Ever since I was four years old I held a fascination with flight. Three quarters of all my toys were aircraft/airport related, and I wore those poor things out from so much use. I'm currently one of the young ones at the age of 22. I began flying at the age of 17 with a kit built Carl Goldberg Electra. I couldn't cover worth a darn at the time, so the model looked like a deranged prune. I didn't belong to a club either and only taught myself to fly the glider after many, many crashes. I have since entered college as an aviation major where my love of flight has only grown. Two years ago I joined a local club and was taught how to fly a glow powered Avistar trainer. It didn't take me long to learn to fly it since I had the previous R/C experience. I progressed from the Avistar to a Great Planes Cessna 182 to a Kyosho Spitfire. I sold the 182 and spitfire to buy other aircraft after learning to fly them well.

I currently have four aircraft in the hangar: a Joker tailwheel pattern aircraft with tuned pipe and retracts, an Atlanta tricycle gear pattern aircraft with tuned pipe and retracts (very fast airplane), a Sundowner 50, and a 1/3 scale Pitts S-2S Special with 50cc gas engine. I am building a Fresh Aire pattern airplane and a quarter scale GeeBee R-2 from Haffke plans.

I also instruct new members how to fly and find this extremely rewarding. I have found that my full scale flight experience (although limited compared to some of you) has helped me in this hobby. I have had two mishaps in the hobby so far. I was training a student one night with a cub and noticed an avistar coming towards us. The avistar pulled up, so I figured he was spacing himself further away to avoid conflict. In actuality he was simply performing a loop. When he came back and finished the loop both aircraft collided head on. I should not have assumed I knew what he was doing. The other was with my Joker when I failed to properly perform a preflight check. I took off, the airplane turned left and collided with a bank of trees at full throttle. It turns out that the aileron connector was plugged in backwards. I had zero aileron control and the rudder didn't have enough coupling to bank the aircraft away from the trees. I have since repaired the Joker to like new condition and always perform very thorough preflight checks. I haven't dumb thumbed one in, yet (knocks on wood).