30,189.51 raised in 2026. We have reached 6% of our goal.
Help us reach this year's goal of $500,000!
When I was 12 years old (1971), my father (RIP) took me and my younger brother to Jacob Riis Park in Rockaway, New York. At that time, the Pennsylvania Avenue Radio Control Society (P.A.R.C.S.) was using the beach parking lot as a runway. I saw a beautiful, incredibly detailed P 51 Mustang waiting to fly. I was hooked. I said, then, that I would get into this hobby.
I’ve been flying RC since 1978. I flew glow engine sport and pattern.
I continued flying on and off between 1985 through 2015. After a bit of a lull, I got back into flying EDF Foam jets and aerobatic planes. I’ve been dabbling in 3D for the past 5 years.
My interest in airplanes started at an early age, with two cousins and an uncle who were pilots, and my Dad who was a machinist for Eastern Airlines. He would take my brother and me to the airport in Miami to watch planes take off and land. First plane was a Cox .049 PT-19 control, which crashed almost immediately.
I started in this hobby when I was about 7 or 8, when my parents got a large thermic towline glider. It was way beyond what I should have started, but I put it together and it actually looked pretty good. Skip ahead to when I was 15 and became friends with a man and his wife who had opened a hobby shop not too far from where I lived in Glendale, California. Bill and Roberta Coleman became my second family. Bill was an ex Navy pilot and was a Captain flying a Lockheed Constellation for a West Coast company. His wife, Roberta, was a Stewardess.
A Modeler’s Life
In the early 1940s, when I was an infant, my mother frequently sang me to sleep. One of her lullabies was "Bluebirds Over the White Cliffs of Dover," a popular song at the time. I thought the song was about birds. Much later, I learned it was about warbirds over the English Channel.
Got hooked on R/C at the young age of 10 years in 1965. Got serious, having money, in 1982. Went from trainers to scale to 3D aerobatic to warbird. Love it all!!!
Matt Ott here. I have been a member of the AMA for about 20 years now. I am now 63 years young. This is how I became involved in model aviation: I have a friend and former coworker Ron T. who had been flying models most of his life. He is now 72 years old. He invited me to come to a church gymnasium to see him fly indoors with rubber-powered and micro RC planes. There were guys flying RC planes, some of which were kits and others were scratch built.
Like many of us, I have fantastic memories of building and flying simple balsa airplanes and model rockets with dad as a kid. We’d fly them (or attempt to) in a big field behind grandma’s house as the sun set on long summer evenings. Tall grass, lighting bugs, and the sound of cicadas seem ever-present in those memories. A lot of hope and excitement was invested in those toys, but success was rare and fleeting. I’m not sure what we were doing wrong, but the experience was nonetheless magical.
I have been in the modeling hobby now for 62 years and an AMA member since 1971. After flying full size aircraft for 35 years, it was only natural to continue with this hobby and aviation interest.
Currently both sons in Texas and grandson in Pennsylvania are both flyer/modelers and are AMA members. So, with this family activity & interest, the modeling tradition will continue in our family.
In what other hobby can you learn about aerodynamics, engine operation, structural building, electronics, & radio frequencies combined??
I'm a former NASA Astronaut who flew on the Space Shuttles Endeavour, Atlantis, and Discovery and spent 95 days aboard the International Space Station. My son, Buster, and I joined the AMA club on Orcas Island, Washington, and have been flying RC airplanes ever since. Buster has really gotten into it and has built two RC airplanes from scratch, one of his own design.
