Brief History of

Radio Control Pattern Flying

in the U.S.

1950s – 1960s

By Giuseppe Fascione

-2015-

Brief History

of Radio Control Pattern Flying in the U.S.

The Starting Point.

Before the Second World War there had been many attempts to control “Free Flight” planes, for many different reasons.

From the one side, the Military Forces had their own objectives, mainly at that time oriented to control Drones to be used as targets. There has always been the need to train gunners, on land, on sea and on board of planes; hitting a moving target is a must in a serious training course, but how to get one? Unmanned aircraft of 100-120 inches of wingspan were designed and manufactured, including the relevant power plant. Then the problem of controlling them arose: if the target was missed, you wanted to fly it back home, and start a new mission. So you needed a system to control the Drone during the firing phase and eventually land it safely at the Training base. Therefore some companies studied the problem and were able to provide the Army with Drones that could be maneuvered and later on, if not caught by the fire, brought back to the field and landed.

From the other side, the aircraft

modelers, especially when utilizing the newly produced small gas engines (Brown Jr., for instance), more and more needed some sort of control to safely bring their models back to the flying field once they were caught in a thermal or driven away by a strong wind.

Between 1932 and 1937 several Radio Control pioneers began developing R/C models; Chet Lanzo, Bill & Walt Good, Clinton Desoto & Ross Hull among others.

Chet is one of the most recognized names among the model aircraft family; he progressed with the hobby starting with rubber models, then gasoline powered, and eventually on to Radio Control. During the early days of Rubber power, Chet won national meets in Indoor and Outdoor categories, often leading the way in design trend. He is credited to be the real father of R/C. He was a licensed amateur radio operator, and designed and flew with some of the first R/C systems. As with most new developments, others were working in the same direction at the same time, but Chet was more visibly successful. Chet built a spark gap/coherer system, but all the attempts made in 1934-35 produced inconsistent results. He also developed a 3-tube Receiver system weighting 1 1/2 lbs and with that system he was able to win the 1937 Nationals.

If you want to look at some old Chet’s schematics, Frank Zaic’s 1938 Model Aeronautics Yearbook features seven different schematics for R/C systems. In that book, Chet also describes an airborne transmitter which provides a signal for finding a lost model: some 50 years ahead of his time, eh? One of his most popular designs is the RC-1; the Stick and the Bomber are also very well known, especially in the Old Timers circles. The Record Breaker is often used in the Texaco events.

Walter A. Good, a major contributor to development of guided missiles for U.S. Fleet defense of the radio proximity (VT) fuse during World War II, and a pioneer authority in the field of Radio Control Aeromodelling, retired on June 30, 1977 from The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) where he had served for 35 years after being hired as one of its first staff members.

In his younger years Dr. Good's hobby, Aeromodelling, and that of his twin brother William's radio were combined to produce what was one of the first Radio Controlled airplanes, which they flew in May 1937 in their hometown of Kalamazoo, Michigan. The unique plane, called Big Guff, was flown for some 1,000 subsequent flights, and has been housed at the Smithsonian Institution since 1960.

An international authority on Radio Controlled planes, Walt judged several World Radio Control competitions. He was elected a fellow and life member of the National Academy of Model Aeronautics and was the recipient of the

Federation International Aéronautique's Tissandier Award (1960) for outstanding Aeromodelling achievement. In 1969 he was named to the Model Aviation Hall of Fame at Spokane, Washington. He was U.S. representative to the International Committee for Aeromodels in Paris for eight years and president of this committee in 1965 and 66.

In 1952, Walt Good won the world's record for Radio Controlled duration model plane flight, taking the record of that day away from the Russians.

By the way, Walt & Bill Good did not fly in the 1937 Nationals because the Alternate Current extension cord needed to power Bill’s Transmitter came too late along with deteriorating weather conditions. Bill & Walt Good had an 8’ free flight model, weighing 8kg (18lb). In 1936 Bill wanted to add Radio Control to the model. He took a summer lab course at local college on building Radio Control systems. After building a 1 tube Receiver & Transmitter, he demonstrated a “rudder only” control system at college Science Fair in January 1937. After making several additional flights in 1937, they renamed the model “the Guff”. The Good brothers finished 1st with it at 1938, 1939 and 1940 Nationals. This is a rare color picture of Bill and Walt Good at the 1940 Nationals. In 1941 Jim Walker, considered the father of Control Line, won that R/C event.

After the war, the contest activity regained, and “Nationals” were held again. The most active modelers were still the Good brothers, Chet Lanzo and Jim Walker, among others. Jim was the “inventor” of Control Line flying; he made an incredible number of demonstrative tours, in the US and abroad, promoting this modeling activity. He was able to fly with both hands, and he often flew two planes at the same time. He is also known for the fact that occasionally, using a specially designed helmet, he even flew THREE models at the same time!!!

In the late 40’s, early 50’s, more and more Free Flight modelers, sometimes assisted by an electronics expert, got involved in radio control. Single Channel systems became available to the general public, some more reliable then others. Most of them used a rubber escapement to control the Rudder: the number of “inputs” available were therefore determined by the number of turns you could twist a long loop of ¼” Pirelli strand! COX engines appeared on the market, and while extremely popular in Control Line and Free Flight, they were also used to power small to medium Radio Controlled aircraft. K&B Torpedo Green Head engines were also used, mostly in the .09 and .15 displacement. All these engines used a Glow Plug, and an alcohol based fuel, with a lot of Castor Oil as lubricant. On the other side of the pond, British modelers were using Diesel engines instead: a fuel Ether + Petrol based, plus Castor Oil, was ignited just by compression. The engine had two parameters to adjust, compression and fuel/air mix, but they used very little fuel, provided a lot of torque and didn’t require an igniter! The drawback was the exhaust: it was messy, dark and smelly!!!

There are a few things to be noted in this phase of “radio control”, which really can give you an idea of the environment our predecessors were living in:

1. The model aircraft technology was already quite sophisticated. Free Flight was the modelers activity, with Control Line was in its infancy. The models were gliders, brought to some height with a very thin, long line, or by a winch; or they were powered, either by rubber band or by the very new “gas model engines”.

2. The real innovation was “Radio Control”, so the most famous R/C men of that period were people with the “electronic bug”. Sometimes, if they were not capable to build or just they didn’t have time to build, they teamed with an aircraft modeler and together they flew their creature.

3. Almost all of the systems that you saw on the flying field were “Experimental”, meaning that each system was a Prototype of his own. Sometimes a transmitter or a receiver (or a servo, for that matter) appeared on a magazine and then it gave birth to a series of “derivatives”. In any event, there was no real “production”, not even some “low rate” production. In the ‘60s, if you wanted to compete at the Nationals, you had to build your own plane (Builder-of-the-Model rule); in the ‘50s, in most cases you also were the “builder-of-the-Radio/Control/System”.

4. Systems were expensive; they were delicate, finicky, temperamental AND expensive. Hal deBolt started designing and producing kits of Radio Control models in the early ‘50s. Hal

would teach you, in the model in a

5. drawing, how to house the R/C gear wooden box you could easily move from one model to another (not exactly the way we are accustomed to think and act nowadays, were all the airborne parts, servos, receivers, motors, regulators, batteries are “expendable” and can be glued and hidden forever inside the plane).

For instance, above you can see the R/C box for the Live Wire Trainer, a model designed and kitted by Hal deBolt in 1952. Many of the deBolt designs of that period shared the same Fuselage center section dimensions, allowing you to move the box from one a/c to another.

Harold deBolt competed in hundreds of contests. Beginning in 1930, as a young boy, Harold suc-cesssfully organized the sponsorship of model contests in Geneva, N.Y., in conjunction with local civic groups. He worked with the American Legion program in this town and developed a system to enable sharing of model supplies and later engines which not only enabled Harold to compete, but many other youngsters in that area were able to compete as well.

It is not difficult to determine if Hal's early psychological bent was to compete to win or to compete to enable better and more modeling. A clue to his unselfish approach lies in the number of personally organized contests, clubs, events, and circuits throughout the years. Harold entered virtually hundreds of contests in his lifetime. Pictures of contest winnings are still available, on the web and elsewhere; and if it were not for the fire in Harold's plant in Williamsville, N.Y., where many other important and valuable trophies were lost, there could be a more complete accounting.

Harold deBolt was an outstanding designer of planes. His research and careful analysis along with scores of pages of records and experiments with different designs have enabled many modelers to become instantly successful with the famous deBolt designs.

Harold deBolt was never a “designer for a market”, even though he was an outstanding manufacturer. His basic intention, when producing a design, was to first successfully accomplish a modeling task, i.e., set a record or build a better, simple design to enable a certain personal performance in modeling. Evidence of this philosophy is seen in the many championship planes which ultimately have been kitted, not withstanding the many designs which could have been kitted but never quite measured up to the deBolt standard.

An anecdote is worth mentioning, to remind the kind of environment the modelers, even the famous ones, were living in and the kind of relationship there was between them and the manufacturers. In 1959 Hal deBolt was selected as a component of the US Team to the 1960 World Championship, the first Radio Control Aerobatic Championship, with Ed Kazmirski and Bob Dunham. The K&B Torpedo 45 Green Head R/C was recently released to the market, and Ed Kazmirski was using one on his Orion, as well as Bob Dunham. Well, Hal was not pleased with the performances of HIS K&B 45 R/C (cost in year 1959 = $27.95) and, instead of calling K&B and ask for other engines, already selected and broken-in, he decided to build ANOTHER plane, smaller, to be utilized in conjunction with hit trusty Supertigre G21/35 BB R/C. This is why the deBolt Swiss Bipe, the model he used in the 1960 Championship in Switzerland, is a smaller, reduced copy of his more famous Live Wire Bipe, originally (and marginally) flown with a K&B Torpedo 35 R/C. Hal deBolt was already a living legend in the US. While Ed Kazmirski and Bob Dunham (the ORBIT man) had become only recently popular for their activity in Radio Control Aerobatics, Hal deBolt had been on the modeling scene for at least 15 years, competing in all possible specialties, Free Flight, Control Line, he was already a well known Airplane Kits manufacturer (DMECO Company). Can you imagine today Chip Hide or Jason Schulman re-design and build another aircraft, just because the one (and only) engine they have is not up to the expectations? I can easily see them calling K&B and ASK for immediate shipment of 2-3 (or more) already selected and broken-in engines!!! And I am sure that the company would have been more than happy to oblige, considering the potential market return that a product used by the great Hal deBolt in a World Championship could have provided. Evidently that was a different time, and modelers were not accustomed to ask and manufacturers were not accustomed to consider the benefits of a very inexpensive way to obtain the great visibility that a big International event could provide.

Ten years later, the major manufacturers had a completely different marketing approach and in their ads always proudly showed the major competitors using their equipment. So, while in 1959 Hal had to design another plane because he didn’t have an engine of his liking, in 1969 Orbit was advertising his proportional radio showing Hal deBolt has a “testimonial” and I’m sure Orbit was providing Hal its best equipment to convince him to go Orbit (and not Kraft, for instance)…

This was the 1950’ scenario: apart from the military applications, 99% of the radio control was performed with a Single Channel radio, meaning that you were able to send just a signal to the plane, either a real On-Off transmitter signal, or (sometimes later) a modulated signal to signify the On-Off affair, on a continuous base wave. Either way, the transmitters were bulky and often ground based, with a big (10ft high!) dipole antenna and a hand held button for control. The receivers were bulky as well, relatively heavy (3-4oz), and used small valves (vacuum tubes) which required heavy 45V and 1.5V batteries for their filaments. Can you imagine all this apparatus just to get an On-Off signal? This signal was used to operate a rubber driven escapement that controlled the Rudder, AND THIS WAS THE END OF IT!!!

The power of a rubber escapement was very limited, and therefore the dimension of the controlled rudder. Various experiments proved the right model airplane controlled in this way had to have a 48” wingspan, and the other dimensions according to a rather sanctioned Table (see table above). The control was obtained by a sequence of input: usually when you pressed the button you had “Right”, and when you released you had neutral again. Next input was “Left”. While the radio systems became more reliable, modeler’s ingenuity was very active providing various ways to obtain more that one control from a single signal. The first step was the so called “Compound” escapement: push for “Right”, Push-Release-Push for “Left”. The second step was to use a very short “Blip” to control a second escapement to move a flapper valve on the engine intake. This gave High Speed and a sort of Low-Medium Speed, that allowed to more experienced modeler to start playing with engine revs and therefore model speed. Engine throttles were very rudimental, from the one hand because engine manufacturers didn’t have a lot of experience on the subject; on the other hand the power provided by a rubber escapement was so ridiculously small that they didn’t have many chances to express themselves.

Another technique that was experimented was to connect a full second escapement, in sequence with the first one, to control the elevator. Therefore now the sequence was: Push = Right; Push-Release-Push = Left; Push-Release-Push-Release-Push = Up; Push-Release-Push-Release-Push-Release-Push = Down. The “Blip” to control the throttle could still be applied. As you can easily imagine, this was technically possible, but very hard to implement: Transmitter and Receiver had to work properly, the escapements were subject to the temperament of a sequence of relays, which quite often required fine tuning as well, and, last but not least, the pilot had to be quick in reactions and very good with his thumb, while the only control he had available was a mere BUTTON!!!

Even with a limited amount of control, Rudder only airplane could perform a number of stunts: the secret was SPEED! The plane was first trimmed to glide (like a Glider) when the engine quit, in order to land safely. Then the power was applied, and the Right and Down trust adjusted to provide a slow climb. Once you were reasonably high, the application of full Rudder induced a Spiral Dive, which created an excess of speed and therefore, due to the relative incidences, an excess of Lift. This was the secret of everything that followed. If you had enough Lift, you could pull a Loop! Even one Loop after another! You could go 180 degrees of a Loop and once inverted apply full Rudder and make an Immelman. Full Rudder to the inverted position, and then nothing, could result in a Split S. The sequence can go on and on: the secret, as I said, was EXCESS SPEED.

A big step forward was the availability of the so called Reed Banks: they were resonant banks, with very thin metal blades (like the teeth of a comb) vibrating at different frequencies. The Transmitter, eventually, didn’t have just a Button, but Toggle Switches, which could move horizontally, to give Right and Left controls, or vertically, to give Up and Down controls. Each Toggle position excited a different “tooth”, therefore being able to give different input, Right, Left, Up, Down, eventually resolving the “sequence” constraint. Quite soon many different transmitters appeared on the scene, capable to handle Rudder and Elevator (R.E., 4 Channels), Rudder, Elevator and Engine/Motor (R.E.M., 6 Channels), Rudder, Elevator, Engine, Ailerons (R.E.M.A., 8 Channels) and eventually Rudder, Elevator, Engine, Ailerons and elevator Trim (R.E.M.A.T., 10 Channels). You could start with a 4-6 channels system and eventually increase the number of channels, once you were sure you liked what you were playing with. Many Manufacturers had a “direct link” with the customers, and quite frequently the Systems were tailored to the Customer needs. It was common, for instance, to send the system back to the manufacturer during the winter season for a general overhaul!

Systems used initially super-regenerative receivers, which were adequate for the task but not selective enough to allow for more than one aircraft in the air at the same time. Each reed tooth had to operate a small relay, before the current could go to a servo. Additionally, the first receivers were still using vacuum tubes, and therefore they were bulky, heavy and required heavy batteries. Luckily enough, in just a few years between the end of the fifties and the early sixties, the situation improved dramatically: the receiving circuitry became super-heterodyne, with frequency con-trolled by small quartz, with enough selectivity to allow more than one aircraft up in the air at the same time. The above CG Electronics ad is dated 1959. Receivers soon used transistor instead of vacuum tubes, drastically reducing the weight of the airborne batteries. The extensive use of transistors also enabled the production of servos that could be driven by the Reeds directly, eliminating the weight, the space and the electro-mechanical complication of small relays.

We are now in the late ‘50s, early ‘60s, and even if terribly expensive, the Radio Control systems are not any more a prerogative of a few electronic technicians, but some “industrial” products are appearing on the market, with increasing success. ORBIT, for one, in the early ‘60s was producing and advertising on all the modeling magazines their complete line of radios, from Single Channel to 4-6-8 and 10 Channels. The possibility to have two channels per moving surface gave the possibility to develop electro-mechanical servo mechanisms that were fast and powerful. This, in turn, allowed the engine manufacturer to study new, improved, more effective carburetors. Supertigre, for instance, went to the drawing board and for some years produced a new carb every six months!!! It was difficult to follow all the evolutions… Luckily enough the attaching point to the engine was highly standardized, so you could just remove the old carb and install the new one! In any event, it is worth remembering that, even if they were so expensive (a complete “full house” system was worth more than $500 {five hundred dollars}!!!), they still needed some electrical assembly (receivers and servos were not connected, you had to find a way to electrically assemble the system)! The number of modelers who could afford Radio Control (at least “Multi” radio control) was limited, but nevertheless was steadily expanding.

Looking at the 1958 Air Trails Annual, the winners list for the 1957 Nationals in the "Multi" class goes:

1st : Bob Dunham with Smog Hog2nd : Hal deBolt with Live Wire Custom Bipe3rd : Dr. W.A. Good with Multibug4th : Howard Bonner with mod. Smog Hog5th : Bill Wormley with mod. Smog Hog6th : Z.W. Ritchie with mod. Multibug7th : Dale Root with Ascender (Curiously, there is no info as to who placed 8th)9th : John Fellabaum with Cub 1510th: Edward Keck with original design.

If you are familiar with the names of the modelers and their models, you’ll notice that almost all the aircraft are High Wing: the model was still supposed to be intrinsically stable, and the radio was used to “disturb” the model from its path, which was supposed to be straight and slightly up. All these aircraft had a significant dihedral and were supposed to turn with the application of Rudder; the Ailerons were only used for the maneuvers a-round the X axis, like the Roll, for instance. You can find a confirma-tion of this examining the Transmitter Tog-gle Switches lay-out: the control just opposite to Elevator, in the middle of the

Transmitter, is Rudder. Ailerons are on

the top right, and Throttle is on top left, like controls not so commonly used…

In 1959 Bob Dunham, the owner of

“ORBIT” Manufacturing, won the

Nationals again, this time with the first successful “Low Wing”, the Astro Hog, designed by Fred Dunn. The Astro had a low wing and, if possible, even

more dihedral than before (stability, you know…); but good size ailerons resulted in decent rolls, and inverted flight was much easier. The only problem was the insufficient power, provided by the “ubiquitous” (at that

time) K&B Torpedo .35 R/C Green Head, the most powerful and reliable R/C engine in the late fifties. The Astro was a big plane, with a large rectangular wing of 72” wingspan. It flew with the .35, even decently, but you had to be very careful not to over control it, in order not to stall it. The a/c had to fly on its wings, not “attached to the engine” like we are accustomed today!

A few words about the Author.

When I was a kid, my dream was to become a jet fighter pilot, not just an airplane pilot. I wanted to be able to fly a military fighter, to tear holes in the sky and chase any other plane.

Unfortunately, when I was 16, I discovered that my eyesight was less than perfect, thereby ending my dream, since in Italy spectacled pilots are not in the picture. Well, what can I do? For sure, my mom appreciated the opportunity for safety provided by my little handicap. But this is also the reason why I became an aeronautical engineer: if I couldn’t pilot them, at least I could learn how to build them!

To compensate for my disappointment, I decided to make the most of my hobby. I have been an aircraft modeler since I was nine years old and I began to dedicate more and more time to aero-modeling. This passion would remain with me for my entire life. I participated in many contests in Italy, Europe and the United States. Even when, due to my career as an aeronautical engineer, I had no time to build and fly model airplanes, I never stopped keeping up to date with the evolution of radio control technology and collecting radio models from the early ‘50s until today.

When I began, in the mid fifties, I was already using a little model engine to power my models. They were flying all by themselves, going high for a few seconds, with the engine running, and then gliding back to the ground, in a slow, majestic flight (well, most of the time, let’s say!). I learned to control some of them by flying them in a circle, tied to a handle with very thin steel cables. But what I liked most was radio control. Can you imagine having a model airplane that you have built, which takes off and flies in the blue sky responding to your commands? A plane going far away and then returning, going to the right and to the left, even making aerobatic maneuvers? Then, when the engine eventually quit, like a well trained pet, the plane would come back to the ground, landing close to your feet. In those days, the early sixties, the radio control systems were still quite rudimental, but were getting more and more reliable every day. They probably worked 90% of the time. This means that once in a while your plane, your pride and joy, after a magnificent take off, didn’t respond to your commands and flew away from you, not to be seen anymore. This is the reason why it was customary, at that time, to tag your name, address and phone number inside the aircraft. When they were out of control, these models were stable enough to fly all by themselves, nice and straight. At the end of the engine run, the plane would glide back to the ground, hopefully in a plain field. If the finder was an honest person and was willing to give it back to the original owner, the tag made that easy. Many models happily found their way back to the builder using this little trick.

On Sunday mornings, I used to go to an old airfield, belonging to the Piaggio factory complex, to see radio control models fly. The complex was a few miles from Pisa, where I lived. The Piaggio family, the manufacturer of the Vespa scooter, was once also involved is some aeronautical business, and there was an old airstrip, available to the modelers on Sundays. I had to take a bus and a train to do that, but it was nothing compared to the joy and the enthusiasm I experienced. The Italian Radio Control Champion was from my hometown, Pisa, the city of the Leaning Tower, and every Sunday he would practice at that same airfield. I learned so much from him and buddies! So when my father, who had been very supportive of my hobby, gave me a brand new Single Channel radio control system, on my 16th birthday, I was on cloud 9, and already able to fully appreciate its capabilities. It was a very basic system, compared with what we have today, but for that time it was “state-of-the-art”. It always performed flawlessly and I was extremely proud of it.

In those days it was very exciting to say R/C, but what you were really able to accomplish, unless you were a champion like Dr. Walter Good himself, was to “disturb” an otherwise properly trimmed free flight aircraft from a straight pattern! The models people were dealing with were absolutely and inherently stable, with a lot of dihedral, perfectly capable of taking off, flying and eventually landing by themselves. Luckily they often did so, since the radio gears were not that reliable! I still remember when I lost my first model, called “Live Wire Trainer”, designed by the famous modeler Hal deBolt, on a Saturday afternoon, when my rudder actuator broke. I didn’t sleep very much that night! The following day, very early in the morning, my friends and I mounted our bikes and headed to the field again to start searching. Luckily, before noon the Wire was found in the middle of a field, where it had landed perfectly. Even though the grass was high, there was no sign of scratch or puncture in the covering!

The model that really taught me how to fly was very famous in Italy. It was called “Grillo” (Grasshopper). The wing, the horizontal tail, the landing gear (tail-dragger) and the engine mount were all connected to the fuselage via rubber bands. I was using single channel Graupner radio, with O.S. or Babcock rubber escapement to control the rudder. I was lucky enough to have a fully transistorized receiver, requiring just one, single 6v battery (and not the heavy 6v+45v battery you had to carry around if you had a gas-valve receiver !), and it was stable enough to allow me to tune the system just once every two or three months. (It is hard to believe, but previously we had to tune the receiver at the beginning of every flying day!). Apart from watching our local champion, my friends and I learned to control the flying models mostly by ourselves. There was no Buddy-Box around at that time, which would allow us to connect with an instructor (a situation similar to practice driving with a professional teacher). The good thing was that the model flew safely by itself, and if you were smart enough to limit in some way the engine time, the worst thing that could happen was a long walk to retrieve it! We had no engine control, so for the most part the flight was done with an engine running full bore. The model was gradually but constantly gaining height. When eventually it ran out of fuel, the model became a nicely performing glider and would land by itself.

While growing up, I was also learning a lot, and was able to manage larger and larger engines, bigger and bigger models, and more and more sophisticated radio control systems. At eighteen I was flying a 52” wingspan high wing model with rudder, elevator and engine control, with a Supertigre G20/23 BB R/C as an engine. The following year a designed “Look-Alike ORION” with a ST .46 was my companion, and at twenty-one I was tearing holes in the sky with a low wing pattern model, running an ST .60 R/C engine and controlled by a Cliff Weirick PCS radio system, one of the first proportional radio gears to appear in Italy.

I have been living in the States for several years, now, and have discovered E-Bay. This is a fantastic source of old, original material, and I have been able to find again engines and radios which were in fashion when I first approached Radio Control.

I have been thinking for many years about writing a book on the progress of radio controlled models, and specifically aerobatics. The first goal of Radio Control is to maintain the model in reasonable range and safely retrieve it after every flight. But immediately thereafter one starts looking for something more complicated, and Loops and Rolls become your obsession. Once these maneuvers are mastered, there is an almost infinite combination of Loops and Rolls to play with, at high speed, at low speed, upright, inverted. What follows is a short history of Aerobatic Flying in America from the early ‘60s to present times.

I feel it is my legacy to spread the information I have accumulated over 40 years to a younger generation of aero modelers and non aero modelers. I would like to be able to convince new generations to try it, to come to the field and look, experiment a bit, away from bad environments, to spend the weekend in the open air, get a lot of personal reward for the effort!

If this book is able to convey my passion and the sense of power it gives to control a model airplane to at least a handful of kids, and convince them to try, I could happily say that my effort has been successful!