jlingrel, thank you very much for the wonderful comment, but jpurcha is right, building is mostly a learned skill. It just takes time. Plus everything always looks better in pictures!

I started building rubber powered free flight and powered control line at a very young age in the late 40s. There was an older kid in the neighborhood that built beautiful airplanes and he got me interested in building my first kit, a rubber powered kit.

Sometimes learning building skills is painful. My first kit was a Comet brand stick and tissue free flight. I got it all built and was really proud and excited that I was able to even build it. I rushed over to my friends’ house all excited……. and he bluntly told me that it looked like dog do do! What a let down and disappointment that was. I was crushed! It’s funny that I still remember his name and that experience, but I kept on building and have always tried to be supportive of other builders and their work.

Most all of the kids in the neighborhood built kits in those days and later on control line stuff with engines that didn’t start very well. Building and flying was every kid’s passion then, kind of like video games are today. After awhile my building skills improved and my airplanes looked much better. There were some wonderful kits in production back then. My best friend had a pretty decent allowance because his dad was the head manager of one of our local paper mills. He built what seemed like a monster size RC aircraft with a vacuum tube radio. After building it he was afraid to fly it, but I was very impressed with it. The cost of RC was way, way out of my reach but the idea stuck. Most of us kept building and flying control line until we were in high school and got distracted with girl friends.

I started building control line again in 65 after getting married and settling down to family life. Within a couple of months I got interested in RC and it became one of my passions. I was very interested in designing and building my own aircraft. I played around with a lot of ideas. Some worked great and some not so good. See the attached image below of one of my early pattern designs that worked pretty well. It was powered by a Supertiger 40 and had a swept wing and tail. This is all probably TMI but I wanted to share, that from my experience, there is a learning process and I’m still learning.

I love to build and most of all love to fly what I build. Others on the forum have tried to explain the “build-fly” phenomenon and the feeling that many RCers have. I’m one of those people that still have the need to build what they fly! I don’t feel much attachment to the aircraft I’m flying unless I spent the time to create it. RCers often say they would like to build but cannot find the time it takes. True, we are all much busier nowadays making our livings so my solution is to build a little bit at a time, taking many months to complete a build. Meanwhile I have other aircraft to fly. There are lots of days when you cannot fly because of the weather, etc. Those are great opportunities to spend a little time building your dream machine.