Bexhill on Sea…Husband now retired and looking for new hobbies…
He first of all ordered the Plane…just off the cuff…no thought as to where he was going to or able to fly it…
Here he is before the weight loss diet…with his first new Toy
He had no idea really when it arrived but as luck would have it…
One day we were walking about at the Bexhill seafront and climbed up the hill in a Hastings direction…There was this young man flying a plane out towards the sea and diving and then bringing the plane up again before it could drop for good…
When he had finished we chatted to him and told him that we had just got a new 1st ever plane.
Talked about it and he said I’ll give you a lesson…
Now he went on to say he was actually training to be a pilot…How could that offer be turned down then…
We arranged to meet in the same place a few days later when his shift work would allow that…
We were away from the Cliffs where he had flown his a few days before ,down now on the flatish green, which he had assessed as being long enough for a take off …
Confident he certainly was and he explained to us both the order of things…
He turned on the radio …remote control…done the flying checks…once happy with those…Plane on the grass and radio set to fly it…
Up and up it went…he had a slight problem and said oh why is that happening…panic, could see that… he said it is going and going and now veering off the the left…I cant stop it…it is going going…he is now almost running to catch an eye of it…but it was now gone…Thought he was going to cry…He straight away said how bad he felt about this and had no clue as to why that should happen…He said he would pay half towards another one…We said no way, it obviously was not your intention and hope if we get it back we can have another lesson…
Times change quick, remember when the Son got a license to fly, invited his Mother to witness the first solo flight, back then a person needed an extended aerial, in his effort to please this fundamental was overlooked, can’t happen nowadays so sloppiness goes unnoticed .
Well we did go to where it looked like it came down…nothing…absolutely nothing…nowhere could we see any parts of the plane… Home for lunch and could not wait to get back and search more… ,
We searched and searched…there was a small wooded area that was a really overgrown place inside…never had even noticed it before…but searched in that area. Managed some branch scrapes and scratches as well…Was no sign of any parts of a plane…baffled really. decided to go to the very close shopping centre and look and also enquire in a few of the stores…Ravenside it is called has a Tesco,Next, Boots and a few other Stores…nobody had seen it and in the end …we went back home…
Similar story Dianne & I hope your OH got his plane back.
OH flew radio controlled model plane & his friends did, they were all in a club. Proper permission to fly where they flew too.
Most were sensible & put names & addresses in their planes in case they lost them. One member hadn’t & as his plane disappeared over the horizon said,‘Oh! I wish I had put my address in that!’ but not that politely. We meanwhile were in hysterics. He was in luck though, someone found it in the woods near the river & it was repairable. They are expensive to run & the gear is too & they take ages to make.
When my OH died I let his flying pal take all his planes & the gear & all the odds & ends, bulsa wood etc, some he kept & some he sold for me, there were around 20 odd & OH never got to fly them all. Which was very sad in a way, but he loved making them too.
No mention of CB? Back in my radio modelling years, the late 70’s. All the remote controls worked on 27mhz & regardless of what happened, there was always a shout of “CB…”
My big sled kite that I use to lift my wire antennas, is my second. As soon as I got my first I walked over to the local playing field & gave it a fly. The line was supposedly 1000kg breaking strain & the wind was gusting.
I got my nice new kite up to about 200 feet, it dropped & then pulled up hard, then again & then it did so a third time but with much more force. The line snapped & my brand new kite sailed over the road & dropped out of sight among some trees.
I did find it a few days later. It was about 50 feet up in an oak tree & shredded.
My current sled is my second & flown on stronger cord.
Husband also joined a club and he insisted I come also…tried to show enthusiasm, I really went the extra mile as he has always taken interests in what I like to do…
He spent a fortune on Planes…made some from kits as well…in fact he still has some in boxes, untouched…Quite happy about that, as we have a kind of quota system in place here…
Gee3 this was well after 2000…so all quite different…expensive radios really and computerised as well…Spectrum DX7,was the last radio purchase he made…
I always found the CB call / excuse, funny. It was almost like if I can get the letters C & B out before anyone realises I have got it wrong, or before it hits the ground. Then I’m in covered.
I was into gliders, cars & things liked to play with things like hovercraft etc. If & when I flew a powered aircraft it was someone elses. Helicopters at the time were fairly new & rather expensive.
I used to race 1/10th radio controlled cars when I was a kid Dianne - and I always wanted to get into model aeroplanes but never did! Thanks for sharing you story and photo - and I hope your OH found the plane after…
Like owt else, technology has crept in, and in someway has removed the excitement. The Son started flying at the start of this century and, even that short time ago, it was even chances that the plane would come back fully operational, a “Dead Stick” was an event to be trained for, now we have two way communication, failsafe’s gyros, etc, etc, the mantra used to be, “If you ain’t prepared to lose it, don’t fly it”, that has been lost, to some degree, the days of the “Flight Line Autopsy” are all but over.
We I say we because I was encouraged to be part of all this neck aching hobby,but never wanted to fly any…I did enjoy it though as the members were allsorts and some of the planes are out of this world…Two members where very experienced at also flying helicopters…they were flown separately though…
One day one of Husband’s babies ended up in Tree…could not get it down however much we tried,
… so he went home and got a ladder…the tree was about as far away from where we could park our Truck as possible…typically it seemed.
Anyway up the ladder with a long piece of wood…yes he brought that with him as well…and no time at all it was about to descend…he is saying to me catch it wont you Di…don’t let it crash again…well it kinda glided down being it was a glider…
All was repaired again as soon as we got back home…nothing else mattered at the time…mend plane pride sorted…
One of the joke things they all done…was carry a large black rubbish sack, just for the bad crashes…
High wingers are relatively easy to glide back in without power (Dead Stick), low wingers like aerobatics are a bit more tricky. the whole of the covering came of the one wing on one of the sons planes, but he still got in back in one piece.
Well the planes are all here getting dusty, 1 year he signed up to a local club,therefore it gave him somewhere safe to fly them…Just near to Ruffec and guessing 15 minutes drive away…Would only go there on a calm day.
We would leave here as there was no wind…get to the club field and it was breezy…never would it not be…used it maybe 3/4 times so he never joined up the following year. Nobody was there when we went up there…Maybe they had only a few members… :thinking
