While she was gone I picked up this Gentle Lady that was already built plus it had a power pod and a hi-start and the radio was installed.
I think it was a four channel Futaba radio.
We had a lot of fun with this at Lebreton Flats, Hurdman Hill and other cool venues. It was 195 bucks so that’s some pretty serious fun when you think a pair of sneakers or soccer shoes was a hundred bucks and they are outgrown pretty fast. I found another one similar with no hi-start or power pod so I picked it up. So we had two of these things for some time.
It was an awesome summer of slope soaring, sailing in thermals and other fun.
He was starting to get into some science stuff at school as well. So the RC equipment maintenance would work in concert with this sort of stuff.
The following Christmas I got a small three channel Katydid (Airtronics) and a Cox Helicopter with an 049 engine.
We spent a lot of time at Lebreton Flats. It’s a shame they re-purposed that area into a museum.
This lifestyle change was a lot of work (driving around to soccer, daycare, procurement of day care, babysitting, procurement of musical instruments, driving to music lessons, tutoring, hiring tutors, teacher interviews, bicycles, tennis lessons, golf lessons, golf clubs, other sports equipment and much more of course).
I enjoyed sharing simpler model planes with Joseph and his cousins and family. In the pictures below we were on a vacation visiting her family. I added a package to my luggage with materials to build about 10 Courier model airplanes. So shortly after I arrived at Ranch 108 for this vacation. I put together a good size batch of these planes. I hated golf but model planes plus golf course = fun. The kids could walk out that porch and fly them near the 9th hole. I experienced my first flyaway that day. After making the batch of planes I picked one for a test flight. I put just a few turns on it and gave it a toss. It started chugging away and worked it’s way up to about 40 feet high and the flew over the hotel. I chased it like crazy but I lost sight of it over the hotel and I never saw it again. It was very fun.
Kids of many ages with their Courier (designed by Don Ross). Even the baby’s having fun!
Joseph had lots of activities but I always like model planes especially since we did it together rather than being dropped off. Model planes are fun for all ages. In fact age vanishes from the equation.
Here we are at the camp site. As you can see, I should have gotten a pickup truck. This Don Ross, Canarsie Courier was a lot of fun.
I also shared the model planes with his friends, neighbors kids and did a bit of community work including presentations at schools, ran a model plane program (and computer programming program) for ABC (Association for Bright Children).
We did a few “built-up” model planes as well as the stick and tissue. Here’s a couple of One-Nights we built. I seem to remember loosing mine on a building but it was pretty fun.
And of course I got an Air Hog one year when they first came out. Also some other flying toys such as the Cox .049 helicopter. I recall buying one for my brother Brett and one for Joseph. We had an absolute blast with the helicopter. We flew it at Lebreton. I will dig out the videos for that.
I picked up an EasyBee (Airtronics) on year. It’s a foam plane and we had fun with it at Lebreton Flats. In the summer I picked up a couple of Gentle Ladies.
The following Christmas I picked up the game a bit and got a Katydid with a three or four channel radio. It had a throttle and everything.
Once I was settled in Ottawa I didn’t have as much time as in childhood but as you can see by these pictures of my apartment at 47 Cameron Avenue (near Bank), there were a few planes floating around.
I remember I had a wrecked plane sitting on the top of the brown shelf. A man named Jack was over having a brew (then about 85 years old). He saw the wreck and he encouraged me to rebuild it. That project is the one facing upward above the couch. So this is after I rebuilt it. It does not have an engine installed yet by the looks of it so this is fairly early in the game.
These are conventional “gas powered” RC aircraft. They have engine displacement of about .4 cubic inches (refereed to as a .40 or .46 in model airplane talk). You need to be a member of a club and drive to designated sites to keep noise and danger out of the city.
They have a wingspan of about 50-60 inches and can go perhaps 50-80mph.
It’s pretty fun but it’s a lot of work and if you add it commuting and club fees and other overheads, you really need to have some time for this sort of thing.
After I had been doing some flying I noticed that my equipment (which I had since childhood) was getting old. Batteries, connectors, there was lots of maintenance. So I sold off all my equipment thinking I’d probably never get back into it till retirement or if I ever had children.
I was offered a job at Agriculture Canada as a CS-02 (Computer Programmer/Analyst). I didn’t like it so much since there was no creativity for me. Just writing code and operating programs for the Dairy Cow Indexing system which ranks dairy cows for milk volume, protein content, fat content, calving ease. There were 6 million lactation records in the database and we had a supercomputer. In those days this was heavy stuff.
I left that to move onto consulting which was more varied and financially interesting.
I had all my stuff transferred from my parents to my little apartment at 47 Cameron Avenue in Ottawa. Of course this included all my model airplane stuff.
I joined Stetson Flyers and also visited ORCC. I flew a bit but had equipment problems. I realized that my stuff was getting old. NiCd batteries past shelf life, motor bearings blowing and other problems.
I eventually sold and gave away all my stuff deciding that model planes were fun but I didn’t have that much time.
Early 20’s is a busy time for people. School, jobs, chasing girls, other hobbies, silly sports cars and other stuff like that.
