________________________________

	From: The listserv that doubts.
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Cuyler Page
	Sent: Thursday, November 15, 2007 12:25 PM

 

My woodworking career began in those same days with the same plane,
except that I designed my own model of it and built it out of some
orange crate planks.   As a 14 year old, I was used to single engine
control-line flying, and was inspired by a fine giant-scale four engined
bomber that often flew at the annual model air show at the first Ithaca
airport down beside Cayuga Lake.

 

The enthusiasm and the knowledge of immortality carried by youth,
allowed me to take the little two engined monster on my bike to a field
beside the Llenroc Stone Quarry.   There, with one engine running, I
began to start the second, but in the excitement, didn't pay enough
attention to my personal habitual motion of power-flicking the prop with
an index finger.    After power-stroking the blade to start the second
engine, I discovered my habitual motion was onward and offward  to the
side, right into the prop already spinning.    Bits of personal DNA
remain in Ellis Hollow Road all the way between the quarry and my
childhood home, and the scar stares laughingly back up at me as I type
this.

 

cp in bc

(now a safety freak at work)

 

 

> 

Bruce writes:

cp

 

I too tried control line flying off and on from about nine or ten years
old until my late 20's. I never got more than about two or three
circuits before the lines went slack, the plane climbed up, up over my
head, and then made a very hard landing. If I was lucky the engine was
salvageable. I always got dizzy and never developed the skill of backing
up just the right amount to keep the lines taught enough to maintain
control. 

 

I didn't do much better teaching myself radio control flying though now
think I know how to master this skill (other than having someone teach
me-that's no fun!). I was smart enough to take lessons when I learned to
fly full-scale planes.

 

I saw a beautiful eight-foot-wingspan DC-3 radio control model (scale
right down to the rivets) turn to splinters in front of me due to a
classic "departure stall" (took off without enough airspeed and lost
control four feet off the ground).

 

I got bit many times trying to start 0.049 Cox Babe Bee engines (usually
using the chicken's friend, the spring starter). Never a scar though. I
saved that for a knife with folding blade, complete with guard
(essential to get parental permission for such a long blade), which
evidently didn't have a lock (or squeezing the handle released the
lock). As I recall while trying to start a hole the blade folded
catching my index finger and putting a large nick in the cuticle (or
more technically "eponychium") which is there to this day. 

 

Ahh, youth.

 

Bruce (all ten still work though they creak and crack at times)

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