One of the occupational hazards of this job is that I have a steadily growing list of ‘must see’ places to visit on this gorgeous Big Blue Marble of ours. I am truly fortunate to get to see (in some cases before it’s seen anywhere else) some truly breathtaking photos of what clearly are the best places to fly in the world. If I can ever gather the courage to get on a plane again — and I win the MaxMillions to pay for it — I could easily stay busy travelling the world for the rest of my life…

My first RC sailplane was a Boss T designed by Seattle’s Don Burt of Superior Flying Models. Along with my older brother, I mowed lawns to abstraction in the early 1970s just so we could eventually fall slightly short of the money needed for the SFM kit, accessories and associated Heathkit GDA-1057 radio control system. Our parents faux-begrudgingly plugged the remaining financial gap and after countless hours in the ‘shop’ (actually a corner of the bedroom my brother and I shared) we emerged with a pretty fair example of the type. We took it out to the expansive athletic fields…

My father was an institutional physician, which is to say that while our family never lacked for any necessity, we were in no way wealthy. Dad prized time with his family above all else and he was going to be damned if some high paying, private practice position was going to keep him from that. He made professional choices in the 1950s which would look positively modern in the 2020s. …

An essential element of the re-launch of the NEW R/C Soaring Digest was to clearly articulate, through our Community and Social Media Policy statements, the ground rules for interaction with the RCSD readership and the aspirations for how the readership would interact with each other when using any of RCSD’s platforms. In doing this, I more-or-less assumed there would be some push back of some sort at some point. The truth is, there has been virtually none. In fact, the opposite: feedback has been much more on the supportive side of the ledger. …

One of my earliest memories — I must have been five or six at the time — was when my father decided it was time to pass along his lifelong love of all things that fly, and bought us a Guillow’s Javelin. My brother and I were absolutely not capable of assembling the delicate balsa wood frame, not to mention attaching the diaphanous green and yellow tissue. So really it was more of an exercise in Dad building, and us watching, but the smell of the dope on the tissue was intoxicating. …

For those of us in the northern part of the Northern Hemisphere — the part where it gets cold and snowy mid-November and stays that way until the end of March — there’s nothing quite like feeling the first warming rays of the sun in Spring and watching the last sad remnants of dirty snow drip away. The world is once again full of possibility and we think of summer days to come and the new chapter in our flying journal we’re going to write.

Having grown up in a time when you simply accepted what the science teacher said…

Welcome to the February, 2021 issue of the NEW R/C Soaring Digest. In last month’s column, my first In The Air, I introduced myself and talked a little bit about RCSD’s history, where things stand today and where I hope to take it in the future — with your help — as each new issue is published.

The time since the January issue was published has been filled with all sorts of exciting developments, some significant challenges and, yes, a few surprises I wasn’t expecting. But mostly, I look back on the past month and my thoughts are about the…

On a whim in the summer of 1976 — no doubt in part because he wanted to drive his shiny silver Alfa Romeo on the twisty and dangerous road through the mountains — my father suggested I have a stab at the Model Aeronautics Association of Canada National Championships held that year in Calgary, Alberta. This was on the strength of some spotty success at similar local model airplane competitions. Dad did his fair share of dreaming big. Particularly when it came to his kids.

For my part, I thought it was a perfectly fine idea, and duly registered to…