I've been an airplane fan since I was a kid...I'm 58 now.

Back then I played with those cheap balsa gliders that you got at the dime store that just slid together with a weight on the nose and a wing that you could move forward and backward to get the plane to do different things. I built dozens of Revell model airplanes and hung the best ones on fishing line strung between the walls of my bedroom. Graduated to flying Cox .049 control line, but never got into RC which in the early and mid '60s was expensive and unreliable.

A few years after we got married, and had a bit of extra money I got my private ticket when we lived in Baton Rouge. I soloed in a Piper Tomahawk that went for $19 an hour wet, and then graduated to a Warrior that cost $25 an hour wet. Ended up joining an equity based flying club there in BR and in the Chicago area when we moved there. My full scale days pretty much ended when we had our third child and four seats were no longer enough. With three kids there were also many other places for the money to go. I ended up with about 400 hours.

That was it for a long time, until I tried RC for the first time earlier this year. Got hooked in a hurry. It's hard to explain the thrill you get when you advance the throttle and see the wheels break ground. It's just there, and I know that it's as close to flying full scale again as I'm likely to get.

I'm just now assembling my second plane, and already have a mental list of others that I want. Most of my hours are in Cessnas, and I've got my eye on the H9 95" Skylane. Others on the list include a Waco or perhaps a Staggerwing, the GP 72" Gee Bee, (I remember reading about that one as a kid and thinking it was the coolest looking plane I'd ever seen), a P51 or P47 (maybe both) and eventually a B25 or a P38. I love the way it looks when those retracts tuck up with less than a wing span of altitude on take off. I also love the sound and smell of a well tuned 2S or 4S glow engine.

I don't know that it explains it real well, but I think you get the idea.