I really enjoy this site, scale warbirds are my passion. A great place to learn from others and share my interest. My name is Denny, I just got into RC aircraft about 5 years ago. I have been interested in aviation since I was very young sitting on my grandfathers lap as we looked at his old picture album from when he was in the Army Air Service in the mid 1920s. His stories facinated me and are part of the fabric of who I am. He talked about the Jennys, the Dehavilland DH-4s and Lindbergh who landed at France Field Panama in 1928 while he was there. While the Spirit of St Louis was there, he and another guy did a bit of grafitti on the Spirit. If you look on the engine cowl, both sides, there is a pirates head, the symbol of the 6th composite group assigned to France Field. He and another guy painted it on the cowls while they were removed from the aircraft for servicing. Later, I joined the Air Force and worked F-4s and F-16s. I also unofficially worked on several NAvy, Army and marine aircraft. I was the president of a Military aviation museum for several years. I taught aircraft weapons system for about 12 years, I really enjoyed teaching. Before I retired I began restoring Norden bombsights for individuals and museums. I have restored many such items including gun sights of many types, Rolls Royce and Merlin engines a radial engine we donated to a school and a BT-13 cockpit thats now on display at Walnut Ridge Museum in Arkansas. My wife got tired of having full scale aircraft on the carport so she could park her van there. I throttled (scaled) back a bit and discovered radio Control aircraft about 5 years ago and have really enjoyed the hobby. I started out flying a Nextar and LT-40 trainer with my son. Our aircraft have steadily grown, mostly Giant scale warbirds. Our biggest is now a 1/3 scale Sopwith Pup. My son was invited to fly at Top Gun 2011 so I built him what I consider our nicest scale plane. Its a 1/5 scale, 100 inch wingspan BT-13. Its covered in polished aluminum roof flashing andweighs right at 34 pounds. Sean ( my son) flew it at Top Gun and did great. Unfortunately we didnt get the first flight in till less than a week before the event so he had no time to practice flying it. The plane wasnt even done, there was glue still drying as it was in static judging. I had duct tape holding some of the panels on but we still scored 93.45 in static judging. Now that the stress of that is over, I have discovered electric flight and really like it. I am currently converting several scale glow planes to electric, 40, 60 and 120 size. Be ready, I will have lots of questions, I will try to make a few of them intelligent questions. I have been reading lots of threads and would like to thank all who post their experiences. It does a lot to get me on track and keep from making as many dumb mistakes on my own. Thanks again to everyone here. If anyones into scale warbirds, I have lots of pictures from my and my grandfathers picture album posted here for reference if anyone is interested. Also I am so enthused about electric, I began with a buddy of mine our first annual all-electric event here in Florida. Its WATTFEST 2011. I will include links here to the album and to the event.
http://rides.webshots.com/album/552141172xfdmUKhttp://www.wattfest.com/Thanks again,
Denny