When I first decided to get into planes, I bought a Ace Simple Series Cap21, and bolted a little Cox reed valve engine onto it that came out of one of those little plastic control line deals. I had a car radio, so I used that! It was a two stick 2ch radio. I used two standard sized servos. Needless to say it never flew other than a nice arc from where I released it, to the ground. I patched it up, tried again, did that a few times until there was nothing left. I gave up, until about 6 months later I talked my dad into taking me to the hobby shop that was nearest to me, about an hour away. We spent the better part of the morning there, and he recommended a club that was nearby the hobby shop. He also gave me the name of a guy that taught people to fly. I contacted him, and he invited me to go visit the club which I did. My dad and I spent a whole Saturday watching people fly, and I got some stick time on a Dynaflite Butterfly. I was hooked! The instructor turned out to be the guy who owned all the land that the club was on, and told me to stop by his house on the way out. He gave me a foam Spirit of '76 glider with an engine pod and a Black Widow engine on it, and told me to get an airplane radio which I did. I got it all ready to go, and couldn't wait to get back to the club and tried to fly it myself. I busted it up too. Now it was starting to sink in that I DID in fact need help. I called him up, told him what happened, and he wasn't angry as I expedted him to be. Instead he told me to come back out to the club and he would teach me on one of his planes. I did that a few times, while saving birthday and christmas money to get a plane of my own. I bought a brand new Thunder Tiger World Trainer 40T, with a TT GP42 engine. He helped me tune it, and break it in, test flew it for me, and gave me a few more lessons before I soloed. I then bought a used Sig Astro Hog with an OS .91FS for a good price from a club member. I flew it for the rest of the season and loved it. Driving over an hour to the club was getting old, and about the same time we moved to another house where we have 4 acres of land, the back half of which is all clear, and there are nothing but fields all around for miles. I got the farmer nearby to build me a runway with a tractor and blade. I sold the Astro Hog, it was too big to fly here. I flew a Piece O' Cake glider for a while then lost intrest. I bought a GP .20 sized CUB not long after that and never flew it. It hung around on display for the last 5 years or so, and jsut the other day I got it out, got it ready to go, and flew it. Now I'm hooked again! So there's my story of how I learned to fly.

Keith