As a young lad, Jim was enamoured with planes. He caught that from his dad. It is contagious. And naturally, his oldest daughter joined the Australian Air Force, his oldest son joined the US Air Force, and that love goes marching on!
But, back to Jim. He started with plastic models – military aircraft, helicopters and Navy ships. But selling greeting cards helped him to get something in the air that really flew. His payment for the sales commission was a control line plastic, Cox 049 powered P40. It didn’t last long, but he loved it!
Before long, he took up the challenge of building a balsa SE5a control line biplane powered with a McCoy 35. The wings weren’t quite straight, and it had a habit of turning in towards the ‘pilot.’ Needless to say, it didn’t stay in the air long. This got Jim started on his repair skills, along with acquiring a nice scar across the end of his thumb where the prop from that engine nearly cut it down to the bone!
As all of this was happening, there was another influence that was at work. Jim ended up following his dad to his alma mater, General Motors Institute, to study to become an automotive engineer. While he was there, Jim was employed by the Chevrolet Engineering Center and managed to earn enough to take some flying lessons in a Citabra. While at school, he built a balsa Piper Cub RC plane, and also built the radio to control it from a kit sold by Lafeyette Electronics.
Needless to say, he also crashed that, and rebuilt it. Are we beginning to see a pattern? 🙂
Sensing a call into Christian ministry Jim was ready to quit engineering school, and informed his dad of that plan. The response: “No, you don’t. You started something, you finish it. Then you can do whatever you like.” Fortunately, Jim followed that advice, and the next year met the girl with whom he recently celebrated a 50th wedding anniversary!
Upon graduation, Jim and his new wife moved to Tennessee where Jim got a job as an engineer. Both he and his wife worked part time, went to school full time, and over the next four years completed their studies. God then led them to come to Australia as church planting missionaries.
They began with a handful of people (basically one other family and a couple individuals) in the western suburbs of Melbourne. It was a new area with lots of homes being built, and a large population of immigrants from all over the world. Over the next twenty years they worked in that ministry, and eventually saw it grow to the point that they could support a local pastor, and continue on their own.
It was during the last half of that time that Jim and his two boys got into radio-controlled flying. His hobby budget was $50 per month. There wasn’t any worry about over spending. There just wasn’t any more money to spend! But it was enough to get them into a Great Planes Trainer 40 and a Duraplane Aerobat, both powered with OS Max 46 nitro engines, and a glider which could have an .049 in a pod on top or be launched with a bungee. Jim still has all three of those aircraft, and flies the powered planes on a regular basis.
Around the time of completing their ministry in Melbourne, Jim’s kids were reaching adulthood and moving on to university. As mentioned earlier, a daughter went to the Australian Defence Force Academy with the Australian Air Force. A son went to a university in Melbourne and got a degree in commercial aviation. It seems like there was something in the water at Jim’s home!
Through a variety of circumstances, God led Jim and his wife to move to the Newcastle New South Wales area. By that time, Jim was working part time in church ministry, and part time in a secular Job, with he and his wife supporting themselves in their ministry. He ended up taking a position of assistant pastor in a church up there, while working as a financial advisor.
There is a beautiful lake just south of Newcastle, Lake Macquarie, which reminded Jim and his wife of living in Michigan. Having the lake nearby, and the boys away from home, Jim focused the next 20 years or so on water sports for his hobby – mainly sailing. Of course, there is a lot of aerodynamics involved in sailing, and to sail competitively, one needs to understand them well and tweak the rig just right to optimise everything.
As Jim was approaching retirement, the senior pastor of his church left, and the church asked Jim to fill in until they could find a replacement. He had been doing club sail racing on Sunday afternoons, but that meant that he had to leave the church 15 to 20 minutes after the service. When he was just an assistant pastor, that wasn’t a big deal. But being the only pastor, he felt that he needed to stay at the church until everyone had left.
So, Jim gave up club sailing and looked for another hobby. He thought he might take up radio-controlled sailboat racing and bought a boat. When it arrived, he saw that it came with a four-channel radio. Looking up at the old planes hanging in his garage, he thought, I can fly those with this. Of course, by this time his old radios we obsolete – not to mention rather dusty and dead. But with a new radio…
And so, that led to Jim contacting a local radio-controlled flying club. In trying to get the old planes going, he found that his electric starter was shot, the motors were clogged up, and it was going to be a lot of work to get them going. The club president suggested that he consider going electric, and so to get things happening quickly, Jim bought an FMS Ranger 1800 and a Spektrum NX radio – the sailboat radio wasn’t compatible with the Spektrums that the club uses for training. Jim went through their training program, and within a few weeks had his wings.
Early on Jim had the idea of sharing his RC flying experiences though YouTube, and to use that as a way to help fund his renewed hobby. It has been a lot of work, and we won’t even think about the pennies per hour that he is earning, but he enjoys it, and gets a lot of satisfaction knowing that he is helping others in this hobby. He also hopes that the joy and fulfillment that he has experienced in knowing Jesus Christ will be evident, and cause others to realise that there is something even more wonderful than RC flying!
RC Jim 