The Sig Kadet Senior was my first model aircraft building project. I literally bought a box of sticks and sheet balsa with some die-crunched ribs and glued the thing together. It was a painstakingly long process. I covered it with red and yellow monokote, stuck an OS .48 4-cycle engine and an old Futaba AM 7-channel radio in it. As difficult as it was to build, this airplane could really fly. I've had full-scale pilots tell me how beautifully coordinated my turns were. I told them it was only because the airplane had no ailerons. It's amazing what a little rudder and a lot of dihedral can do!

Dad was also a model builder. He flew a lot of U-control before building a Heathkit radio and learning to fly without wires. He built his airplanes big. Some had 12-foot spans. Being a reasonably competent mechanic, he also built a 5-cylinder radial supercharged 2-cycle engine for one of his planes.

Brother Walt caught the flying bug bad. At last count, he had about 50 flyable aircraft in his garage. Here we're just about ready to cover a DynaFlite Butterfly modified for tricycle gear. With an OS .15 engine this aircraft would fly for hours. It met an ugly death in the Nevada desert when high-G aerobatic maneuvers caused a main spar failure. It took about two minutes to spiral straight down.

Dad gives mom some time on the sticks. Dad would take a big plane to altitude, lock the throttle for level flight, and let mom steer with rudder only.

Dad and me at Yomitan airstrip on Okinawa. This was an abandoned World War II airfield not too far from the house. It made a great place to fly RC. We made more than one trek through 8-foot high sugar cane to find airplanes that didn't quite make it back to the airfield.

I had just finished building this Hobby Lobby Telemaster for brother Walt. I added flaps to the wing's inboard trailing edge so he could do some really slow fly-bys. We did most of our Nevada flying at either a dry lake bed near Stead airport, or at a small gliderport near Pyramid Lake. It was interesting transitioning from flying at sea level on Okinawa to taking off at airports in Nevada at 4500 feet altitude.

This is one of Dad's modified aircraft. It began life as a Top-Flite Nobler. It is a U-control model that could really pick up some speed. Dad ran the hobby shop for the US Army at Machinato Service Area on Okinawa. This picture was taken at the flying field right outside the hobby shop's back door.

This was the third or fourth of about ten model airplanes I built. I've always loved the lines of the Piper Tri-Pacer. I absolutely had to have the color scheme shown here. On her maiden flight, I had to hold full right rudder to make the thing fly straight. I could only make left turns. After a few tense minutes in the air, I was able to execute a left hand pattern and put it back on the ground. Upon closer inspection, I found I had built a warp into one wing half. It became a lovely static display model.