When I was about 9 years old our family did a three year stint living at the mouth of the Moisie River.

At one point, my dad had to go away for 2 weeks (may have been a week) for a course.

I was pretty busy with my projects which included my Meccano set, macramé, , kite flying, acrylic painting (was taking courses on that), drawing, chasing girls, motorcycles (we had a Honda CT70 minibike!), playing with my dog Charlie, making my own inventions out of junk, imagining my own inventions that I could not make and much more.

But my dad felt he should get an extra project for me for while he was gone.

It was two model airplane kits. These were of high complexity using balsa and silk-span. He spent an evening or two sitting with me showing how to assemble balsa parts including cutting with a hobby knife, gluing, attachment of silk, shrinking of silk, doping, sanding and other finishing.

I got one of he models completed. It was quite a disaster. I remember that I could not get the center wing rib angle right for the dihedral joint. The covering was pretty sloppy. The wing root was not very strong. I had no idea about proper winding or trimming the aircraft. I remember being ready to fly the plane and my mother objecting saying that the wind was much too strong today (she was right). We all know how much this sort of thing means to kids. I insisted and went to the front lawn to try the plane. I wound it up and it did not fly. It pitched up and then fell back. I tried a couple more times and it kept pitching and falling back like a leaf. Today I know that it required a balast to get the center of gravity right. I tried it till the wing root failed. Perhaps five tries.

I was pretty pleased with this experience. I was now imagining a beautiful balsa frame with a perfect job of covering it with silk-span and imagining it could sail very high up. But of course my current project didn’t fly yet, but I intuitively knew that I would sort it out some day.

This really stuck.

My dad returned and after his assessment he produced some ready to fly catapult planes for my brother and I. We had a lot of fun with those over the next month or so.