Originally Posted by
RCKen
89-92 I was stationed at a Nuke Artillery Detachment in Italy. We didn't deploy to the first Gulf war because we had a real world mission of baby sitting a batch a 8" nuclear artillery rounds. In 92 after the fall of the USSR we closed down the detachments and all the rounds were shipped back to the US. Before that I was stationed at Ft. Lewis and after Italy I came home to the States and was stationed here in Oklahoma at Ft. SIll. That's were I was medically separated from the Army from and where my problems with PTSD started.
Building bigger airframes aren't something you start off with. It's like everything else you do in life. You have to work your way up to and you have to develop the skills for. But they are by no means secret and by no means something that is impossible to do. In my case it's just that I have been building for a long time. While I haven't been building RC planes for all that time, I've been building balsa wood planes for quite a long time. My dad started me off building Guillows planes when I was kid and I've always loved building kits since then. I've always liked taking a box of parts and putting them together and having a finished product. Whether it's wood to make an airplane or for the times that I was building scale plastic models it's still the same desire the build that has always driven me.
Ken
Ah yeah, "Restricted area, deadly force authorization" My kind of watch, I know it well but not in Italy. Sorry to hear about Ft. Lewis as I've been there before and it wasn't exactly a "nice" base to be at.
In regards to the builds, no one taught me, I basically bought my first kit which was an Eaglet 50 back in '80 and did the best I could. I had built a few dozen plastic models by that time along with model rockets so I sort of had an idea. Back then, an Eaglet 50 was about the only rc I could afford. I think there were a few ARFs out at that time, but they were more expensive getting them that way and I didn't have the cash since I was a kid. I built and flew three birds in total during the early 80's. I then got back into r/c in about '95/'96 and built and flew two SIG Kougars until roughly '97/'98. I returned to r/c for the third time (third times the charm perhaps with everything) roughly a year ago. It was the leap in r/c electronics advancement that got me interested in the hobby again. The computer based radios, the electronics such as GPS and camera's, etc. is what did it for me. And for my first bird in over a decade, I chose the bird that I went bonkers over as a kid, the SIG Kougar. Fitted that plane with the most modern electronics. Next up is the SIG Komet which I'm hoping to maiden next month.