When I was a kid (8 years old or so) back in Falls Church, VA - about 10 miles from the Capitol in DC, I had a newspaper route and had to carry newspapers around to about 30 homes. That was the only way I earned any money to buy stuff for myself. I did not really enjoy the newspaper business, too much pressure to add new customers. But it was something a kid my age could do to earn money. My mom and dad both worked, but did not make enough to provide any extras for my two sisters and myself. I did enjoy the money I got to keep, so I stuck with it.
The newspaper I worked for was delivered in the afternoon, so I could do this after school. One day I was a bit late, so I was in a hurry to get the papers out. The day was sunny and the wind was calm - perfect weather to be doing anything but delivering papers. I lived in an complex of what today would be called town houses - four homes per building, and several hundred buildings. As I rounded the corner of one of the buildings only a block away from my home, I encountered something that changed my entire life - a staggering thing for a kid of 8. I did not know what this event was going to do, but looking back it was amazing.
What I saw that day was one of my customers sitting on his front porch winding up a long rubber band with what looked like a hand drill. The other end of the rubber band was hooked to something inside a bunch of balsa wood sticks and tissue that looked like an airplane. This was my first exposure to a real flying model airplane, one that had been built from scratch by the man doing all the work at this moment. (I wish I remembered his name, but it is long lost in my mind somewhere!)
Once the man finished winding the rubber band, he carefully unhooked it from the drill contraption and attached the end of the band to a hook on a wooden propellor whose wire shaft went through a metal tube buried in a wooden block that formed the nose of the airplane. The nose block and propellor were detached from the rest of the airplane. He then carefully placed the nose block in place - holding tightly onto the propellor to keep the rubber band from spinning it around, and than walked to the sidewalk in front of his house. The airplane had a low wing, and looked like a model of a single seat craft that might have been build in the 20’s or 30’s. It had two wooden wheels mounted to a structure below the wing and a skid under the tail. The man placed the model on the sidewalk on the wheels and skid, looked around and checked to make sure the wind was still calm, then let go of the propellor.
The rubber band started spinning the propellor, the model airplane started rolling on the sidewalk, and as realistically as anything I ever saw, lifted the tail up so the craft was level and then lifted off the sidewalk and started flying in a large circle away from the house. The plane climbed up about as high as a four story house, and circled around many times, taking several minutes to do all of this. It then started a slow descent in the same circle and amazingly landed on the sidewalk not far from where it was launched, and skidded to a perfect stop.
I was stunned by the beauty of the flight. I knew about airplanes in a casual way - I even took my first flight in a real airplane at age 5 flying in a Lockheed Super Constellation (a beautiful airliner!) to see my Grandmother in St. Louis, but I never witnessed a complete flight of something someone had built himself and made to fly with no help from anyone but God! Needless to say, the rest of my customers got their paper very late that day. I put down my bag of carefully folded papers and started asking a million questions, trying to get the man to help me understand everything he had done to make that one single flight. In the end, he agreed to help me try to build one. Although I never actually got one built, I started off that day on an adventure I will explain in a moment.
The model was a replica of a real airplane, one called the GadFly (British, I think). The plans for the model were published in Model Airplane News about 1955, and I eventually found a copy of that issue and bought it. The man had drawn up a new set of plans for his model, and he gave them to me - a big sheet of craft paper with ink lines he used to build the model he flew that day, all cut up by the razor blade he used to cut the balsa wood strips. I still have those plans, and I intend to frame them one day. You can still find similar plans for this model today, although the one I found was modified to use electric motors instead of a rubber band - technology marches on! I made several attempts to build that model over the years, but never really succeeded - maybe one day I will.
Why was this life changing? After that day, I found myself getting caught up in trying to figure out how that craft managed to do what it did. How did a simple rubber band make a propellor spin, how did that propellor make the airplane move, how did the airplane moving make it lift off the ground - all of these questions needed answering! So I set off to find the answers. I set off to be an Engineer! I set off to be an Aeronautical Engineer, although I did not know that at the time! Since I lived so close to the Mall in DC, I started going down to the Smithsonian after school and looking at all the airplanes on display. Over the years, I discovered that a kid has certain advantages over a grown up. Kids are too short to see the “Public not allowed past this point” signs in the buildings, and one day I found myself at the front door of the American Aviation Historical Society, which had offices in the old Arts and Industries building in the Smithsonian. I barged in and started striking up conversations with the folks who worked there and had an amazing time looking into filing cabinets full of old post cards from people like the Wright Brothers, Glenn Curtis, and others I had never even heard of, but who were big in the history of aviation. I visited those offices often, and eventually got introduced to none other that Dr. Paul Garber himself, the Curator Emeritus of the National Air and Space Museum, who is credited with getting the Wright Flyer on display in the Smithsonian. (The Secretary of the Smithsonian at the time the Wright brothers were working on their craft was Samuel Langley, and the Smithsonian long insisted that he should get credit for inventing the airplane - Dr. Garber finally said enough of this, and went all the way to Europe to retrieve the remains of the Wright Flyer and had it restored for display. It was hanging in the A&I building right behind the “Spirit of St. Louis” another airplane you might have heard of.) What an adventure I had. And, as it progressed, I got deeper and deeper involved in aviation - mostly in model aviation.
In high school, I joined a model airplane club in Fairfax Virginia, The Fairfax Model Associates, and started meeting some really impressive model builders, and building and flying free flight model airplanes in contests on the east coast. One of men I met was Bill Bigge, who had become known internationally as a builder of extremely light weight rubber powered models that flew for amazing lengths of time (up to an hour) inside very large rooms, the largest being the blimp hangers at Lakehurst, NJ (where the Hindenberg blew up). Bill helped me build a number of models, including an ornithopter that flew by flapping wings using another rubber band, and a helicopter - also rubber powered. I went on the set National records for duration with both of these models under Bill’s guidance. I was having a ball, and learning a lot more about airplanes.
When it came time to pick a school to apply to for college, I had one choice in mind (in part due to severe financial limitations). I needed a school with an Aeronautical Engineering program, and it had to be in Virginia - and I applied to that one school, and was the first one in my high school accepted to college. I became a Hokie - at Virginia Polytechnic Institute.
When I went to college, the Viet-Nam war was going on and all of us knew we were at risk of being drafted. I decided that the one place where the coolest airplanes on the planet were to be found was the US Air Force, so I signed up for Air Force ROTC right away! Since my family did not have enough money for me to go to more than one term at college, I also signed up for the co-operative engineering program at school, and got a job with McDonnell Aircraft in St Louis, where I could live with my grandmother and save money for school.
While working at McDonnell, I got to watch them build the Gemini space craft, and watch the Astronauts practice their missions in a huge vacuum chamber at the plant. I sat on the sidelines during several Gemini flights, and saw Walter Cronkite doing his thing sitting in a mock up of the Gemini crew area. I got to sit in the Gemini-Agena docking simulator and try to fly the gemini toward the Agena - not an easy thing to d at all!
(This is the real thing - from a Wikipedia image)
I also got to work on flight testing the Phantom II jet. The factory in St. Louis was building about one of those planes a day, and they all went off to Viet Nam. I even was able to work on flight testing the planes flown by the Navy Blue Angles, and the Air Force Thunderbirds. For a college student wishing for a career in aviation, this was an amazing place to spend time, and an amazing time for the entire aviation industry! More fun!
Once I earned my B.S. degree in Aerospace Engineering, I was offered a full three year scholarship from NASA to continue my Aerospace education. Although I never finished my PhD, I did get my M.S. in Aerospace (and completed all but my dissertation for the PhD). Boy, did I learn a lot more.
After graduate school, I entered day one of an amazing career in the US Air Force, workng with high performance computing systems and doing work on advanced aircraft and missle systems that I will talk about in a later blog. I got my pilot’s license (see another later posting) and got to experience flight, the only true way it can be done - alone in control of the craft. I even shared an office with Guion Bluford, who applied to be a Shuttle Astronaut, and became the first black man in space ( I went to his first launch as a guest of the crew!) The suit he wore is on a wax model of himself on display in the National Air and Space Museum - my old haunt! How many of you can walk into a museum and stare at a friend on display in a case (well, it sure looks like him!) Twenty years later I retired from active duty, having proudly served my country doing a job I truly loved!
After retiring, I went into consulting in computer technologies. I even applied for a job at the Smithsonian, working with the computer systems in the National Air and Space Museum. I did not get the job (over-qualified!), but I did get invited to do some consulting on their network installation as the new Udvar-Hazy building was under construction. Talk about a life going full circle! Here I was working in the very buildings I grew up in, and revisiting my experiences as a kid wondering what his life would be like.
That one moment as an eight-year-old kid set me off on an incredible journy through life. I do not think I ever had a job that was not so much fun, I looked forward to going to work each day. That is about the best you can hope for in your career. I hope you have had such a moment in your life, or have one coming up. it can be very special!
BTW, here is a picture of those plans I found on the web. (Right click on the picture and save it on your system to see it in detail, it is a pretty big image):
