I married a women that had a child.

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.

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.