Showing posts with label letting go. Show all posts
Showing posts with label letting go. Show all posts

Sunday, December 13, 2015

Dealing With the Memories.

Fokker D-7, flying condition, photo by Julian Herzog, (Wiki.)


























Louis Shalako




When my dad went into the old age home, I had to clean out his house. Part of the job involved packing up all of his radio control aircraft and equipment. I burned a bunch of planes out behind the garage after removing motors, fuel tanks, hardware, servos and radio equipment. My sister has a plane in her basement. I have a plane, my brother ended up with a couple of planes.

The real problem is, or was, that I also had a dozen boxes of tools, spares, electronic equipment, hardware, fasteners, engines, fuel tanks and wheels. Everything, in fact, to get started in radio control. There’s enough stuff there to keep a small air force in action for quite some time, if you had any idea of what you were doing…

And I moved that stuff four times in four or five years. Every time I opened it up, my heart kind of sank and I closed the boxes up again. I just couldn’t deal with it.

My dad taught me to fly, and he also taught me how to build an airplane. One thing my old man could do was build an airplane. Anyhow, it was something we did together much of the time, for about seventeen years, longer for him as he started first. He was in his fifties. He’d built rubber-band and free-flight aircraft starting at about ten years of age—in 1942, with WW II all over the front pages.

It was something he’d always wanted to do. The last time we flew was in 2006. He had the training box and I had the kill-switch. When he lost it, I simply let go of the spring-loaded switch and took over. His Parkinson’s had progressed to the point where he was unable to fly on his own.

(I’m sort of emotional writing that, but not crying or anything. It’s just a heavy, emotional feeling, ah, grief, loss, regret. Something like that…)

When my brother started asking about that equipment, I had my reservations. The trouble is, that I’m not likely to do anything with it. My nephews are thirteen and sixteen. It’s now or never, most likely, for boys like that to really get interested in flying…

Shit. But flying really is a good thing—I can’t stress that enough.

So. Why the fuck not, eh?                                    

I do have some concerns.

The transmitters are old. They wouldn’t be allowed at the club field now. Setting up an electric airplane for radio control has its dangers. A banger engine won’t fire itself up at top revs. An electric plane, if the servo switches on the transmitter are set up wrong, ‘off’ might in effect be full-throttle. They don’t know a damn thing about battery charging, not walking away and burning down the friggin’ house…all the same damn worries the old man probably had. In the end I guess we did all right.

If my brother really thinks radio control is cheap, he’s probably mistaken. It takes, time, money, commitment, and knowledge. You only get that knowledge from learning—training, practice, reading, listening, and really thinking shit out on your own.

Let’s hope the fuckers can learn it.

So basically, I’m going to dump all of that stuff on him!

I have my own radio, my own Fokker D-7, my own charger, batteries, transmitter and receivers.

I hope they have some fun with it, and get some good results with it.

Otherwise, as far as I’m concerned, he can go through the boxes and see if he can get a buck for this and a five-dollar bill for that.

Because frankly, that’s about all most of that stuff is worth.

As far as me teaching my brother and the two nephews to fly, yeah, sure.

That sort of depends on you—whether you’re capable of being taught or not.

I had lessons. I had to put up with it! That was the price of admission, submitting to the notion that someone else might know a bit more than I did. I was also bankrolled to a certain extent, and I always appreciated that.

I crashed, sooner or later, every aircraft I ever flew. It took a good two dozen real flying lessons, out at the club field, before I was competent enough to go solo—and ultimately, to go flying on my own, no instructor, no father there to save my ass if I got into trouble.

That’s not to say I didn’t have fun, and make some great memories, because I did.

We did.

Maybe that’s why I gave it to them.

Hopefully, they will get something out of it.

Because otherwise it’s kind of a waste.


END