"Let's fly!"

Those were the last two words I had expected to hear that day. I had taken my recently completed trainer out to the local field. I was hoping that some experienced modeler would be kind enough to examine the model and point out any glaring problems that needed to be fixed. To my great surprise, one of the club's instructors immediately pronounced this yellow beast airworthy and offered to take it up for its maiden flight.

I strapped the wing to the fuselage, performed a last-minute radio check, and handed my transmitter to the test pilot. I stood there waiting with my heart in my mouth as my creation rolled down the runway for the first time. A couple of experimental hops and unbelievably it was off the ground. It even stayed there. This pile of sticks I had been working on since the previous year had somehow managed to turn into an airplane!

Francis, the test pilot/instructor, flew a few circuits, made some minor trim adjustments, and landed my airplane. I thought the afternoon could not possibly get any better. That is when he reached for his buddy cord. Standing on the flight line with a transmitter in my hands and butterflies in my stomach, I watched Francis take off and gain some altitude. He asked me if I was ready then hit the buddy switch. I was flying!

I only got a few minutes of stick time in but it was still a moment I will always remember. It had been a long time coming. That first flight was the culmination of a little over a year of off-and-on hard work, a fair amount of money spent and a lot of worrying. It was all worth it when the wheels left the runway that first time.

I had ordered the kit a little over a year before. I had always been interested in R/C flying but had never had the money to invest in trying the hobby. I had a new job and a little more disposable income and had my interest sparked when I ran across the AMA's web site. I spent a lot of time cruising R/C related sites and became a regular reader of the rec.models.rc.air newsgroup. I decided to try it but did not know where to begin.

A few posts to the newsgroup yielded a lot of useful information from old hands about how to get started, what to buy, etc. I started attending meetings at a local club and started looking around for a plane. I was tempted to get an ARF but eventually wound up ordering a kit for several reasons. I was told that by building a kit I would learn a lot more about how to repair it when the inevitable happened. ARF's are also more expensive. The plane I finally chose was only available as a kit. I wound up buying a Stick 40+ from Balsa USA and have yet to regret it.

I bought a used engine and radio and set to work building the Stick. I had never built anything before and had never been a home-improvement type. I was skeptical about my building abilities but there was only one way to learn. I had a lot of guidance by Email during the building process from Howard Sullivan, from whom I had bought some of my gear and who had recommended the Stick to me. Howard's help turned out to be invaluable and saved me from several mistakes that would have been time-consuming to correct. Additionally, he provided a lot of encouragement to a rookie builder who was often intimidated by the task that had been undertaken. I learned a very valuable phrase during these first few weeks, "It's a trainer." The Stick was designed with novice builders in mind, and would accommodate a certain degree of ineptitude.

Generally, construction progressed fairly smoothly although slower than I had expected. I soon realized that my plans to build the plane in a couple weeks of hard work were far from realistic. As August passed into September and I was just finishing up the airframe, I began to realize the Stick might not fly that year. I had finished building the plane and had gone on to painting the wooden fuselage when I suffered a severe setback.

I had hung the fuselage tail-down from a hook in my bedroom ceiling to allow a fresh coat of paint to dry. I bent down to retrieve something on the floor underneath the plane and was rewarded with the sound of splintering balsa as the back of my head struck the tailfeathers. The next thing I heard was the crash of the already broken empennage smashing on the hardwood floor. I had knocked the whole assembly off its hook. Every single surface in the tail was broken. I knew I could fix it but it's hard not to become discouraged after an event like that.

I did not even touch the plane for a couple of months after that. Every time I would think about picking it up again, I would find something else to do. I decided not to worry about flying it that year but to finish it over the winter to have it ready in time for next year. Once the time pressure was off, I quit even wanting to think about it.

Eventually I found the motivation to fix the damage to the tail. The damage was not as bad as it had first appeared. After spending an hour and a half or so with a bottle of CA and a sanding block, I had returned the tailfeathers to health. The scars where the balsa broke are still visible, but since I doubt I will finish learning to fly without breaking something again, I am not too concerned about looks of the model.

Covering the wing was difficult for a beginner. I chose two colors of MonoCote. White was used on top of the wing and yellow on the bottom for good visibility. I managed to get the covering on but with lots of wrinkles. I found getting the MonoCote to adhere to the fiberglassed center section frustrating, as were the compound curves of the wingtip blocks. The end result was a covering job that holds but is not pretty. I took the same approach to the wing covering that I did to the tailfeathers. Since I might well break it learning to fly, I am not going to sweat the aesthetics.

I had some help mounting the servos and installing the control rods. When I was shown how to do this, I found that it was not difficult. The hardest part was getting the rods the proper length. Mounting the engine took several trips to the hobby store before I finally got bolts of the proper length (there is a lesson to be learned here, I am sure), but it was finally installed.

At about this point I lost all motivation to finish the aircraft. It was over 90% complete and I just did not want to deal with it anymore. I left it sitting untouched in the shop for months, feeling guilty every time I read a copy of Model Airplane News or drove past the hobby shop. I had spent so much time and money on the thing with more yet to go, that it often seemed pointless to keep trudging along. I knew it would be a shame to have put all that time and money in without seeing it through, but I often found it hard to care.

Finally, in early July, I decided I was going to finish the plane and fly it this season if it killed me. As it turned out, there was not much left to do. All I had to do was install the fuel tank, mount the landing gear, and balance it and it was finished. I had been very intimidated by the need to balance the plane, but it turned out to be easy. A lot of things about this plane were like that. Certain things seemed too difficult for me to accomplish without help. When I got down to it, I found that there was not much to them. The instructions were excellent with lots of illustrations and these helped a lot.

So it was that I found myself driving out to the field, looking for someone to check my work. That took some courage in itself. I was terrified that I would be told everything was all wrong and I would have to do major revamping or just plain start over. Imagine my surprise when everything turned out to be acceptable and we could fly it then and there. All the Email correspondence with Howard turned out to be a lifesaver. Without his help, I would never have gotten a lot of things right the first time.

I had a great time watching the plane fly and then taking the controls myself, but the best part was just knowing that it was done. I could quit worrying about the weight, the warped elevator, the tailfeather repairs, the poorly covered wing, and the rest. It flew, and it will fly a lot more this summer. I am looking forward to every moment of it.