Sometimes it seems to me that I was born between two eras of aeromodeling. As a classic war baby, born during 1944 while my father was on duty in the Pacific as a B-29 flight engineer, I missed the entire pre-war "golden age" of free flight. I was too young to be part of that grand scramble right after the war when new engines were appearing one after another and control line flying was coming of age and then all at once the glow plug turned it all upside down. At about the time I was ready to start school, my father more or less by chance brought home one of those old StromBecker solid models of, guess what, a B-29. When I became much more enthusiastic than he had expected, a few more solid models and then a rubber job, a Comet "Firefly", got built, mostly by him as I "helped". He didn't stay interested, but I did. By the time I was a fourth grade kid in 1954 I was old enough for my first "gas engine", a Cox Space Bug Jr. that I put on the front of a Jim Walker Firebaby.

I flew the poor Firebaby and several other 1/2A control line jobs to exhaustion in various schoolyards and in the process eventually discovered that one other boy in my sixth grade class built airplanes. Together we goaded each other through graduation from 1/2A's to a series of profiles like the PDQ Clown and the Ringmaster, tired used McCoy and Cub .19's and eventually nice new Fox and Johnson .35's , and learned to fly control line stunt fairly well. In between figuring out how to fly inverted and do a good job of building a Nobler, we put our old .049's into some home brew free flights and learned a lot about climbing trees in the local woods and how to get models out of cow pastures without getting chased too much by the bulls. By the time we got into high school my friend began to drift away from active modeling. I made a serious attempt to start a real model airplane club in high school, but even with the help of a sympathetic but non-model-building chemistry teacher, it never got off the ground and for a while it seemed that I was all by myself with my love of model airplanes.

During my first two years of college there wasn't much time for model building. During that time my family had moved from the Boston area to northern New Jersey, and when I came home for the summer at the end of my sophomore year, it was to a strange place with no modeling connections. A few days after getting home I was outside early in the evening and heard what could only be a small model engine in the distance. Jumping into my car and following the sound I discovered a neighbor half a mile away flying a single channel 1/2A R/C airplane from the pasture adjoining his back yard. That was the beginning of my return to active modeling as well as my introduction to R/C flying. Within a week I had gathered up and sold off a lot of my old control line stuff and was well into construction of a Schoolmaster equipped with C&S single channel gear and a Bonner escapement.

For the rest of that summer, and whenever my academic schedule permitted during the next few years, I built and flew a wide variety of small R/C airplanes. It was here that I got the experience that put me in that "in between" status. Although these years were the end of the era of reed radios, and the first really practical proportional sets were beginning to appear, my student status forced me to do modeling on a very limited budget, and I ended up with an exotic collection of second and third hand equipment and a stubborn ability to make most of it work. Although I was not old enough to have been flying R/C during the real pioneer era, in working my way through compound escapements, pulse proportional with homebuilt actuators, and finally multi reed radios before I was able to buy a "real" proportional radio (a "black box" Orbit) in 1968, I had the opportunity to re-live the recent history of R/C modeling. Having been too young for the "old days", I now found myself on hand as an accomplished modeler while the modern age of reliable proportional R/C systems dawned, and I soon found the opportunity to begin sharing my experience and enthusiasm.

While I was living in Boston during the late '60's, working days and going to night school classes at Boston University, prior to going back to college full time and then beginning my first teaching job, I found a group of welfare - dependent kids in a settlement house and offered them a class in model building. One of these boys "saw the light" and became a good friend and protégé'. In the end he became an active R/C modeler, in the process learning from me and other adult modeling friends the relationship between our work ethic and a rewarding life. That experience gave me an insight into the value of sharing my love of aeromodeling, and I have never been able to turn away from it.

In 1969 I returned to full time studies at my alma mater, Bowdoin College, and during a program of practice teaching in the Brunswick, Maine Junior High School I started a model building class. Two of the "kids" from that first class are now, years later, still active modelers in the Brunswick community and friends I continue to visit via email from my present home a continent away.

Immediately following my graduation from Bowdoin College I found myself back in northern New Jersey and almost by chance wandered into a local R/C club whose members included Art Schroeder, then editor of Model Airplane News. Art also happened to be the Assistant Superintent of Schools in Glen Ridge, NJ, and before I knew it, I had my first professional position teaching math to middle school kids in Glen Ridge. Needless to say, with in the first few weeks of school I had begun the first of many model airplane classes and after school and weekend clubs that introduced kids to control line and simple free flight building and flying. Within a few years I was back in Brunswick, where I really wanted to be, teaching Junior High School math and building models with a widening circle of kids, including some of those first students who were now in high school and flying R/C with the local club.

In 1973 I made a major change and moved to the Pacific Northwest, where I soon met Teryl Reynolds, the lady who would soon become my wife and enthusiastic supporter of my model building and other creative efforts. Ending up in Olympia, Washington, I had to accept that bad timing and perhaps fate had conspired to prevent me from getting back into my chosen profession as a classroom teacher, and I spent many years working in the commercial printing business. During these years I continued building and flying R/C models while also fulfilling an old ambition by completing the requirements for my private pilot's license and shortly thereafter buying and restoring a 1946 Cessna 140 classic two seat airplane.

In those days I was in fact just another experienced modeler, building more or less typical R/C airplanes and sharing my interest with anyone who wanted to learn about them. However, things were about to change. Not long after moving to the Northwest I began to take seriously a long-dormant interest in art, and eventually began working actively as an artist specializing in aviation subjects. Beginning with a partnership with Bill Northrop at Model Builder Magazine in 1983, this activity resulted in the creation of over 50 airplane paintings that would be published on the covers of Model Builder and Model Aviation magazines, as well as the fullscale magazine Aviation. In addition to this model airplane magazine cover series, in 1992 I completed a set of nine paintings for the AMA for use in a capital campaign intended to help fund completion of the first stage of the then-new Muncie facility. Much of my other aviation art has been reproduced as limited edition collector prints, with many originals in private collections all over the country and one original in the San Diego Aerospace Museum.

During this same time period it became clear to me that building "just another model" for weekends at the R/C field was not enough of a challenge. At the same time that I began seeking out vintage ignition engines to put into a succession of S.A.M.- type oldtimer freeflight and R/C assist models with which I had pretty good success in local competition, I began not only designing my own R/C airplanes but also developing them to the point of being suitable for publication as construction feature articles. In 1983 I published my first original design, a 1/2A control line aerobatic job that had been developed for use with a group of Civil Air Patrol Cadets, in Flying Models, and not long after that, a diesel powered R/C design, the "Bobcat", appeared as a construction feature in Model Builder. Since that time I have published a dozen original designs in various magazines, as well as a wide selection of product reviews. To date I have over sixty published articles and column installments to my credit, with many more in work. My work has so far appeared in Model Aviation, Model Builder, Flying Models, Model Airplane News, Scale R/C Modeler, High Flight, RCM, and S&E Modeler.

The big change in my aeromodeling career came in 1988, when I accepted the challenge of learning to use electric power to the exclusion of other means of flying my models. Having watched other Seattle - area modelers flying electric powered models for a few years, I decided to try the new technology myself and built an Astro Challenger sailplane as the subject of a product review for Model Builder. It did not take long for me to realize that most modelers, including a lot of the ones who were already "doing" electric, were failing to recognize the full potential of electric flight. This was the beginning of my ongoing effort to popularize the idea that electric power was not "about" flying a particular class of lightweight glider-like models, but rather an exciting new means of flying all kinds of model airplanes, and a technical breakthrough that offers to solve many of the problems that have traditionally plagued aeromodeling. These are not limited to that classic enemy of modelers, engine noise, but also include issues such as oil contamination of model structure, engine vibration as it affects structures and radios, the ability to turn large propellers for scale models, and powerplant reliability, among others.

Almost simultaneously with my accepting the challenge of using electric power in models initially designed for glow engines, beginning in 1990 I began to participate actively in R/C scale competition. In that year I became the first modeler ever to qualify for and fly in the U.S. Scale Masters championships using electric power. Since that time I have continued to compete actively in the Scale Masters program using electric power exclusively. During that time I also became the first modeler, to my knowledge, to participate in the U.S. World Championship Team program using electric power, earning the position of 1st Alternate to the 1998 F4C team with my Astro 90 powered ¼ scale 1941 Taylorcraft, and in 1999 I became the first modeler to compete at TOP GUN using electric power. I took the Taylorcraft back to TOP GUN 2000 and was fortunate enough to place Fifth in the Designer Scale Class. This was acknowledged as the first time an electric powered airplane has finished "in the money" (top 5) at TOP GUN. As this material is being written, I am preparing for TOP GUN 2001, again to compete with an electric powered scale airplane, this time my new ¼ scale Aeronca "K".

During the last several years I have actively demonstrated electric powered airplanes at every opportunity, having traveled, often at my own expense, to demonstrate the practicality of electric power to kit manufacturers including Major Hobby, Dave Platt, Stream, Ace R/C, Horizon Hobby Distributors, Great Planes/Dynaflite, Sig, and Midwest, all across the United States. This has resulted in the appearance of gas-to-electric conversion magazine articles featuring several popular kits, as well as the introduction of my TigerKitten design as an Ace R/C kit and more recently as a Laser-Pak kit via S&E Modeler Magazine. In 1994 I had the opportunity to represent Model Electronics Corp. by flying their products in front of a crowd of over 40,000 spectators at the prestigious, invitation-only R/C Aeronautic Pageant in Ota, Japan, as one of only four non-Japanese pilots on the program. Sometime during this period, my friends began calling me "Preacher Bob" in recognition of my enthusiasm for sharing the excitement of electric flight with anyone who showed an interest.

During the past several years I have been writing a regular column on scale aeromodeling using electric power for S&E Modeler Magazine and have begun a similar column for HIGH FLIGHT. Recently I agreed to begin writing a series of articles for the German aeromodeling magazine Aufwind, presenting to that readership an American modeler's impressions of the growth and potential of electric flight. During the same period of time, as a partner in Model Video Productions, a small independent production company. I have written and directed a series of instructional video programs for modelers interested in electric flight, as well as a series of programs for the AMA that include a feature presentation of the Celebration of Eagles as well as the recent All Because of Model Airplanes.

Recently I have sold a few of my no-longer-active scale models to collectors, and it is interesting to note that two of them have each brought a price higher than what I paid for my full scale Cessna 140 in 1976. Who knows what will happen next? We have only just begun to explore the possibilities offered by electric power for model airplanes. I for one can see no limit to the progression of ever more challenging electric powered scale airplanes that will take life on my building table. As this biography is being completed, I am well along with the writing of a full length book, a memoir intended for a general readership, that includes a significant amount of material on the challenge and rewards of building and flying model airplanes and the way they have contributed to and enriched my life. Perhaps the best is yet to come.