I started on C/L also in the late 60's and got my first R/C in 1976, and it took me awhile to build it and save up for the radio...I soloed on it in 1977. I had some "dark years" in the late 80's and drifted away from the sport some...but that didn't last long

Man!!! I got to thinking about that, and I'm going to have to say the magazine writer is full of it. If you think about going flying, usually I average maybe 5-10 flights on a plane in an afternoon at maybe an average of 12-15 minute flights. So at a very low estimate, one of my favorite engines gets an average of an hour on it every time I go flying, and thats usually once sometimes twice a week... So for the sake of simplicity, lets just say once a week...and I missed two weeks a year...that would be 50 hours a year on the engine. The engine I'm talking about is a TT pro .46 and it's been on many Spads and has even seen action in combat. I bought it in 1998 so it's at least 4 years old, so I would very conservitively say it's got roughly 200 hours of run time on it.