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Aircraft have always interested me. One of my first words was "whee" - the sound of the vampires & meteors flying out of Biggin Hill.

When I saw my first helicopter (probably a Westland S51) it was called a "wicker whee" from the noise the rotors made.

My dad was also interested in aircraft thus we went to Farnborough each year (1953 to 1958) so I saw many of the interesting prototype aircraft - Rotodyne, Sr53, Flying Bedstead etc.

I honed by building skills on the KeilKraft scale series, the Auster Arrow was by far the most successful. A birthday Mills 75 flew in several C/L types culminating in 1960 with a scale C/L DH4.

Various simple R/C gliders followed then on to electric indoor RTP C/L, ending up with a Martin Baker MB5 with full scale contra-rotating props.

With my Dad we even had ambitions to break the world endurance record, then (1960?) about 16 hours, so we aimed for 24 with a home build 5cc petrol 4 stroke.

 

I have flown full size gliders, they behave just like the models but crashing is not an option!