Mine was a Dodgson's Designs Camano 111. This was the wood winged version with glass shell fuse, the first of the Camano line. I was already (in my mind) a pretty good power pilot and one of these came to me via one of our locals in Corpus Christi, TX where I lived at the time (1981). Straight wings, ailerons, flaps, seemed pretty unusual to me. For about 1 month I had a ball launching that plane off a high start at the local field. Never had a flight over 3 minutes since I actually hadn't the faintest idea what a thermal was or how to recognize lift with such a slick plane, but I had a ball doing a couple minutes of aerobatics on the way down. I finally got the message that this wasn't quite like flying power.
Bought a Gentle Lady and learned to soar with that, then a PMP Challenger 2M, both of which really taught me how to soar, find thermals, etc. So, I would say the first glider I flew successfully was the Gentle Lady, with which I got a 55 minute flight during the first couple months of flying it. After that long flight with the Lady, and some more time on the Challenger, I went back to the Camano which I could now actually keep in the air for more time than gravity would allow. Then built the first of probably 25 Windsongs (for both myself and many others) over the next few years. At that point (1989) the Falcon 880 and ATRCS modified Airtronics Module radio came along, and the model soaring world changed forever for me and lots of others. Jim Thomas RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please note that subscribe and unsubscribe messages must be sent in text only format with MIME turned off. Email sent from web based email such as Hotmail and AOL are generally NOT in text format
