Chris Downing

From North Yorkshire but moved to Canada in 1991.

Have struggled to get RC flying all my life and have had a few attempts & failures through the years since the 1970s. (Took a lesson with ATS while visiting England in 1990s and a couple here in the 2000s).

Working for a living took up most of my time but I still remain interested. Built two sets of RC gear in 1970s and 1980s (couldn't afford new) then in 2009 bought Futaba 72MHz. By the next year, 2.4GHz took over, so my new set was obsolete. I was looking for a Futaba 2.4GHz module for the transmitter but they are not sold any more.

Held a PPL licence for some years but it was too expensive to keep up.

Worked for 10 years at a UAV autopilot manufacturer here, so worked with unmanned aircraft and helicopters, trained customers and travelled to other countries to instruct and integrate the autopilots into customers' aircraft.

In the last few years I worked with an RCAF college on their custom-built UAV, based on a Bruce Tharpe Engineering "Superhauler".   12 ft span and flying weight around 90lbs. DA100 efi twin cylinder engine, twin fuel tanks, triple autopilot control, electro-optical /IR gimbal camera and radar.

That kept me involved with aircraft and then we were shut down due to Covid. I was left sort of semi-retired and now am fully retired.

I returned to my RM Digicon RC system that I built in the 1980s and I finally built the mixer cards for it. the system is complete.

I am thinking of finding an RC club and starting again to finish my flight training.

I've been testing/cycling all my batteries to see if any are usable.

Fingers crossed-  I may actually get my RC wings one day.

Would love to build something again.