The Man, Myth, Legend

Since Frank doesn’t seem as interested in planes as I am, he passed on to me the kit plane given to him by one of the local club members. In addition, another club member donated a .60 size trainer to me that I’m hoping the wife might learn to fly with. But the biggest surprise came this weekend when my dad came up on Friday to spend Easter with us. He brought with him an F4U Corsair that our good friend, Bruce had given him to give to me. Needless to say, I was blown away. I remember years ago when I first showed interest in R/C planes that Bruce had built one, and he was happy to share his interest in the hobby with me. Now, he has given me an awesome surprise. One that I still am overwhelmed by. I can’t wait to build it and take to the skies with this vintage warbird. I’ll post on my building progress, as well as my flying abilities.
Bruce- Thank you.

We had a great weekend with my dad. He played poker with “the guys” on Friday night, and we shared a wonderful Easter Lunch/Dinner with the in-laws here in town. I’m always glad when he comes for a visit, if even only for a weekend.

Since I last posted, I have made multiple flights with my Mustang. I have tucked a full blown crash, and one “hard landing” under my belt as well. Additionally, I have added a camcorder into my cockpit for aerial video. The wife videotaped me last Saturday, and I edited the two onboard videos to come up with this:

R/C Flight at Satellite Lake

As you can see, I am really enjoying flying. One of the R/C club members has graciously given me a high-wing trainer to fly in addition to my P-51. I need to get an engine for it, but I should have that one in the air sometime this month. Stay tuned as our intrepid R/C pilot takes to the skies yet again this weekend!

Holy crap, I solo-ed my plane today twice! The weather was not condusive to flying yesterday, so I prepared myself for this morning instead. I got up early, and was out at the airfield at 7:30 am. I was the only one out there, so I unloaded the plane, filled her up, and planned on practicingf my taxing skills. Well, needless to say, after 4 or 5 runs, I made the mistake of giving it full throttle, and the next thing I knew, my baby was airborne (unintentionally)! With my heart pounding in my throat, I got it into straight and level flight at about 150-200 feet altitude. I made several approach attempts before bringing it back to earth in three large bounces. Once I got my heart rate somewhat back to normal, I refueled and took a break for breakfast. Five other model aviators showed up and congratulated me on my first successful solo flight. I relaxed a little longer while they each took their own planes up. About an hour later, I had summoned the courage to try another flight. Again, I took off with a little effor to keep it straight down the runway, but it really has a lot of left torque. In any event, I was airborne a second time and made a few more attempts at lining up for landing. I brought it back to earth with another 3 bounces, and decided to call it a day and not tempt fate again. I am so happy that today was successful. I hope to do some more simulator practice during the week so that I am prepared for next weekend. This is such a fun hobby. I only wish I hadn’t waited so long to realize my interest in it.

After a week full of practicing on the simulator, I took my R/C P-51 Mustang out for her maiden flight. I went out the the R/C airfield with Frank so he could document either my triumph, or tragedy. There were several people out flying today, and one of them was very helpful, and let me “buddy-box” on his trainer before taking mine into the air. After getting comfortable with the controls, and settings, I felt ready to do it for myself. Again, Joe and I linked radios and he got my baby in the air on the very first try. He said I did a good job trimming it for straight and level flight. He let me have control, and I flew in lazy left hand turns before trying right turns, and figure 8’s. I let Joe land, and he said it handled very well. After gassing back up, He let me taxi out and take off on my own. I had a slight issue because it wanted to veer left, but after fixing that, I was airborne on my own! I practiced lining up with the runway for approaches, and after a few passes, I even landed it! This was an exciting day that has bee 17 years in the making. I hope the wife doesn’t mind if I start spending Saturday mornings out at the airfield!

The Man (who finally fulfilled his dream of R/C flight)

17 years ago, I had a Cox EZ-Bee r/c plane. It’s fate was doomed after only a single flight. My interest in model aircraft has until now been limited to plastic scale models. Now, however, I can finally bring my dream of flying into reality with my purchase of a radio controlled P-51 mustang. I have yet to “take to the skies,” but have been spending as much time as possible training on the included flight simulator.

As you can see, I’ve finally changed the website over to a new design. I’ll be tweaking it here and there in the next few weeks, but the basic design will stay the same. It took me two days to transfer all my old posts into the new format, but I can scratch that task off my list. The old photo album is gone. I’ll be looking into a new one, maybe using Flickr, but that will be at some later date. For now, The man, myth, legend will be primarily text posts, with multimedia in the future. Hope you like it.

~Dave

It has been way too long since I’ve done anything with this website, so I figure that sometime this month, or January, I will completely revamp/re-structure the whole thing. I’ll try to keep all the posts and most of the pictures, but I want to try something more multimedia, where I can post pictures more easily with my posts. I doubt many people are actually reading this anymore, but if you are, be prepared for a New and Improved site in the coming month(s). Any suggestions from the outside would be appreciated.The Man

***This is an Update***I am still here, but have not had anything worthwhile to post since August. Life is good, still working, loving and living. rnThat is all.***End of Update***

Last weekend, Frank, Jason and I went to Vegas. It was a joint-venture on my part, because Jen and Alex were also in town. Jen had arranged for some of Alex’s friends to surprise him for his birthday. It went off without a hitch. He was speechless. It was a pretty good trip… I got to see some “old” friends I haven’t seen in 5 or more years, and I got to play craps some more. I didn’t win any money, but Frank came out ahead for the weekend. Jason spent most of his time playing Poker, but didn’t make it to the WSOP yet. As for the heading of this post… My birthday is next weekend, and lately I have been mulling over many aspects of my life: what I’ve accomplished, what I have failed to do, what I still want to do, what could have been different, etc. All these thoughts have kind of put me in a dark/less than happy attitude. Not that I have many regrets, but I’m looking at what I still want to accomplish in my life, and the list just seems to be getting longer, without checking anything off. I’m sure I’ll get over it, it’s just one of those things… The wife and I just pruchased new couches, which should be delivered on the 22nd. Also, the mother-in-law (MIL) offered to buy us a new king-sized mattress for my birthday/xmas present. Next on the wife’s list is new bedroom furniture. I’m happy with what we’ve got now, but I guess part of being married is making sure your spouse is happy too. So, I guess we’ll be getting new bedroom furniture sometime in the future. Eh, as long as I don’t have to sleep on the couch I guess its OK. Anyhoo, I think I may take the Street bike down to LA on Friday night so that I can ride Asuza Canyon Highway with some members of the bike forum. should be interesting, but I’m still not decided if I really want to ride down or not. Mebbe I can truck the bike down, and just ride from my dad’s. We’ll see.~The Man (who’s getting older)

Plumbers came Monday morning and re-snaked the drain from the front access. Didn’t hit any type of blockage whatsoever, and ran a total of 75 feet into the pipe. THat put them out in the street close to the city main, so I am hopefull that whatever was blocking the pipe is gone, and that they only go stuck because of the length they has in the pipe. OH happy day… no $1900 repair bill!!!!!! No dug up yard!!!!! Woooo Hoooo!!!!!~The Joyous Man