Ep 105: Garry Gilbert

[00:00:05] Hello everyone welcome to the rc plane lab podcast i'm ron and i'm tom today we're sitting down and talking with gary price gilbert gary comes to us out of georgia gary welcome to the show why

[00:00:20] Don't you tell us a little bit about yourself well my name is gary gilbert i live in hiram georgia i am the vice president of douglas county air models in douglasville georgia i've been in and out of rc since 1990s my family has been in aviation since i was born and excuse me my family's been in aviation for a long time my grandfather back in the 70s had a hobby shop in

[00:00:53] Spotswood new jersey where my father learned and built model airplanes he was my father was one of the first people to bring quarter scale aircraft to rhinebeck aerodrome for their annual model meet later on in life my father started building a home-built airplane a peat and pole air camper where i started getting involved in building and stuff like that and when i was about 11 or 12 we had got a great plains big stick and that started my love into the rc hobby so i i'm currently now i

[00:01:31] Work for lockheed martin and i build airplanes c-130 j's for a living so my whole day is building model airplanes or building real airplanes that's awesome that is awesome i wish i wish you

[00:01:44] Could see tom's face right now it is just lit up with his big smile about the the the stick and all

[00:01:49] That kind of stuff that's right up his alley oh yeah for sure i obviously i love big sticks and the fact that you started out with a big stick 40 i think is fantastic it's what a great flying

[00:01:59] Airplane what what happened to that airplane well so when i finally got around to i guess you could say soloing and flying on my own i was probably like 13 years old i think it was my third season flying rc i had gone with a buddy of mine to an rc meet and it was the first meeting of the year so i'd gone the whole way this is i lived up in new hampshire at the time so we had the winners you didn't fly so it had been a while i got back it's like okay where it's nice spring day

[00:02:35] Where you go out and fly my dad was like make sure you check everything out on the airplane before you fly it and i was yeah yeah yeah i know well i started it up and went to take off and i don't know i'm not 100 sure even to this day what happens but i would assume that i'd messed with the radio on another airplane this was the time where you'd have to you bought the same crystal or you got the same receiver and i had set it up for another airplane a pt-60 trainer and i think the

[00:03:08] Ailerons were reversed from the oops the switches in the back and as i climbed out and i went to roll it rolled the wrong way and of course it spun into the ground and i pretty much completely destroyed the wings and the front of the fuselage so it was just a usable tail at that point and i had to do that walk of shame out there to go get the airplane and come back and when i brought it home i brought it downstairs all busted up my dad immediately knew exactly what i did he's just

[00:03:39] Like he didn't do a pre-flight check and i was like no i did i did i'm pretty sure i didn't yeah

[00:03:45] Yeah so been there done that yeah we all have and you learn so right i mean hopefully that's a lesson

[00:03:53] That you had only take five five or six of those lessons for me to learn that so yeah you've got to

[00:03:59] Start somewhere well it really did kind of put in because anytime it doesn't matter if i've flown that airplane five times that day every time i go up i do my flight controls check up down left right all this and then thrust and then check my throttle cuts and all that i do it every single time and i think between that and when i was got out of the hobby back in 93 94 ish i was going to get my private pilot's license and that was beat into me by my instructors it was every time

[00:04:33] You do your chat your flight controls checks controls instruments gas attitude run up safety and you're off every single time right and it's kind of stuck with me and i haven't put one in due to not doing a checklist sense so that's awesome that's a pretty good run i put them in for

[00:04:51] Other reasons though well yeah we've all done that it's yeah we don't want to to dwell on

[00:04:58] Our mistakes but as long as you learn from them yeah that's part of the hobby it it happens occasionally you can't fly for more than 20 years without crashing at least one whether it's your fault or not right

[00:05:09] So right see tom tom doesn't crash his own airplanes he does no i just crash ron's anyway so you okay you're around airplanes all day when it comes time to enjoy the rc side of things are you foam are you balsa are you arf are you a kit i mean what what do we do so when i got back into

[00:05:34] The hobby this two years ago i started out with just getting ready to fly airplanes and it mostly the umx line from horizon and that was just to get me in and flying stuff and then i moved into the larger foam airplanes to where i believe i started building like that or buying like the flight line series free wing series from motion rc and just putting in my own receivers plug and play

[00:06:04] Stuff once i got a couple of those and we're flying different types i've started moving i'm moving now currently into building again so no i so i last year i've started building a or i built a dancing wing hobby's fiesler storch it was a really cool build it's kind of built like a jigsaw puzzle you don't have to build on the plans everything's kind of slotted and glued there's

[00:06:36] A lot of shaping of balsa blocks for like leading edges and detail parts and stuff like that there was a lot in terms of making the i used oratex fabric because i wanted that fabric look to the the airplane and that stuff's expensive but it is when it's done yeah it is Ron knows how

[00:07:00] Expensive it is i haven't used it yet yeah yeah but you have some i have one rule do you yeah i'll

[00:07:06] Give you a little bit of a pointer on what i think needs to be done with that because it doesn't stick down like monoco does so it's it's not as tacky but anyway so i built that storage i did a custom paint job on it and flew it and it flies like a brick it's probably the worst flying model i have and i've flown it three times and it's just been each time i have to go in and do something major to the design and try to lighten the airplane up and try to get more power and that's unfortunate

[00:07:44] At yeah it but it looks great it's a beautiful model i love the way it looks it hangs up in my shop but all it's doing is driving me to do another storage in another kit okay because i think the way that kit was put together it's one of those airplanes as you're putting it together you start looking at it you're like i wouldn't have done that this way i would have done it this way but you continue building it to the plans and then when you're done you're like i should have just done it the way i thought it the wing attachment points aren't the best in my opinion

[00:08:16] I know a lot of guys have built it and flown it and enjoy it but i must have skewed somewhere because it like i said it flies like a brick it's it's but like it looks good so i'm happy with that

[00:08:29] Well i doubt that it's anything that you did to it like if you built it according to the plans and that the kit i'm familiar with the type of kit you're talking about being in like a jigsaw puzzle like the fuselage sides aren't like one piece they're pieces that have like the the notches or whatever like the laser cut so there's really nowhere for you to go wrong i mean if you build it according to plan then that's poor planning i would think so yeah so

[00:08:51] Yeah i wonder i wonder if the weight of the covering would have had something to do with it too or maybe

[00:08:55] Whatever paints you used maybe so well yeah and that's what a lot of and that's a lot of guys ask me about that because i actually use house paint but i thin it down 50 with windex and then i spray

[00:09:08] It yeah that's what dave that's what our friend dave does as well and he has fantastic results with

[00:09:13] That and i have i've had awesome results with it on other aircraft that i've done that before i think with this one with it the storch tail is a very very long tail and it's got a decent size nose on it so it's not really short coupled but that tail's really really long yeah the way it's built it almost gets there's a lot of material in that and towards the back of the tail so the airplane ended up very tail heavy at first and i had to add a lot of weight to the nose

[00:09:44] Oh so as i think i added like one and a half pounds of lead to the nose here the cgn holy yeah it's ridiculous well that's why it's a brick that is a lot i have since pulled all the lead out and moved the battery into the like into the cowling of the airplane yeah to get it as far forward as possible sure if you get it to get as much weight as possible yeah to get it as far forward as possible and i have the cg in there in in where it needs to be but i haven't flown it since i've taken a lot

[00:10:18] Of the weight out the other thing is the way the wings attach there's only one bolt in the back and it allows the tips to move back and forth so i need to figure out a way to get that rigid plus i need to add a little dihedral to it doesn't seem like a great design yeah no no no i found a and the thing about it is it's an it's an odd scale and i'm very scale oriented like i like to have so a friend of mine he had a p-47 the fms one with the 1400 millimeter wingspan

[00:10:50] And when i was buying a counterpart to his p-47 i started out with what scale is that and what airplanes are in that scale so when we're flying together that's the way it would have looked in

[00:11:02] Real in combat yeah yeah yeah that's i love that so so what's the what's the wingspan on

[00:11:09] That one the store 1600 millimeters oh boy i gotta do the math so we've done this before that ends up being what about 50-ish inches i think it's a little bit bigger than that i was thinking like 56 inches i

[00:11:25] Think something like that anyway yeah it's a decent it's not a smaller plane but for a pound and a half of weight for a pound yeah that's wait i mean he was able to take most of that out it sounds like so

[00:11:35] Yeah flaps yes it has flaps and i programmed the ailerons to droop with the flaps like the real one so as the flaps go to their first position the ailerons match it and then the flaps go the rest of

[00:11:50] The way cool correct me if i'm wrong but i believe that is what draco is modeled off of right i believe so i'm i believe so or storage it does look like that yeah yeah i think it is but anyway a highly modified one of course but yeah yeah it's a nice looking airplane by the way just expensive for foam i think yeah and that that's what ron and i go back and forth on i mean foam looks like foam

[00:12:16] It really does and i probably like most of my collection you could look is is is mostly foam and like i said i'm gonna i'm okay i i'm trying to get out of it right now i'm like i'm like i don't want another foam model i want to build so i bought i have the one six scale one six scale sig j3 cub and the clip wing cub oh great flying airplane i think that's what 80 inch wingspan if

[00:12:47] I remember right well i don't think the six scale is quite that big is it this the the it's 71

[00:12:54] Inches yeah well then i'm not sure what one i ended up with so the first kit i ever bought was a cub and i thought maybe i'm wrong on the scale it was an 80 inch wingspan but that was the one i never finished so it's probably the one-fifth scale one yeah that's what i'm oh maybe that's okay yeah because that was made quite a few different ones yeah that was one i bought a bought off of them because i wanted to kind of see how how a kit went together and stuff and so i was building and i got the wing fairly through the building process on the wing and then i actually

[00:13:26] Bought a completed arf that was ready to fly and i was like well i don't need two of them so i use the rest of the wood for other projects yeah oh no you can't have too many cubs well what that was when i first started and i'm i'm on board with you now yeah yeah back then that like i said that was the first kit i built i had never actually flown a balsa airplane at that point in time i had no clue where that was going to take me to today right well yeah had i known then i would have would have finished yeah but no gary's absolutely right you

[00:13:57] Can't have too many cubs and right now i have zero well you can't have too many airplanes period right that's something you gotta fix well i've got i've got i have a goldberg cub kit that is waiting to be built and i will eventually build it but yeah i i need to get a cub in the

[00:14:13] Collection because yeah they fly great they do i mean they're just a cub is like the quintessential rc airplane that i think everybody has had yeah or has yeah my first my first one i was gonna say my first airplane was a cub it was a foamy but still it was a great little airplane to learn on so speaking

[00:14:32] Of cubs gary yes you and your family you are currently constructing a cub we've built a full

[00:14:40] Scale aircraft before pete and pole air camper a 85 scale foker dr1 that was never completed we kind of did that through a museum and the eaa and then so this l4 what we're building a j3 cub but it's an l4 which is the military version so that's the one its actual designation is a l4 h okay so this would be a l4 that was used in 43 pre invasion so it started out with

[00:15:18] Purchasing plans from wag arrow who does kit built cubs but their spin on it and being that my father and i and all that are very we want it done if we're going to do it we're going to do it like it was originally done so my father through a lot of talking and going to actually going to where the old piper factory was in pennsylvania writing pennsylvania and talking with people that

[00:15:50] Built them acquired a full set of l4 drawings from piper and we started building it from scratch that's awesome that is cool now we did do some we took some liberties in terms of building materials like we didn't we didn't do the aluminum ribs we built wood ribs so the airplane exterior exterior wise looks exactly as it should be interior wise there were a couple things that were changed for safety and to my father my my family is all engineers i'm the mechanic in the family so

[00:16:29] We went through the the real j3 club has an issue with the tail twisting over time and we re-engineered a brace to go back there to hopefully stop that from happening nice but right now the airplane is sitting up in northwood new hampshire it is we are waiting for a hangar to assemble this airplane and start flying it this year but right now there is a shortage because of the whole covid there's a shortage of airplane hangars oh really nobody has one we've been on a waiting list for four

[00:17:02] Years still haven't gotten the hangar wow that's a long time it's a long time the fuselage is it chromoly tubing and all that kind of thing yes it's all chromoly tubing modern tubing the now i believe i i i don't remember off the top of my head but the stabilizer and elevator are original l4 parts the wheels and brakes are original l4 parts so there are some original l4 pieces on the airplane yeah very very cool that's really cool yeah and the next project is we are designing

[00:17:40] Off of a set of plans we got from new zealand i believe a storage one fi 156 storage but we are going to scale it down because a lot of people don't realize that storage was a giant airplane 47 foot wingspan it was 10 and a half feet tall it had a giant 200 horsepower argus motor in it that was air cooled inverted v8 so we're going to try to scale that down to 80 percent scale i think we at the time i sent you the email it said 75 but i started looking at the scale of it and i was like

[00:18:15] We need to go up a little bit because the airplane will actually end up being smaller than the l4 and it should be bigger than the l4 so we scaled it up a little bit so but we're working that's the design we're in the design process of that now and i'm hoping by the end of this year i will be building the ribs for it and start building the wings down here in georgia my father is going to be moving to georgia in the next year or two so we'll be getting together and building that cool pictures or it

[00:18:46] Didn't happen that's right oh yeah that's i'm i'm horrible about that saying you guys still need

[00:18:53] Pictures of me so yeah just ask ron i'm terrible at it too i i get i get down on my firm i get down on my workshop and i get busy and then the last thing i'm that's on my mind this is oh i gotta stop

[00:19:04] And take a picture of this so i i'll be honest i do the same thing though so it's once you get in the zone like you don't think about anything else you're just working on your project enjoying your time and making progress the thought of stopping to snap a picture never even never really hits me so all

[00:19:20] Right so that's very cool you're building some a full sky a full scale l4 and an 80 storage which that's awesome but we're here to talk about rc airplanes well hold on i'm sorry hold on i do have

[00:19:33] To go back and and one of the emails that went back and forth between us you said that you've crashed many rc airplanes but you have also crashed a real airplane oh yes that conversation let's let's let's talk about that really quick because i'm gonna be honest with this story you are one-upping reggie well he's never crashed a real airplane before so yeah so i know he hasn't told me well

[00:20:01] Hold on listen i just got to tell everybody the object of the show is not to one-up reggie we don't

[00:20:05] Know that's true yeah yeah that's that's that's very true that's a that's a high bar that nobody

[00:20:11] Wants to know no no all right so tell us about this yeah i want to know okay so like i told you before my father when i was around eight years old he started building a pete and pole air camper and by the time i was 16 it was completed and this is an all wood airplane open cock that high wing parasol parasol yeah that's powered by a model a ford engine that's kind of so yeah yeah it's it we we did some modifications in terms of redesigning some stuff on the engine to get more

[00:20:42] Than the 39 horsepower we were getting a whopping 55 horsepower out of it yeah that's like we were swinging we were swinging an 80 inch propeller at about 1700 rpms and it looked cool that airplane was beautiful i'll send you pictures of that airplane so you can post it to the website and a picture of me and it crashed anyway so i got my pilot's license at 16 at being 16 17 years old

[00:21:13] I was like a kid in a regular car like you get out there you drive fast and you do things so i was very yeah i like how you put this drive fast and i do things yes well you take chances because yeah i know exactly what you're talking about exactly yeah so anyway i think at this time i was i believe i was 17 or 18 years old we had brought the airplane out for our local air show that we had

[00:21:45] At our airport and everyone wanted to see it fly it was a little windy and my dad being a little bit more concerned i was like i'll fly it i don't i'm good with it i can fly in this little bit of wind and i took off i got out there started it up taxied it out now this airplane does not have brakes it has a tail skid not a tail wheel so and it's it's a lot like flying a world war one airplane it's very bouncy on the ground it's hard to control anyway that all being said

[00:22:19] I took off at and i mean the runway was had people lining it i took off and my idea was to come around and do a low pass at a whopping 55 miles an hour but it's still cool yeah and at the time the model a ford's oil cap is not screwed on it's just compression fit on and we have had some issues where you added oil to it and it would over pressurize the oil system the cap would blow off well that's what happened the cap blew off and i saw the white smoke kind of puffing out of the engine

[00:22:50] And i was like crap i need to land and we need to put a new cap on when i came in this was a grass strip runway i had touched down a little on the hard side but not too hard and i was rolling out and the airplane started settling to the left really hard and i thought i was going into a ground loop with it and so i'm correcting for the ground loop and the airplane just keeps settling settling over and i'm holding the stick and i get the stick jammed all the way over to the right or to the

[00:23:22] Right trying to keep that wing up and i don't know what's going on and next thing i know i heard crunching of dirt i'm looking straight at the ground and then i'm upside down oh dear oh yes so during that my face made contact with the cockpit combing breaking my jaw right below my nose my skull right below fractured that i sprained every joint in my body with the exception of my left arm lucky to be alive

[00:23:56] Yeah no it really wasn't that bad of an accident one of the sounds awful

[00:24:05] It really yeah i still have like i my septum is completely pushed over to one side from the accident on my nose but yeah it was it was it was surreal and i just remember sitting there thinking about how pissed my dad would be that i just crashed his airplane yeah that would have been my first thought too yeah and i'm thinking about that big stick believe it or not and i'm just like not again not this that's what i kept running through my head oh great

[00:24:35] I'm gonna have to hear about this for the next 40 years yeah yeah so there was a photographer taking pictures of this airplane and he actually has a picture of me hanging upside down right after the crash still hanging upside down from the cockpit wow yeah and my father and my best friend david at the time had run over there before everything else now mind you the fuel tank is in the center of the wing and it had 10 gallons of fresh av gas in it and it's dumping out everywhere there is this

[00:25:06] Model a ford engine that is dumping water and heat and all that right above this puddle of fuel yeah and i just remember hands pushing me in and pulling me out of the cockpit and then i had to call my mom so and explain to her what just happened and i think i started that conversation out with i'm okay dad's okay dave's okay but the peat and pole was crashed so what happened oh so the landing gear

[00:25:36] It's held on by bungee cord the wheels were these 29 inch kind of spoked wheels covered with fabric like the old world war one airplanes there was nothing holding the length of axle to the landing gear besides for the bungee cords one of the bungee cords had dry rotted inside and snapped now there's a safety cable that holds that landing gear just in case that bungee cord snaps and that failed

[00:26:07] As well that big wheel went back into the strut lock that wheel down as a brake and cause the airplane to flip over on its back ouch man wow yeah so not your fault at least though i mean no no and i i remember like i i i always listen to anytime i can listen to an old pilot talk about their experience and stuff like that i try to take note of it and the one thing i learned and it was i believe it was said i gotta try to remember the guy's name now bob hoover who's that famous stump pilot that flew the

[00:26:43] The twin yeah he said fly the airplane through the crash and you'll survive and that's always resonated with me and even with rc fly the airplane to the crash do whatever you can keep that airplane flying and you the airplane will end up better so of course that doesn't work in rc sometimes when it disappears behind the trees we're in the corn or behind the corn yeah yeah yeah so yeah but that's my airplane crash story i was i had that and i also had a hard landing in iraq and a black hawk so

[00:27:18] But that was i'm just sitting in the back and i got slammed into the pilot seat pretty bad and we busted a tail strut oh yeah that was that wasn't fun so i've been through two incidents in aircraft

[00:27:32] Well definitely two more than anyone else i know yeah so you win too too many i would agree with that

[00:27:39] Yeah nobody wants to have to deal with that stuff so yeah at least you're okay yeah that's the important part and you you did get a story to tell out of it and i i mean like compare then full scale to rc obviously rc is less dangerous so does that become like more fun or just less stressful so i with rc i

[00:28:01] Find it more it's more fun the biggest thing is i my dream would be to have fly every world war ii airplane every korean war jet fighter world war one airplane i'd love to do it but let's face it nobody really has the money to do that so that's how it's what rc does for me although i enjoy going up and flying 172s cubs and stuff like that i get to fly an me 262 from time to time or a

[00:28:31] Fox wolf or a p51 or corsair and it's just something you can't do in your normal life and i i just absolutely love that not only that i use my models to try to teach people about it about not just rc but history i mean that's one of the coolest things that this is a multi-leveled hobby and i never like when i build like my me 109 that i have it's in finnish paint schemes so

[00:29:02] It has the finished hook blue hooked crosses they look like swastikas actually look exactly like a hot swastika but and they're blue i have that on there and everyone looks at it and they're like oh that's a nazi airplane i'm like no it's not it's a finnish airplane and then there's a whole history of why finland was flying american and british aircraft at the beginning of the war and then ended up flying with germany towards the end of the war and it i help i like to use that as a way to teach people about aviation history world history and stuff about the hobby so i i

[00:29:38] Really enjoy that aspect of it so and that i really it it helps relax me it helps bring a a level of enjoyment that allows me to interact with people so i do enjoy that awesome yeah i can

[00:29:55] I can see where rc is it's a it's a very low bar to get into compared to full scale for anybody that just has a a hankering to go fly or to be around airplanes or something like that because yeah i can't afford to go out and buy a real airplane right now and fly it around so yeah rc kind of fills that need and obviously it's a little bit safer it is well i've got a couple scars on

[00:30:24] My hands from propellers biting me and stuff like that yeah i've only been scared for my life a couple

[00:30:29] Of times in the pits when someone else was flying so i mean yeah relative is the term to use

[00:30:35] Yeah but at least with that you can go hide behind the the someone else well i was gonna say something else i was gonna say the tables but yeah i guess someone else too depending on who it is yeah so that's that that's amazing yeah full-scale stuff crashes and all that are kind of

[00:30:55] Scary that's the word i'm gonna use actually so you took the words right out of my mouth i'm sorry again that's okay all right so rc planes let's talk about rc planes i'm gary i'm i'm kind of running through the the list you sent us and doing some quick math in my head and your overall number if we can talk about it yeah absolutely because he does have a a note in here that something about the wife not knowing about i think we all have a note like that on our

[00:31:22] List yeah a lot of a lot of the airplanes here are tommy's and a lot of the airplanes at tommy's house

[00:31:27] Are mine so yeah it's something like that yeah those aren't mine those are those are wrongs yeah

[00:31:32] I'm just holding them for somebody yeah exactly all right so a little bit of quick math here i

[00:31:38] Come up with about 37. it's a very good i think it's right about right yeah so quickly if if you don't mind i'll run down the list because i like to i like to see what kind of airplanes people hang on to them yeah what they don't so i like how you have everything organized here nice and neat so i'll just get right to it here from the umx line you have the champ the radian the pt17 the pits one of my favorite the the waco a piper cub the timber the t28 and se5a which is a another

[00:32:11] Favorite of mine and then the foker d7 excuse me d8 so yeah that's actually a pretty pretty nice umx collection just by itself but then foam board which are kind of a kind of like a sandpiper type arrangement just foam board and stick them together and you've got a looks like a ft's flight test correct yes so we got the mighty mini p51 the mini f4u the mini f22 and you have a

[00:32:42] Flight test stick and then you have a depron foker e3 eindecker that sounds like a cool airplane

[00:32:48] Actually yeah that's scratch built i scratch built that one but i didn't have a category

[00:32:54] I figured it falls in the foam board category now ron and i well mostly me we kind of like not that we frown upon but we're not huge fans of the foam airplanes however the ones you scratch build yourself like ron designed the sandpiper and it actually flies pretty good those are actually a lot

[00:33:14] Of fun those are fun for the for the cheapness that you're that you're dealing with you don't have to worry about an actual long build if you crash it you crash it exactly i don't care however i will say and like the foam airplanes i might i might be coming around to them just a little

[00:33:31] Bit yeah i mean they are they do look good they look good from 20 feet away right exactly if you're not

[00:33:37] Close enough and i think that's my thing is you see them up close and you see all the little beads of foam and that's kind of what i don't like but i think i'm i'm starting to come around around

[00:33:47] Because what an airplane is an airplane it's still an airplane right yes i still prefer

[00:33:52] Balsa i prefer balsa but i'm i'm not going to poo-poo on the foam as much as i used to poo-poo

[00:33:58] Yeah i said poo-poo okay all right so moving on 60 64 millimeter edf's electric ducted fans these are all scale birds an f9 panther f86 saber and f8 crusader where'd you find a crusader

[00:34:11] In 64 millimeter that's the motion rc one it's available now i may have i'm having i i just flew it for the first time the other day actually yeah fly good there's some tweaking that needs to be done okay but it's in one piece it's still in one piece right the elevators are no longer attached they just need to get glued back on oh okay oh so i landed in some bushes okay all right

[00:34:39] So that was my fault yeah well it happens yeah and then so 70 millimeter edf you got an me 262 which is a really awesome twin engine german warbird yes and then you have moving on to warbird so you have a soft with triplane music to my ears those are awesome a 190 d9 a 190 a8 which a8 do you

[00:35:01] Have is that that's the flight line free wing one okay yeah yeah that's a good looking airplane

[00:35:07] F4 corsair the bf 109 g6 i'm not sure what that means is that oh that's just the the g6 is the

[00:35:14] Model number okay rounded nose all that that's a dynam model okay cool and then a pt-17 a mig-29 and

[00:35:23] Then the fiesler 156 storage in balsa he's got that in parentheses there thank you and then sport planes you got a timber the one and a half meter and 855 millimeter pits the do 27 which is the fiberglass one yeah cool balsa super cop and then a great plane's pt-60 and then note you have on this one on display in an airport restaurant in new hampshire i gotta guess about that okay so there's a restaurant in new hampshire that has your is this your original great plains pt-60 yes from the

[00:35:58] 1990s that's awesome that is awesome that is awesome i'll give it's actually in and there it's i got the magazine but it's in model airplane news there's a picture of it really hanging up in that mute in that awesome restaurant so like i said i lived up in new hampshire as a kid and when i moved away i still had this airplane i still had it and it it's a pt-60 it has an

[00:36:28] Enya 40 on it so interesting it's okay it seems like it would be very underpowered but it's not it flies really great it flies very scale or sure it flies very well so yeah but my father painted it it was all yellow with red bands on the wing and tail and it's got american star and bar navy on it so if you picture like kind of a stearman or a at6 texan paint job on it and it's all airbrushed and

[00:37:01] Weathered with the shark's mouth on front on the front of it everything really and it has a set of old dubro wheels from my dad's and my grandfather's hobby shop on it and i don't know why but that makes me smile that it has a part from their old hobby shop on it absolutely makes me smile it's not even my my story yeah so that it it when we first built it we took it to an rc model competition with that our club at the i think we were called the rc aces at the time they had a a show that

[00:37:34] They put together with all the other clubs and it won first place in the trainers because of how good it looked and when i moved to illinois i had to do something with it so we i went to the airport that i learned to fly out there was a restaurant there and i said do you guys want to hang it up for a display because they had a bunch of models hanging up there and they're like yeah sure and that's where it's been since 98 99 and it they have a little motion track so it goes around the

[00:38:06] The the the restaurant like it's flying around it's kind of cool really that is so yeah but i was going through model aviation magazine one day and i looked down and there is a little corner picture of it i'm like holy crap that's my airplane yeah that's awesome yeah and it's still in perfectly good flying condition they've taken very good care of it but at this point it's been there 25 years around 25 years it's kind of become a staple to that so i'm just like you guys keep it

[00:38:38] And i'll build a new one if i ever want to build one again so yeah and good thing the pt60

[00:38:45] Is a fairly simple airframe if you wanted to build one from plans it wouldn't be hard yeah yeah yeah it's

[00:38:50] I think like the tail was all just slab quarter inch balsa and the fuselage was the same way the wings were the only thing that really took any effort to build right yeah and that was just standard d-tube

[00:39:02] Construction i remember because i built a pt-40 way back in the day so yeah and good good flying trainers oh yeah awesome mine's not hanging up in an airport though okay so moving on we got kits that you're waiting to build you got the sig clipped wing cub that you mentioned a foam f18 foam board f18 and then you have a dh82 tiger moth which that's to have one right yes yeah

[00:39:29] Which kit is that that's the dancing wing hobbies as well it's the same people that build the storage so i've been hesitant i've had that kit for about two years well i bought it right after i got the storage yeah and i've been hesitant to build it because i'm like oh what am i going to run into with this but right at some point i'll just buckle down and do it yeah well don't be afraid to re-engineer

[00:39:51] That one as you go because you now know you may need to yeah yeah okay and then and then the list that i'm very familiar with crashed waiting for repair you have a scorpio miss two i don't know what that is i'm not sure either like i know who scorpio is because that's what my fiesta 45 is but

[00:40:09] I don't know what a miss two is what is that the miss two was a polyhedral three channel high wing parasol airplane it was powered by a speed 400 like i think it was a groppner speed 400 okay very docile great flying airplane i mean that was my go-to trainer if i was ever showing somebody like the basic controls of the airplane like you could not crash that it was almost impossible to crash

[00:40:41] What however i have to interrupt it's on the crashed waiting for repair list so like i said as you get comfortable you get complacent and you start doing things yes i am because it's completely and like you're like you're 18 all over again yeah yeah so i would get out there with this three channel and show people that you can loop roll it you could hammerhead turn it it's just all about control and watching the airplane and i was coming in caught the wing tip trying to do not like a

[00:41:14] Knife edge but trying to come in kind of with no ailerons get all elevator and rudder kind of get the airplane in a knife exit and i caught the wing tip and took the wing tip off but it was the third time i had had some sort of incident with it a couple times i damaged it in my shop for the most part isn't that the worst the worst yeah and then it's been recovered three times i think so after i i broke the wing tip on it which i could have repaired and just started flying i was

[00:41:50] Like it needs a new cover job and everything so i uncovered it but i bought that airplane in 1995 i want to say so it's it it's the glue joints and all that the boss is starting to get really brittle yeah so i'm trying to figure out am i going to go back and repair everything or am i going to just

[00:42:17] Hang it up as a skeleton at this point yeah like i'm not i'm not afraid of recovering an airplane especially if it's an airplane that's in still in pretty good service but i gotta tell you man you talk about shop damaging them in the shop i have a story a recent story about not to take the focus away from you but no i i feel your pain about shop damage i'm currently in the process of recovering a brand new wing that got damaged in the shop and that's so frustrating yeah

[00:42:48] Complete recover yeah that's oh yeah yeah that's yeah so anyway i feel your pain and the thing about

[00:42:54] Especially when you have something new and you do something like that you're like do i don't want to put a repair on it exactly look new thank you so you end up peeling everything off and you sit there and you're like well what can i salvage and it turns out the best thing to do is just take everything

[00:43:09] Off start over sand it and go back to it yep cut the ailerons off make new aileron yeah i'm that's

[00:43:15] Right yeah so brand new airplane and every cut and peel of every covering is like taking a layer of your soul away because you're like i'm not going to do it this good again i can't i covered it so

[00:43:28] Perfect this time well luckily yeah luckily in this case for me it was an arp so it had been recovered or had been covered by somebody else in china probably some little kid probably in china covered that originally but yeah no i i feel your pain especially if it's one that you had covered yourself which i've done that as well so anyway i feel your pain moving on so that was the scorpio miss too i may have to keep an eye out for that i i like the score was this an arc that the scorpio was it a almost ready to cover or was it a complete kit it was a complete kit i want

[00:44:01] To say it was it was an arf yeah you needed servos and stuff like that so okay but it was all yellow

[00:44:10] With a red tail originally yeah so yeah the scorpio they were they were pretty popular they made what they called arc which was an arc almost ready to cover arf so that's what my fiesta 45 was anyway so moving on at 1.2 meter clip wing cub crashed waiting for repair so we got to hear that

[00:44:32] Story okay so this happened about three months ago four months ago i was flying painful yeah what's that yeah still painful and fresh this was the first larger scale from the umx line that i got into when i got back into the hobby so i've been flying this is the airplane i always said this is the shake the rust off the long time flying airplane because it flies so well but it's the it was

[00:45:04] The horizon hobby i believe put it out or e-flight put it out their foam clip wing cub so i was out flying it i have a real i had a really good friend that i flew with named duane that i did a lot of my flying with and he's the type of guy he's very confident on his he was a he's a drone pilot so he's very confident on the sticks so when i had we were out flying if it's winds blowing six or seven miles an hour i start getting into the i don't want to fly phase

[00:45:39] And he's that guy that is like get up there and fly go up and fly it's not that windy you got that that model had as3x on it he's like you got as3x just get up there and fly so i took it off and i'm i'm not having any trouble flying it so he starts going me into doing different aerobatic he's like do an inverted low pass and i'm like i'm not doing an inverted low pass he's like just try flying inverted do this that and i'm like so finally i was like i did a spin he's like be cooler

[00:46:09] If you did an inverted spin so i rolled the airplane over and i did an inverted spin well i did not recover from an inverted spin i recovered from a regular spin oh so the airplane yep just goes into a nose dive and went right into the top of the trees to the oh the trees okay yeah so it's sitting in the top of a tree and it no damage it looked perfect so i'm like okay i gotta get this thing down so this is way out in the woods in my club from the side of my club so i'm out there and i'm talking i'm like

[00:46:40] What am i going to do how am i get this thing out so i try climbing it but i am not in the shape to climb a tree so and it's probably a good 50 feet up in the top of this tree yeah it's up there yeah so i i grabbed my i went home now this is the worst part about it really it's date night for my wife and i so i'm like babe i just need to run out to the rc field cut this tree down real quick and get my airplane and she's like that's fine now my wife is dressed to the nines and i'm running out there

[00:47:16] In my truck in nice clothes with a chainsaw to go get my model airplane i have to cut two trees down and when the tree came down it demolished the airplane oh so i i stripped all i stripped all the electronics out of it and i just ordered all new foam for it and i'll just put it back together because the airplane's been discontinued otherwise i would have just bought a new model but right now with the supply chain issues i'm waiting on the fuselage and the battery cover

[00:47:46] To actually start putting it back together and i think those i ordered them back in october and they are supposed to be here in may of this year so yeah i've been waiting patiently but since then i bought this like i said i bought the sig balsa one which is roughly the same size so which you'll yeah that was yeah that you're gonna love that airplane yeah they fly so well it flies probably as good as

[00:48:12] The one you don't have anymore oh wow rub it in yeah remember how that flew yeah yeah this one will fly

[00:48:20] Just like that probably better all right and then so the last part of your list which there's not something that ron and i haven't done you have it labeled as crashed and gone like i yes i've i don't think i had so many that i couldn't keep track but you had a phoenix edge 540 an f9f panther a 64 millimeter which looks like you've replaced yes f and a flight test sportster and a umx the 50 millimeter version of the f16 yes so crashed and gone no no plans except for the panther no no

[00:48:56] Plans to replace any of those other three so no not really panther was my first edf my father bought it for me for a birthday present last year or the year before and it flew i loved it it was one of the best flying what i guess they call the toss and boss it's three channel elevator and aileron any no landing gear or anything like that and i had a great time flying it and what had happened i actually have it posted on youtube and i'll send you guys

[00:49:31] The link okay i did not i'm and this is a lesson learned that has changed my behavior out of the rc field i was flying a bunch of different models and i was i set the batteries to one side and the good battery the used batteries go over here and the new batteries are in their in their box over here and i had taken a new battery out and i was like oh i want to film this so that i can show people flying this model stuff like that and i set up my camera on my hat and all this other

[00:50:05] Stuff and i went and grabbed the battery and i had grabbed a used battery battery that was already down to 50 percent and i threw it out there it flew fine for about a minute and a half and then it went into the the electronic cutout on the power yep and i i you can watch the video it's i i still laugh at it every time i'm coming by on my field and i say oh expletive i knew exactly what had happened

[00:50:36] So i'm immediately going into try to turn the airplane back into the field because i'm kind of over the edge of the trees and get landing right now and as i'm making the turn i'm slow that's a very scale built there looking airplane yeah i'm turning and i lose throttle and i lose control and the airplane nose dives and crashes in the only puddle on the field isn't that like our luck though

[00:51:06] Yeah honestly like a magnet yeah and i knew exactly what had happened i'd put a used battery in it because i'm look i looked over at the table and there's a battery set over there it is by the good batteries and one missing from the used so what i do with them and i cut the tails off and then i mount them to my wall and i try to write something underneath them like check the batteries oh i don't

[00:51:30] Do the the thing underneath but i've got some on my walls too i love it it's just i love the i love

[00:51:35] The idea of of posting the lesson you learned yeah yes resulted in that and he's being like a plaque underneath of it yeah that's a great idea wonderful yeah i'm i'm writing that down because

[00:51:45] That's a good idea yeah but that's the only one to replace because that's the only one that i kind of enjoyed that phoenix edge was given to me by a friend of mine who passed away last year and he was like you'll love it it's fast it's this that and the other thing and i'm like okay so i'm taking it up for the first time myself and i'm like man this thing flies like it's on rails it's a great flying airplane well the the peanut gallery all the guys in behind me start saying like it's aerobatic do aerobatics and i'm like okay so i did a snap roll i'm like oh that flies

[00:52:21] That was great yeah that was so i'm like i did a loop i did a regular aileron roll and i'm like i'm gonna do a dual double snap roll because this thing is just so easy to fly and i did a double snap roll i got too slow and i ended up hitting the tops of the trees and that was the end of that those trees man yeah yeah every single time every time they just jump right out of the ground and grab

[00:52:49] Those airplanes so yeah but peanut gallery i like i like the reference because every i think every club has one at their field oh yeah and at our field i think we're the peanut gallery i think so too

[00:53:01] Absolutely depending on who's falling we are definitely doing that yeah i'm horrible with it too

[00:53:09] Always trying to talk people into doing something outside your comfort zone because how do you grow unless you what i mean you gotta push your comfort zone a little bit exactly absolutely so really we're helping well yes i mean it's all about it's not for it's not for our entertainment it's to develop whoever as a pilot exactly yeah whatever makes you sleep at night

[00:53:34] The all all the electronics out of that edge are going to go into the clip wing cub because they're roughly they they have that it's all like it's those all electric so the motor esc servos which i had rebuilt are going into that clip wing cub for that power system so it'll let the parts of it will live again

[00:53:55] Right right yeah well and you said we salvage what we can so yes hopefully something the spirit will live on

[00:54:02] There you go the soul will be in another airplane i i noticed looking through your list though that

[00:54:07] No no nitro yeah i am not like oh i i love the smell of nitro i love the sound of nitro it's one of the things that brings you back but i cannot justify this price of the nitro fuel and the tinkering of the motors and i know tom that's your that's one of the things you love but yeah i when i want to go out to fly i want to go out to fly i've done i have to tinker with c130s all day for little issues i'm

[00:54:43] Like i know i want to go out there plug a battery in and go fly i want to be able to i want to if there's an airplane i need to bring in my wife's car because she has suv suv i have a pickup truck so sometimes it's easier to bring airplanes out to the field in her car yep if i if i leave a screw in there she's gonna let me know about it you left the screw in there you left this in there and i'm like if i had the smell of nitro in her car yeah i would never hear the end i'd have to get it detailed every time i brought it home so yeah i got it and my there's not a good place for me to

[00:55:21] Purchase nitro in my area which is a shame it really is because i don't think anybody if you want to do nitro fly nitro if you want to do electric fly electric but the biggest issue is trying to purchase it and yeah batteries i've been having good luck i haven't puffed any batteries yet and i fly them pretty aggressively i do well with keeping the the charge to 50 when i land and all that so yeah it's just been working out and not storing them

[00:55:53] Fully charged which was a lesson i had to learn the hard way yeah as long as you take care of the battery

[00:55:58] It'll take care of you yeah i mean you can destroy them if you try to but if you try to take care of

[00:56:04] Them they will last a long time yep now my first lipo battery actually ended up in a fire in flight and this was back in 2000 or no 2006 when lipos were still coming on and you would charge them and then you'd have to balance them separately and stuff like that but yeah i charged it up and i didn't balance it and i'm out there flying it and i'm like oh cool smoke and i'm like oh wait a minute that's not a good sign no wait i don't have a smoke system on this airplane well for that but it did this i had

[00:56:43] It and it was a slim racing airplane and i had a power a speed 480 in it a groppner speed 480 direct drive and that airplane it had to be doing about 90 miles an hour and straight level flight so when that smoke kicked in and it burnt like i'm kind of looking i'm like is that smoke and the other guys are flying we're like yeah that's smoke and i'm like betcha that battery's catching fire you're kind of thinking through it it had i would assume it had burned through the aileron servo while i was in the turn the airplane just kept turning but it hit about 500 feet away from me

[00:57:20] In a soccer field and i felt the impact in my feet that hit so hard oh man it was i walked out there just to put the fire out i didn't even pick a piece up there was nothing left nothing i couldn't even find the motor it was buried in the ground wow yeah it was really honking when it went in then oh yeah

[00:57:41] Well so i mean i don't hold it against you that you don't have any nitro because i totally get it i mean it is it is expensive right now nitro fuel is the highest i've ever seen it like yeah even factoring in inflation and all that stuff it's it's ridiculous but i i can't get away from it i mean it's just

[00:58:00] I see it's one of those things where and i've said it before i like nitro i just don't want to own nitro right i like being around it i like listening to it i like the smell of it i like the sound of it i like everything about it i just don't want it yeah so it works out great in my opinion nitro motor

[00:58:16] Airplanes and what they represent they are they are that they represent the hobby they really do but with all the new technology it's kind of like electric cars and all this other stuff it's it's just kind of the way i think the hobby is going and it makes it more approachable for people who aren't in the hobbies because people understand batteries over tuning their they kind of sit there and think about their weed eater and how they function and all the oh it's good for a year and then i have a problem with it next year and stuff like that

[00:58:49] But it's a learning process that you really got to get out there and you're i believe you got to kind of get out there in the field and talk with guys who are experienced with it to better understand it to be able to maintain nitro because there's a lot more maintenance with nitro than there is with electric electric you put them up at the end of the year you're done nitro you got to go through the preservation process so yeah and that's that's just something you don't see a lot of people talking about i mean you guys do which is great i mean i never knew like oh yeah you probably should

[00:59:20] Preserve your nitros over the winter and stuff like that and i'm like that's probably where a lot of my problems are but yeah i want to get back into it right now i will tell you i am not opposed to gas airplanes and i do plan on later on building i want to build a quarter scale d7 foker d7 and i'm going to do that with a like a balsa usa quarter scale d7 with a gas motor in it yeah

[00:59:50] Sounds like dave yeah yeah dave one of one of our friends he's he loves the world war one stuff and he's a he's a pretty good fan of the balsa usa kits and yeah and the foker would be that's something i think he probably already i know he already owns one of those so yeah yeah yeah good flying airplane and which as you are since the pete and paul kind of flies the same you're you're already kind of one step ahead of anyone else who wants to get into world war one

[01:00:16] Yeah airplanes some cool beans you you've talked about flying at the field and stuff what you are the vice president of your field is that correct yes so when i joined my field in

[01:00:29] 2001 i believe was when i joined i know 2000 or i'm sorry not 2000 2020 i joined the field i had been flying at a park just down the street from me with all my small umx and it it was going good but we eventually got kicked out of there people were complaining as the summer comes along and there's more and more people they don't want to see the rc flying there so i found this club going through the ama website and rolled out there and i'm i'm very much of a thing if something

[01:01:03] Needs to be approved i'm going to say it so the the road to our club is kind of treacherous it's a a normal car has a hard time going up there if you don't know the kind of path through the dirt road so the first thing i said is what are we doing about this road i joined and the first thing i say at the club what are we doing about the road and they're like well their current president and vice president are they're like we're trying this that and the other thing and i'm like okay well is there somebody i can contact is there any help i can give you this that so

[01:01:38] I started contacting people well at the end of the year came around the vice president and the president said you guys myself and a guy named alan jack who's the president were kind of working together to get improvements done at the field with blessing of the president and vice president that was at the time and they those two guys just looked at each other and said why don't you guys be the president vice president so they had the vote and we got we got the job so and it's been now it's bureaucracy and rc and it's not the fun part but

[01:02:15] It's the part that needs to get done if you want to get anything done yeah to improve your does so

[01:02:21] Does your club own the land or do you guys lease it or how's that work we we get it for free we had

[01:02:28] Set up as a non-profit the douglas county park system who owns the property said if you're a non-profit but you still have to collect dues and you use your money to improve it or to put towards the club in any way we'll let you have the land for free so we are pretty much we have an unlimited lease on the land for this rc field so we and it's been there since the early the late 70s

[01:02:59] 80s and it's kind of tucked out of the way it's not usable for anything but being either forest or an rc field in my opinion so that's how we ended up with it and it's it's getting a little tight because they don't like us doing too much maintenance on the actual ground cutting trees down and stuff like that to get airplanes which i'm yeah so we've been working with them saying they don't mind if like we've told them airplanes get stuck in trees and we want to cut the tree down there one

[01:03:32] Tree out of a million is not a big deal to them but they don't want us going in there and hiring a company and clear cutting the field yes yeah so yep i get that yeah so it's it's a good field we have it's about four or five hundred feet wide by roughly a thousand feet from end to end but then it's trees dense trees all the way around it all the way okay yeah yeah that would be kind of scary but other than that that's that's a good size area yeah yeah it's pretty decent it is i wouldn't i don't

[01:04:03] Think i would fly quarter scale or third scale there just from the simple fact that if you if you lose power on takeoff or go around or something like that you're putting it into the trees which is when you got that much money invested into it you want to have sure at least a chance land

[01:04:23] Yeah yeah right room for mistakes yes exactly yes so for field improvements such as the road do you guys have to coordinate and the only reason i ask is just it i like to it so many different fields are ran so many different ways oh yeah and if we hear that that this organization is getting this accomplished and they went through it this way hopefully that information can help out somebody who may be listening who might be going through a similar situation with their field and

[01:04:54] Haven't tried that idea whatever what i'm saying so like when to do the road work did you guys have to work with a road commissioner or anything like that or or the land is still owned by the

[01:05:05] By the lessee i guess it was the the so we have to get approval through the parks department for everything that we do and i have a good contact with the douglas county parks department where i can kind of explain they just want it's kind of like an hoa if you live in an hoa they just kind of want to know what you're going to do and then they approve it and allow you to do it but we have to fund it all ourselves of course yeah so with the road right now we're raising the funds and we're not raising

[01:05:36] We don't raise our dues or anything to pay for this we we really ask our members to just either contribute or anybody that can throw a couple extra bucks to it but we're going to purchase all the new gravel for the bad areas for the road and the parks department is going to lend us a operator and a piece of machinery to to grade it all out yeah so but it really is it's you've got a i've always

[01:06:06] Said it's there's about 25 of us active on the club i think 28 total members but it's to ask the parks department to give funds for 28 people when they have parks that are open to thousands of people right no you're you're going to be alone and you got to understand that that's that's really how it should be right it stinks but that's the way it should be but with anything if you have a passion for it you're going to get it done and you're going to make the

[01:06:38] Improvements it just you got to be willing to be patient with it right you guys that's been my biggest thing do you guys fly off of grass or textile we have a three or four hundred foot by 75 foot asphalt strip and then oh that's fantastic yeah it's it's wavy it's kind of like landing on the ocean it's not that bad but it does follow the contours so there's it's there's it's kind of down at one end and it kind of humps in the first and last quarter and then it's kind

[01:07:13] Of low in the middle which it'll it'll come up and bite you and on it you'll be set up for a great approach and you're like all right i got this i'm gonna i'm gonna grease this and you would grease it if that hill wasn't there so you end up slamming it in or you end up floating over and then going way along so but you get used to it i mean yeah it's makes you a better pilot right exactly

[01:07:36] Yeah exactly so how far how far away is your field from your house like how long of a drive

[01:07:42] About 15 minute drive oh that's not so bad that's about where we are yeah i'm a little yeah but are

[01:07:48] You yeah it's about 20 ish or so now yeah it's not terrible though yeah now for my umx airplanes i fly right in my front yard yeah and why not i mean they're yeah they're perfect for that's the beauty of

[01:08:02] Those yeah they're easy to transport you can fly them anywhere and just have to watch the wind i should probably get yeah oh yes i we all should get some of those i think i i would agree well those

[01:08:15] And if you like building the micro aces models are awesome they look super scale they fly really well that's what the the sc5 and foker d8 are they're those micro aces ones and they use the same boards and motors as the one cell umx airplanes so you can buy stuff from horizon and the guy and i believe they're out in england he has all those boards as well spectrum futaba all compatible

[01:08:52] See i learn every time we do this ron and i both wrote that down actually i'll have to be checking

[01:08:58] That out yeah we'll be probably checking that out see what new stuff i get to buy it's exciting yeah

[01:09:03] That's awesome so it just occurred to me sorry i don't mean to interrupt the flow here but i i was looking at the list and i did notice something besides nitro that is missing from your list and that's

[01:09:13] Gliders i actually love gliders that's true he does have a radian yeah you've got the radian

[01:09:21] Yeah yeah but it's being that small it doesn't it it's not i don't really see it as a true glider it's hard to get to thermal and you can't thermal very high in it because it's so small small yeah i see

[01:09:35] It yeah so ron and i we've kind of gone on to this glider kick and yeah i think we're gonna we're

[01:09:42] Gonna give that a give that a shot yeah it's gonna be exciting i'm looking forward to that it's

[01:09:46] Different what kind of gliders are you guys doing powered or rubber band launch or discus launch

[01:09:53] So i we haven't done any of the discus launch stuff yet i think that would be good to practice with right now we have powered gliders and i think that's where we needed to start mine's

[01:10:07] Not powered you haven't flown here so that's right but it's it's still a glider and it's not

[01:10:11] Powered right now right now flyable we have a powered glider that i think is a good place to start because like i said a while ago the first time i flew that trying to land it took me forever and it was nice to have the motor to be able to go back around because yeah i'd never flown a glider before and they're completely different than a regular airplane yeah so we're totally completely but

[01:10:35] Yeah we're toying around with the with a non-powered glider and towing it behind the trash can telemaster that's what oh that'd be great yes that's the plan and luckily the the field we've landed we're really really fortunate to have such a a long runway that's actually a grass strip for an airport that is a dual purpose with they let us use it and perfect setup i think for oh i do

[01:11:01] Do we're doing absolutely yeah kind of a operation an arrow toe yeah that'll be fun no i've i've

[01:11:06] Thought about i've thought about the six the sig riser i think it's a hundred inch wingspan and doing a powered modification to either putting a power pod that will rubber band to the top of the wing so that i can go from powered to non-powered sure or something like that but glider yeah i love the guys i used to fly with i call them the lockheed retiree club they're all engineers from lockheed martin that i met at the park i used to fly at and i ended up getting around

[01:11:44] Working around with them and learning a lot but they they're big glider guys so they'll get up there and they'll soar around for 30 and 40 minutes and thermal they also go through all the telemetry on the radios and stuff like that download it and look at it and they say oh i was doing this and that and they go back and rework their models to get more performance out of them which blows me away but that's i guess it's what's one of the advantages you get when you do

[01:12:15] Retire you get a little more time to delve into your hobbies a little bit deeper yeah so but no it i've always wanted to get a a glider but i always wanted i'm kind of like power glider on power glider discus launch because that discus launch competition stuff just seems like it's a neat thing how you launch the air the glider up in there trying to do the the time flights exactly to like a minute and touch and goes and spot landings all that seemed it seems

[01:12:48] Like it would really build up your skills and that's being able to say i'm gonna land it here and without a chance of going around having to really manage your power or your altitude and airspeed and be able to spot land stuff like that especially very interesting to me yeah yeah that's

[01:13:05] That's why i think it's good to start with powered because you have the option to go around if you end up accidentally landing 500 feet away because they i mean they just float forever it's so hard to get them lined up and especially like the one i have that i've been flying does not have ailerons and i can't that's a pain for me like yeah you lose so much control when you don't have the ailerons to where you can't crab coming down the runway if there's a little bit of wind you just you use or you lose a lot of the control i'm used to having i guess so well not only that you can always program

[01:13:40] Your ailerons to kind of pop up together as spoilers to help you get on the ground a little

[01:13:45] Bit quicker that's the one i have has a spoiler built into it oh okay okay i don't know how to use it obviously because i you always try things high up when you when you first try yeah so i had it pretty pretty high up there and flipped the switch for the spoiler and it just it dove straight straight nose dive down to the ground so i was like oh i don't like that turn that off then it was fine so i'm gonna have to do some more practice with that and kind of learn maybe it was

[01:14:15] Up too high maybe it was too fast maybe it has to have elevator built in when you do it i don't

[01:14:20] I don't know there is so i i when i was learning to fly i was i got up in a grobe 109 glider it's a powered glider powered by a porsche four-cylinder engine really cool airplane well one of the things we did was what we call the max effort landing where you come over the numbers of the runway at pattern altitude roughly about 900 feet above the ground and you would deploy the spoilers and push that nose straight down and you would dive for the ground and then pull out and

[01:14:53] Land about 100 feet down the runway 100 to 200 feet down the runway and that's where i learned how to do spoilers even in rc airplane you really want to have those kind of dialed in you don't want them just fully deploy and fully come down you kind of want to i would put them on the r knob if for spectrum the r knob on there and just slowly play with them yeah so you can see what the airplane

[01:15:17] Does with different degrees of spoiler that's a good idea yeah yeah see learning stuff why you have the conversation yeah i'm not in that got to yeah that's awesome yeah which which the glider you talking about you got at the swap meet that we had talked over and over and over and probably wore all of our listeners ears out but we're so excited to go gary do you do you like to

[01:15:42] Go to swap meets i even so and a lot of my other hobbies i go to swap meets rc covet kicked off right when i was getting back into it and i only live like three hours from perry oh so yeah i got back into it didn't even know what perry was i drove right by perry going to visit family in st augustine florida during when perry was going on didn't even know i got back and guys were like oh you went down

[01:16:13] To st augustine at the club i'm like yeah they're like did you go to perry and i'm like what's perry that i drove through it like it's the largest swap meet for rc and i'm like oh i didn't know that is it still going on they're like no it was last weekend i'm like dang and then the next year it was canceled and then this year i actually was like okay i'm going to perry with everyone and i got sick and i was like i don't want to go down there because i didn't i didn't test positive for covet or anything but i was like i don't want to go down there with a weakened immune system and have to that so i had to miss it now three years in a row but this next year is going to be

[01:16:49] I've already told i'm going to perry and i'm coming back with a lot

[01:16:56] Yes you're not it's not a successful trip trip unless the vehicle you go down there and is so full that you cannot see out the windows on the way exactly i agree 100 yeah we're we're gonna try

[01:17:11] I don't know if we'll do next year i'm i'm hoping to but there's a lot of things that have to align right make it happen but i'd love to do perry next but yeah our goal is to eventually

[01:17:20] Go to go to perry because it sure sounds like it's a nitro lover's paradise yeah so yeah anyway

[01:17:27] I agree before we get out of here i wanted to bring up the facebook group that you have started

[01:17:33] But i want to talk a little bit about that yeah so one of the things i i i really enjoy doing is i rarely leave any of my foam airplanes this when you were talking about you look at the foam and they look like beaded foam so i i i follow the rc geek on youtube and facebook and i've loved how he modifies his he goes back and fills it all in it almost does it like a plastic model very scale model so i kind of dumbed that down a little bit and i created on facebook the custom

[01:18:09] Foam rc airplanes where i want to basically encourage people to take that airplane that they buy from motion and all that and make it their own go in there and repaint it and then try to share how we do the repainting and things we have learned and that work and don't work so like my panther that's kind of how this all started that f9f panther is yellow with a gray fuselage and that's kind of i think that what the navy used as a drone chase airplane and i'm like it's cool it's

[01:18:41] Visible but it's the panther was kind of underrated in my opinion the f86 kind of out shined the panther in the korean war but one of my favorite movies growing up was the bridges of toko re and they fly the f9f panther so i went through and sanded that whole airplane down filled all the foam repainted it in the blue had collie graphics out of new mexico make scale decals for it so now it is the

[01:19:13] Commander's airplane and the bridges of toko re and that kind of got me going like well how many people actually know how to do this so i wanted to create that facebook page to basically create a forum where we can talk about the things the successes the failures that we've had with customizing our model airplanes our phone model airplanes and that's really what it's about

[01:19:40] I mean we're modelers right yeah absolutely i mean yeah make taking an airplane and customizing it and making it what you want it to be i think i think is awesome sounds similar to what i had talked to ron probably offline about i picked up a taft hobby i think it's a viper edf or whatever it's called but it's just ugly i mean it was in it was in a fire it has a lot of smoke damage and staining the foam is okay but the building it was in was in a fire right right exactly okay so it's

[01:20:11] Just not pretty so i was thinking of sanding it down and putting a an italian because it looks very similar to a machi i think it's a f201 or something like that an italian fighter the the silhouette of it looks like so i thought i'd be kind of needed to put an italian air force paint job on it so that's what i'm gonna do so i'm gonna reference your your facebook group

[01:20:34] Because i bet there's a lot of good tips on there yeah if you have a lot i was gonna say if you have a link or something get it to us and we'll put it in the show notes yeah that way we can get

[01:20:42] More absolutely absolutely sure so but yeah that's so doing that and like i said we every month i always put the last week of the month i say hey submit your pictures to this post i pick whoever gets the most thumbs ups on their picture and that becomes our background as well so i try to involve everybody that i can very cool into posting and stuff like that and sharing so like i said i only started i think maybe two months ago so we're up to i think 170 members

[01:21:16] The conversations kind of come in waves how do you do this how do you do that and we share back and forth different stuff that we've seen online so it's it's been a lot of fun it's interesting to me because i i am probably the least tech savvy person in the world i find that hard to believe considering what you do full-time you you would think but i do better with wrenches and drills than i do with electronics so i am with the c-130 i'm i'm a mechanic and then they break down

[01:21:51] Avionics and electricians into different job categories so we send the cone heads to do the cone head things and the sparkies do sparky things and we take stuff apart put it back together yeah so and make it work so but no like my computer for this interview i actually because i have no idea how to set up a computer very well so i actually turned this computer on yesterday to make sure it would boot up in time that's how bad i am with electronics gary i feel your pain because ron

[01:22:20] Does all the computer stuff for me because i am and when it comes to computers i'm an idiot i mean

[01:22:26] I'll be honest yeah i mean yeah i agree it's i actually have a 3d printer that i've had since christmas that i have not set up because i'm a little intimidated to set it up and my buddy duane who was my flying partner for a while he had to move to texas to take a job with nasa so i'm kind of like like oh man i don't have anyone here that i know that 3d prints or how to set this up and it's computers involved so i'll just go build models until i figure it out and watch enough youtube on

[01:22:57] It so some sometimes you just got to go step at a time yes or because if you if you try and delve too deep into something that deep at one time it's it's just overwhelming and yeah like it gives me a headache and i just i can't take it too much so one little step at a time baby steps it'll get you there

[01:23:16] Yes so yeah i'll get that i'll eventually i'll get it i mean every any someone told me once and i kind of live by anyone who's ever done it before has never done it before so you're not in a unique position you you're gonna figure it out yeah i like that that's all i do too i like it good

[01:23:35] Words live by yeah well gary i really enjoyed our talk today anything else that you want to bring up

[01:23:41] Before we get out of here actually i wanted to share one story with my buddy that i flew with my buddy duane with our so like i said i like to fly air combat and i had bought that f86 and he had a mig-15 and we would go out there and we'd fly these things and i mean literally try to shoot each other down so there was one time we were out there flying and i had i'd done a bad toss like

[01:24:12] I had thrown the airplane tip stalled it and and smashed the nose so he's up there with air superiority and the whole time he's just like oh he's like he says the commies have got air superiority where are the americans he's going me on so i get the airplane up and i toss it and i'm flying it around and i'm like i'm gonna make you eat those words so hold my beer and watch this yeah so i'm he's coming around and he's like i've got it he's like he's like i'm at three minutes i've got to land and

[01:24:43] I'm like well i'm gonna take you down so i started kind of going towards them and i was like ah he's in the pattern i don't want to mess with him we he was coming in in a tight in a right turn and i was coming straight at him so i was like well i'm gonna bank left and kind of cut across to cut across them but not cut across them well i misjudged the distance and i hit his tail with my wingtip

[01:25:06] Nice and these are not large airplanes like these are small airplanes and that is very yeah the wingspans are only like maybe 30 inches yeah it's like extremely hard to hit another airplane

[01:25:18] Intentionally yeah yes it seems like it happens i hit his tail unintentionally that's amazing

[01:25:26] So yeah i hit his tail he he snapped over the wings folded up on it and he spun into a tree i came back around and landed and you could i still have the red streak from his tail on my wingtip and just to rub it in i put that beautiful red star as a kill mark on the side of it nice of course i was like yeah i took a picture of it i said i know your mig still hanging in a tree and it's still hanging in a tree to this day is it really that's awesome well the wing came separated

[01:26:00] But the aileron wire was still there so it it's wrapped around a branch with that aileron wire like so and i was just like as yeah i put that red star and i took a picture i'm like sorry i lost your airplane but one more for the good guys type of deal so oh yeah but that was the second crate i was we were calm we were doing combat earlier i think the time just before that we were doing combat and we were pulling into each other and he folded his wing up again

[01:26:34] And landed in into the trees and we were able to get it back and fix it but that was that next flight i ended up taking him down again so it was a lot of fun it is a lot of fun like i did so i was at

[01:26:47] School in texas back in 2008 and i was flying with the wichita falls radio control club at the time and they got me into these little foamy f-22s and everybody had the same airplane the same power system the same battery so everybody was kind of evenly matched and we would launch i mean occasionally there'd be 15 of these things in the air all at the same time and you'd go five minutes and nobody would would touch anyone but then as soon as somebody tried to come in and land accidentally people are crashing left and right because they're running into each other and

[01:27:20] Stuff it's like when you're trying to hit another airplane it's it's incredibly difficult to do on purpose

[01:27:26] And we we have the duane had a p-51 and i had the dora the i think they're 800 millimeter wingspans from free wing okay and we would do air combat with those and i tell you what we tried everything to get an air to get a midair on these things i mean we just got so confident with these airplanes that i mean full throttle they'll do about 80 miles an hour and we're doing low level combat with these things and i'm like i'm surprised we never hit each other yeah the funniest one of the we're

[01:27:59] Flying now the door has a yellow tail and the p-51 comes silver and he get you can paint it any way you want so he painted his up and with a yellow tail as well so we're out there flying the first couple of times he's like i i don't know which airplane is mine mine's the one with the yellow tail and he goes we both have yellow tails and at that moment i realized i was watching his airplane he was watching mine like how do we not lose these airplanes already yeah it happens that happens

[01:28:31] Frequently in combat so yeah oh yeah well this has been fun i i've really enjoyed this conversation i don't know about you guys yeah i know this has been a blast i actually have quite a few notes here thanks gary i'm gonna check out the custom foam rc airplane facebook group and then micro fighters or micro races excuse me yeah i got lots of good stuff here yeah we've got some homework to do now so

[01:28:55] Gary like i said thanks for joining us we'll have to do it again sometime we can talk more about how to make a foam airplane your own hey there you go because that's yeah absolutely i'd love to get on

[01:29:04] There and show it in i'll try to send you some links to some of the stuff i've done on youtube with some of the custom stuff i've done on other airplanes and all that i'd love to share awesome yeah that'd be

[01:29:16] Fun so we will stay in touch but until next time i'm ron i'm tom and you i'm gary gilbert all right thanks everybody for listening goodbye good night good night we hope you enjoyed this

[01:29:30] Episode of the rc plane lab podcast for topic suggestions to ask questions or to give anything back 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