I think I know this. 137, HA-137. Is that the asymmetric fuselage with the weird one engine on one side and a cockpit on the other? No, no. That is a Blumenvoss 131, I believe. So what is this one? It actually competed against the Stuka to be the dive bomber for germany and lost they only made six of them and if you look behind you there is the center
[1:07:14] section of the fuse up on top of the boxes and it's a gullwing except it has a 20 millimeter cannon right above each wheel and the wheels are ferared in in a fairing and then it has single it just had a single pilot with an open cockpit and they actually used them in the war until they were no spares were available and and they were just junked them then but it lost to the stuka and how did you come to acquire this one? Just run across somebody that had it.
[1:07:47] And I believe this one is about, there was a 60-inch, a 61-inch one in Model Airplane News plans, I think. And this one, I believe, has blown up for them plans one and a half times to about 90-inch. And it's G62 powered. So I haven't flown it yet. I've been working on it. the guy never put flaps on it. Now, maybe they're not. Maybe they never put flaps on the other one. I got flaps on it now. I got some suspension on it. It's just fixed landing gear.
[1:08:20] I put some suspension on it. So give it a little more. So you have that one ready for january first then not quite but probably this year okay oh cool i mean i've been i've been working out for a couple years i i work kind of slow depends and i hop around from airplane to airplane and some kind of like a kid in a candy store something catches my eye and i gotta get this one going and yeah so we understand absolutely yep so that's kind of a unique
[1:08:45] airplane that i have yeah for sure i just picked me up a a third scale bucher youngmeister this kind of a unique airplane yep and this one was actually a kit from germany it's got a lot of unique features it's got like the bicycle fender wheel pants like and it also has a little leather boots over all the fittings for the flying wires. And it has flat steel flying wires as opposed to round ones. Yeah, they're a little more scale, the flat ones. So I'll show it to you.
[1:09:16] I've built the, for a friend, I've built the Seagull ARF of that airplane, which is flies okay. Yeah. I'm looking forward to flying this one. Make sure it's nose heavy. The one I put together was tail heavy from the manual, and it was a handful the first couple of flights. This one has flown before. It's got a GT80 on it. Oh, okay. Twin, right? Twin, yeah. 80cc twin. Yeah, nice. That's awesome. That's
[1:09:46] all I got wrong. only thing I wanted to ask. So you said, you, you're friends with Dave Platt with Dave Platt. Yeah. Any stories from him since we're building a plane of his? Oh yeah. Yep. I'll, I'll, I'll tell you one. I, Dave called me up one day and he wanted a cockpit for his zero. So, and I do have one for a plat zero so anyhow i sent it to him and and a couple months later i seen him at toledo at the hobby show and in fact
[1:10:13] we were sitting in the bar having a few beers and i says how'd that cockpit work out and dave says well he says worked out pretty good it wasn't as good as I could have done, but he said it worked out pretty good. And I believe he's telling the truth. I mean, he's a heck of a scale builder. Yes. But he probably thought it's just easier than scratch building the whole thing from the start. And yeah, he is quite a builder. That is for sure. And what's he doing these days?
[1:10:45] And, well, I just had somebody tell me the other day that he took first in some kind of a free flight contest. So that was pretty good. Interesting. I know he was doing control line for a while, and then now he's doing free flight, which has got to be interesting. I mean, in the old days before radios, you just kind of put a little rudder in there, a little up elevator,
[1:11:03] thing i mean the old days before radios you just kind of put a little rudder in there a little up elevator put a fuse on the engine and start that thing up and let go and runs for 30 seconds and you hope it spirals up and spirals down yeah in one piece yeah i can't imagine that yeah then you got to be a good builder because if it don't comes down a pile of sticks and you build another one yeah yeah yeah there's no pilot error that's like one
[1:11:26] two yes there is no there is no pilot air that is for sure yeah there could be builder air there could be builder air i mean you had to build a perfect perfectly true have a balance perfect i mean all the incidences had to be perfect or i'm sure you found out right away yeah if it wasn't so i'm sure it made you a better builder. I mean, when RC finally arrived, there was probably a lot of really good builders. Yeah, I bet there was. Yeah, absolutely.
[1:11:52] And, I mean, we don't do much control line here. Every now and then I get a guy in here that has done control line. I have a few control lines up there on my wall. here that has done control line. I have a few control lines up there on my wall. And maybe a couple of years ago, a guy came in, he actually had a participation trophy from Glenview Naval Air Station for the Nats in the 60s. He had a couple of airplanes that he built and flew in the
[1:12:17] Nats. And one was a Corsair, which I don't know what class it was in it was it's a pretty large airplane for control line i mean it's probably 30 some inch i mean it's it's pretty pretty beefy and then he had some other ones that were like he only had half an elevator and i and they're very razor thin i'm sure there was some kind of a racing speed class yeah yeah and they're very interesting and i come in he
[1:12:43] come in and we worked out a, and I bought the whole batch from him. And that one says 65 Glenview on the tail from basically 1965. And I have a friend of mine who, at the time, he was probably 15, 16 years old. He goes, yeah, he says, me and a buddy, we hitchhiked. And he lived out here by me not too far from here so we actually hitchhiked him and his buddy all the way and they took their
[1:13:11] backpacks all the way into glenview which was 100 miles almost and watched the gnats for a couple days camped out at the on the base glenview was a naval air station and camped out on there during the nats and watched them and then hitchhiked back home i mean it was a big deal i mean i couldn't imagine somebody doing that today oh my gosh no i mean yeah so i mean that was that was quite an event yeah yeah to hitchhike yeah yeah all the way in there to do to see that well i mean
[1:13:43] there's no social media back then, so it's either word of mouth or magazine ads or whatever. So to know an event like that is coming would have been a big deal. And I had a friend of mine. His name was Dave Shipton. He flew control line. He was at least ranked in the United States top 10, I'm sure. And he was a very good flyer. And I didn't know him probably until, I know he passed away maybe five, six years ago. But I knew him for probably, from 20 years ago.
[1:14:18] And anyhow, he would have an event at his house. And he had a bunch of older control line models that had been in various contests that were just amazing to see it's like wow i mean some four even some four engine models oh wow that control line scale and his wife at the time was blind but she had she could fly control line and and he and she was flying control line blind, which I found amazing. And he was right there with her telling her what to do.
[1:14:52] And I'm thinking, man, with me, it would last about one second, and I would pile that thing in, I'm sure. I've never flown control line, and it'd be interesting. But I don't know anybody that wants to sacrifice an airplane. Yeah. To let you try. Right. Yeah. So anyhow, I thought that was amazing. Yeah, that is cool. but i don't know anybody that wants to sacrifice an airplane yeah so let you try right yeah so
[1:15:05] anyhow i thought that was amazing that that is cool that and she flew the whole flight and without crashing which i i found incredible that is incredible blind yes i mean just with somebody telling her where the ground is ground is and that. That was pretty amazing. Yeah. All right, Ron, well, that's all I got. Yeah, same here. So is there anything else you want to say, how to visit you, how to do anything? Okay, well, I mean, my Facebook page, Dynamic Balls and Hobby.
[1:15:37] You can always go on there and like the page. I do send a lot of stuff over that as I get new items in. A lot of them go fast. If you think you're interested in an item, you can always call me. We can talk about it or send me a message or something. And you will ship stuff, right? Yeah, well, I'll ship kits and stuff. I don't ship full airplanes. I've never had much luck in that.
[1:15:58] I have tried several times to box them up, but now the shipping is just so crazy that you almost can't afford it. So it's best to make the drive here and see it in person. Yes, like we do. There you go. Or if you have somebody that lives in the Midwest, have them drive here for you. There you go. It's worth the trip. It is. Well, thanks, guys. My website is dbalsa.com. Well, thanks, guys.
[1:16:32] My website is dbalsa.com, and you can go on there, and you can also contact us from there if you want to just send me an email or something. Or look around on the website. You'll see lots of interesting stuff. Most of it's all scale on there. I don't have my hobby shop items. My general merchandise hobby shop items are not on the website. That is just my scale items. Okay. All right. Interesting. Well, I think it's time for us to go do some shopping. Okay.
[1:16:55] Brian, we sure appreciate your time. Sure. I think we've done a good job of capturing that original conversation we had. Learned some more stuff, which is awesome. job of capturing that that original conversation we had learned some more stuff yeah which is awesome once again that's brian dynamicbalso.com in leonore illinois and that's one more thing i want to ask you why leonore illinois well is it just where well my my machine shop
[1:17:17] happened to be here and it's a family business and i mean i've been there since I was five pretty much so yeah and this building the the hobby shops in I mean it just came up I mean I have a friend of mine that owned it and he did one day he just said hey how'd you like to buy this building and I says well I thought I could always use storage and so i bought the building and and i
[1:17:47] just use it for storage and then it turned into the hobby shop next thing and yeah and it's it's it's pretty economical to have a building here yeah as opposed to downtown peoria oh sure yes or something like that yeah where it would be much more expensive to have a building there. So anyhow, it's and it's handy. And if you're a first time, if you're a person here that comes here for the first time,
[1:18:12] you may notice a sign on the door that says just call a number because I I run back and forth between my hobby shop and machine shop. Some days where, there's somebody here all day. Some days there isn't. But we're here and it's open. And you will usually answer the phone. Yeah, I answer the phone. Just call. Yeah, you can just call me. So if I hear the phone or I'm not busy doing something, yeah, I'll answer the phone or I'll get back to you. Right on.
[1:18:42] Awesome. Well, thanks a lot for your time. Yeah, thanks again. Well, thanks a lot for your time. Yeah, thanks again, Brian. Well, thanks for coming up and doing the show here. You can expect a lot more business now because we are so huge. I am looking forward to it. I am looking forward to it. Yeah. It was fun. I enjoyed that. A lot of good stories. Like I said, let's go do some shopping and until next time, then. I'm Ron. I'm Tom. Thank you, Brian. Thanks. You're welcome. All right.
[1:19:07] Bye-bye. Bye. 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.
