Photo shows Håkon mounting the aileron servo.

It all started in the summer of 2003. Håkon had expressed a wish to start with RC model planes. For his 14th birthday he got an ARF Trainer from World Models called Super Frontier 40, an engine and a 4-channel radio. In addition glue, fuel, an electric starter and all the other equipment needed to get it in the air. (or so we thought, a propeller was something that was not included and had to be bought separately.)

Well, we started "construction" and it was quite different from anything we had ever done before.

Here the trainer is on the building table. Almost done by this time

Another issue soon came up. Where should we fly the plane? We had not given that much thought so far. We did get a tip about a local club, Lukeenga Aerodrome that might give us a hand. We found their web site, went up there and talked to some of the members. They were very helpful.

Picture shows Håkon training on the G2 flight simulator.

At the same time we bought the plane, we also bought the G2 Lite flight simulator. It was a big help for both of us. We used it extensively before we tried the real thing. We did upgrade to the full G2 simulator and also acquired all the add-on packs.

The first time we started the engine (which we spent quite some time on), Håkon got his finger into the propeller. That was nasty, blood everywhere, but the medical staff got his fingertip safely taped and it is now nearly as it was before.

Håkon is flying while the instructor watches with his son

When the time came for Håkon's first flight, one of Lukeenga's instructors, Tom, was giving him the needed training. He was a fast learner though, probably helped by the many hours on the simulator.

After a few flights he soon managed to both takeoff and land by him self.

One of Håkon's early landings

He quickly learned to make very smooth landings, as shown on the picture.

Taxiing on the field

Later the same year we got the second plane. A low-winged trainer from World Models. It gave us a lot of headache as the engine had a nasty habit of stopping in the air.

Getting the T-34 from the forest

At one of these occasions, Håkon tried to glide it back to the airfield, but didn't have enough altitude to get over the trees. It hit the top of a tall tree, and fell down. Luckily we had a Be-found mounted in the plane so finding it was easy.

The only thing that had happened to the plane was a small crack in the canopy and a wheel collar that had fallen off.

Later we found and fixed the problem with the engine stopping, and the plane has worked flawless after that.

And of course sometimes more serious repairs are needed. This movie is my first crash with a plane. It happened the day after I had changed the wheels to larger ones. After a takeoff one of the wheels fell off. Stressed and trying to figure out how to land with as little damage as possible, I got an advise to try to come in low between two groups of trees. I had never tried that before, and of course, it was not a good idea to try it while I was really stressed. And naturally it went wrong as the film shows.

T-34 crash movie (4.3 MB Windows Media File)