About Me

At the age of 15 my parents purchased my first radio unit which was a Cox Sanwa 2-channel system.  I proceeded to build a Guillows F4U Corsair covering the entire model with 1/32” balsa.  A Cox Baby Bee engine up front completed the package.  The first flight ended in crash destroying the model.  My second model was a Sterling F4U Corsair powered by a Cox Medallion .15 engine!  It too was quickly destroyed.  You can blame the television show Baa Baa Black Sheep for my love of the Corsair.

A couple year older and wiser I purchased a used Proline, Competition Seven radio from a new friend.  An Andrews Big H-Ray Airplane was built and a K&B .40 engine was installed.  With help, I proceeded to learn how to fly this model and put hundreds of flights on it.

Although I’ve built dozens of kits over the years I take more pride in designing and building my own creations.  I’ve built well over 300 RC models over the past 37 years and hopefully I will get in a bunch more built in the years to

Model rockets were built and flown during all these years as well.

In my early 20’s my parents and I took ownership of a Hobby shop named M-n-M Hobbies.  I ran this shop for three years but finally closed it since the business didn’t pick up as hoped.  My next career was designing, building and test flying large RPV’s for a local company. This job lasted only eighteen months but it was one of the best jobs I have

From here I moved into a career as a PC Tech.  After many years I got a designer job at Midwest Products.  At this time Midwest was wasn’t doing much in the way of model airplanes but new boat kits were needed so I proceeded to create the last three model boat kits the company is producing.  When new owners took over and new kit designs were not in the future for the company, so I left.

I packed up the family and moved to Colorado to work for Estes\Cox.  My job there was to bring back the PICA line of model kits as ARF models.  I never did get to do this but instead designed a new line of small scale foam models powered by electric motors.  Seven designs later and three being tooled and almost ready for production, COX was winding down and I quickly found myself designing models for Estes, the rocket side of the company.  Two of my designs were put into production but things started slowing down on the Estes side so I found myself unemployed.  A few months later I started doing CAD drawings for a Company named Trane, the furnace and air conditioning company.  Eighteen months later and with the economy slowing down even more I was laid off from Trane. 

When I turned  47 years old and with lots of time on my hand I created the first version of this website.  Well not long after creating this web site I am now the Head of the Estes R&D Department where I get to design model rockets and other cool stuff.

Back about 8 years ago when I was 40 pounds lighter, Oh, the good old days.