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Home > Model Making - A Lifetime Hobby
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Model Making - A Lifetime Hobby by Dale Smith
Have you ever had a hobby or sport that lasted for your whole life? I mean, from when you were a kid until you were a grown person? A lot of things that you have done as a child lost its interest as you grew older. It takes a lot of dedication for an undertaking to last all your life.
Such an hobby has consumed me from childhood to my grown life. And that hobby is model airplanes. To be more specific, models of all sorts, including ships, architectural, trains and more. But model planes are the most consuming. My first efforts at this skill began when I was in elementary school and I was obscessed with military airplanes. I began with light, fragile models, powered by a twised rubber band, that were capable of short flights in my own backyard.
As I became older and bolder, I graduated to powered flight with simple glow-plug engines. A lot of cracked knuckles before I managed to have an electric starter for my planes. Sore fingers never stopped me and it grew into U-control flying my models. It didn't matter to me that I was limited to a small circle on any clear spot I could find in town. That is, until I was chased away to find another reasonable location. That lasted until I discovered the real thrill of flying in radio control.
I was living in California by this time and I found radio controlled gliders. I could not believe the freedom of tossing my carefully crafted soaring models off a cliff overlooking the Pacific ocean into the strong breeze and carefully soaring the updraft and back over the cliff to once again circle back into the wonderful breeze, never changing my wave of excitement. As long as the batteries of my plane held up, I would soar off the cliffs for hours.
Incidentally, my workaday time was spent at a major aircraft company in California, building wind-tunnel models and demos for the marketing department. What a thrill that was for me.
And as time passed, I changed employment and geographical locations several times. But I never did lose my interest in model making and I still am involved in the minature world. Now I make various models for clients in my home, really filling my hours with the thrill of crafting the real world in miniature.
But there is a new vision on the horizon for me to explore. Always being consumed with aviation, the chance to pilot a jet-powered airplane has always been a dream. A little experience in jets while in the military peaked my interest and sparked the dream to fly jets. Never having the chance to do so in real life did not dampen the dream.
Now, combining jets with my love of modeling has been given a chance to do just that. The recent influx of model turbines, in conjunction with sophisticated methods of construction, has me chomping at the bits to fly a jet again. Several companies are building ARF replicas of various military jets that are powered with genuine jet engines. They fly like their big brothers, they sound like the real thing, they smell like the real thundering jets. Officially classified as UMV by the FAA, all the thrill of the real thing has been brought to the average person.
I can't wait until I can get into the cockpit, figuratively speaking, of an A4 or F16 and show my Top Gun stuff. It may be a little like Joe Cool but it will be very close to the real thing. That is my next step in modeling.
Dale R Smith drsmith7684@sbcglobal.nethttp://www.dalzmoney
About the Author
I can't wait until I can get into the cockpit, figuratively speaking, of an A4 or F16 and show my Top Gun stuff. It may be a little like Joe Cool but it will be very close to the real thing. That is my next step in modeling.
Dale R Smith drsmith7684@sbcglobal.net
http://www.dalzmoneytree.com
Career spent in teaching and training, both as a civilian and military trainer. Mr Smith has been a teacher in public schools, college and university and both the US Army and US Navy. A graphic artist and photographer with many prize winning designs
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