Love of the hobby started young
Bucky Edwards
bucky.edwards@heatcraftrpd.com
Bucky Edwards (bucky.edwards@heatcraftrpd.com) provided us with a nostalgic photo of himself and his sister. He wrote:
“Here is a picture of me and my little sister, Tammy, taken in the hayfield beside our house. I reckon the picture was taken in or around January 1978. Tammy was 7 and I was 10 years old. In those days, before I started building balsa-and-tissue planes, my favorite plane was a Styrofoam Testors Catapult Glider and Tammy was tossing my Nerf glider around. The Nerf plane flew horribly, but she didn’t care.
“Even though it was the middle of winter, the weather was warm, as evidenced by the discarded coats—not uncommon in Alabama. We had been playing most of the afternoon when my dad took the picture. Back then, I kept an inventory of recycled balsa wood and Styrofoam parts from wrecked planes, so I usually had a replacement for broken parts. I could not begin to guess how many model planes took flight over this field. Nearly 40 years later, I still build and fly model planes—nowadays though, it is RC planes and not Catapult Gliders.
“I often use that picture as the wallpaper on my computer at work. Even though I became a mechanical engineer with the intent of working in the aerospace industry, I have never worked in that industry. My love of planes and flying models has never gone away.
“My mom was over at [my] house a few months ago and I was flying my latest RC plane around. She said that seeing me standing in a field looking up at a model plane is a familiar sight she has seen most of my life.”
Do you have an airplane or helicopter photo you are proud of, or a model aviation-related photo with a great story behind it? Email your high-resolution “Viewfinder” photo and a short note about it to jennifer@modelaircraft.org, or submit it online at www.ModelAviation.com/viewfinder.
