Inkling

It all started with an invitation to RMS Fun-Scale Competition 2006 from a friend who owns “Riviera” bar at River Valley Road– Clive Park, to check out aero modeling. Clive’s brother Richard was one of the participant. The Park brother’s are quite renowned flyers in RMS (Radio Modellers Singapore) – Singapore premier flying club situated at Tuas which has been around for a significant 30 years and Park brothers themselves have been flying for almost 10-15 years. Richard Park (my trainer) was awarded runner-up in the event.

The competition was held on 16^th April 2006. It was an overwhelming experience to see extraordinary planes built participating in the competition and one can imagine how serious this hobby is and can be. It was even more awe-inspiring to see them up in the air.

Being an overwhelmed spectator of the event, and thinking it was freaking easy to do it, I decided to be a part of this community (to console myself for the fact that I wanted to be a pilot at one point of time) and decided to take it up as a hobby. End of the show I approached my friend to figure out the details, he gave me the most iniquitous smile possible either giving me a hint on “that’s how I got into it” or maybe “let me see how far you go with it”, though I didn’t defy him but he was quite receptive about the idea of me opting for the hobby.

On April 18^th 2006, two days after the show, I ended up with Clive to a shop at Fook Hai building. He suggested that I buy a basic model which will be sufficient enough to practice flying. And the basic stuff cost me roughly around S$800!. And trust me it was not just basic but some real hardcore and cool stuff. Clive was kind enough to offer me to build the plane free of cost. With all this excitement happening I had to leave for India to attend a course. Though I was away, was fervently looking forward to come back to Singapore to get into action.

While I thought it was kids stuff here are some of the rules: You will need to engage a trainer to teach. You just can’t fly anytime you wish; you can do that only on a Saturday, Sunday and public holidays from 8:30 to 5:30. You will have to sign up for insurance. You can’t fly solo on day 1, you need to go through hours of training and there will be a review/selection panel which will decide whether you are capable enough to fly solo. And from whatever I have seen the most difficult is the take off and landing part. Though it’s not a pre-requisite but a modest fragment of basic science is considered necessary.

6^th of May 2006, for the first time I get a chance to test drive my plane and learn some basics. I had to wait for my turn since another flyer was using the same frequency (two controls of the same frequency cannot be operating at the same time since there could be a potential conflict) that I was supposed to use. At one point of time when the flyer took a break, my trainer took that chance to tune up my plane and take it for a ride to extra ensure that the plane was functioning properly and quickly brought it down for final tuning. We broke for lunch and had to wait again for my turn but it was fun to watch experienced flyers on the ground (majority of the flyers where kids ranging 12-17 of age) and finally I got my chance around 3 pm. The trainer took the plane up and I had to monitor his hand movement and learn about the controls that I was to use. In between he would let me hold the remote and guide me and grab it back. At one point of time I was holding on to the controls  for the longest time possible and I was quite excited to see the plane up in the air and wished I could do that forever. It was one of the most gratifying flashes in my life and I couldn’t express the elation that was sinuous throughout. I was in the air for about 10 minutes and the most disastrous thing happened (obviously my fault to have pulled the wrong knob), the plane lost control and before even the trainer could grab the control and stabilize the plane, the wing snapped and all I could do was just gawk at the plane nose down at a speed of 50-60 crashing down and hit the swamp few meters away. S***.

Well, it was a hard lesson learnt though I wish it didn’t happen the first day, but atleast we were able to retrieve the engine (park brothers to the rescue again) and other major parts of the plane. Luckily what broke was the least expensive stuff, the body of the plane. I am not giving up yet, I bought another plane and park brothers out of sympathy offered to build this one too and I am flying again this week.