This is an attempt to catalog my activity in the hobby from a very young age.
So here goes nothing.
I fell in love when I was a toddler. Some guy my mom was dating was laid up in a hospital bed after getting in a wreck with a semi truck. He made a paper airplane and threw it out the door of some room. Don't know where it was. It was totally cool though. Later, I learned how to make a pretty shoddy version of it.
I became obsessed with perfecting each fold, lining up the corners and making the creases as sharp as I could. At my grandmother's house, paper planes began showing up in strange places. Behind the book case. In the piano. Wedged in between the curtain rods.. in between the washer and dryer, under the refrigerator, soggy in the sink, in the yard, on the roof, you name it.
As if that wasn't enough, around Christmas time and birthdays my family got the wild idea to purchase more airplane paraphanalia to support my awful habit. Books containing photos of every plane from the Wright brothers designs to the F-117. The 'world record paper airplane book' by Ken Blackburn who's time aloft record at that time was around 16-17 seconds...
My grandpa, who was a captain in the Navy and flew on his first and only solo flight in a T6 (I think, unfortunately he has altzeihmers and I can't verify) came home one day with a guillows cesna. We sat around the kitchen table until we were booted by grandma to the attic workshop he had set up. We finished the plane and attempted to fly it until it was a real wreck. I don't remember what happened to it.
My older brother Travis Gafford, who is now a legend in the E-Sports world, was really into computers, and as soon as Fryz electronics opened a store locally we would make frequent trips there to oggle video games and PC parts. I came across the toy isle one day and found a box that said "White Wings." Now if you've never bought a pack of whitewings I highly suggest doing so if you have the opportunity. They are some of the best rubber band launched paper and paper/balsa planes in the business.
I went absolutely nuts with them. Grandpa and I took a road trip from California to see some relatives in the Midwest, making stops at scenic locations and tourist traps along the way. I believe my first experience with Slope Soaring occurred when I threw a WhiteWings Glider off of the Grand Canyon, and was astounded when it not only flew straight out over the canyon but also began to rise, and go up... And up... And up... And "hey can I borrow your binoculars" until it was out of sight. It looked unreal, it looked like magic.
I started making more free flight gliders, in the white wings style, using balsa grandma bought from Michael's and whatever poster board or construction paper I could find that was most similar to the Kent paper used on the WhiteWings planes. Then I started making the wings from really thin balsa wood, and then from thicker balsa I would sand bevels into to make an airfoil shape.
Grandma and Grandpa went to China for about 6 months, grandma taught English and Grandpa, being a dermatologist, taught that kind of stuff.
I believe I was about 8 or 9 when they came back, and they had brought souvenirs.
A magnetic floating, spinning top. I could never figure it out. Bootleg DVDs featuring videos of... uhh, movies... and a remote control plane I can only describe as a clone of a "firebird". It had a plastic fuselage, foam wings, and differential thrust - and wouldn't you know it, would absolutely not stay in the air. I think maybe today I could make it fly. Maybe not.
So, there was my first remote control plane.
It looked like the plane in this photo but it was red and called something else. It was the bootleg filmed-in-theatre version of the real thing.
So here goes nothing.
I fell in love when I was a toddler. Some guy my mom was dating was laid up in a hospital bed after getting in a wreck with a semi truck. He made a paper airplane and threw it out the door of some room. Don't know where it was. It was totally cool though. Later, I learned how to make a pretty shoddy version of it.
I became obsessed with perfecting each fold, lining up the corners and making the creases as sharp as I could. At my grandmother's house, paper planes began showing up in strange places. Behind the book case. In the piano. Wedged in between the curtain rods.. in between the washer and dryer, under the refrigerator, soggy in the sink, in the yard, on the roof, you name it.
As if that wasn't enough, around Christmas time and birthdays my family got the wild idea to purchase more airplane paraphanalia to support my awful habit. Books containing photos of every plane from the Wright brothers designs to the F-117. The 'world record paper airplane book' by Ken Blackburn who's time aloft record at that time was around 16-17 seconds...
My grandpa, who was a captain in the Navy and flew on his first and only solo flight in a T6 (I think, unfortunately he has altzeihmers and I can't verify) came home one day with a guillows cesna. We sat around the kitchen table until we were booted by grandma to the attic workshop he had set up. We finished the plane and attempted to fly it until it was a real wreck. I don't remember what happened to it.
My older brother Travis Gafford, who is now a legend in the E-Sports world, was really into computers, and as soon as Fryz electronics opened a store locally we would make frequent trips there to oggle video games and PC parts. I came across the toy isle one day and found a box that said "White Wings." Now if you've never bought a pack of whitewings I highly suggest doing so if you have the opportunity. They are some of the best rubber band launched paper and paper/balsa planes in the business.
I went absolutely nuts with them. Grandpa and I took a road trip from California to see some relatives in the Midwest, making stops at scenic locations and tourist traps along the way. I believe my first experience with Slope Soaring occurred when I threw a WhiteWings Glider off of the Grand Canyon, and was astounded when it not only flew straight out over the canyon but also began to rise, and go up... And up... And up... And "hey can I borrow your binoculars" until it was out of sight. It looked unreal, it looked like magic.
I started making more free flight gliders, in the white wings style, using balsa grandma bought from Michael's and whatever poster board or construction paper I could find that was most similar to the Kent paper used on the WhiteWings planes. Then I started making the wings from really thin balsa wood, and then from thicker balsa I would sand bevels into to make an airfoil shape.
Grandma and Grandpa went to China for about 6 months, grandma taught English and Grandpa, being a dermatologist, taught that kind of stuff.
I believe I was about 8 or 9 when they came back, and they had brought souvenirs.
A magnetic floating, spinning top. I could never figure it out. Bootleg DVDs featuring videos of... uhh, movies... and a remote control plane I can only describe as a clone of a "firebird". It had a plastic fuselage, foam wings, and differential thrust - and wouldn't you know it, would absolutely not stay in the air. I think maybe today I could make it fly. Maybe not.
So, there was my first remote control plane.
It looked like the plane in this photo but it was red and called something else. It was the bootleg filmed-in-theatre version of the real thing.
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