How long will it really take to get a plane in the air?

The guys in the hobby shop aren't lying, above anything else they want to see you come back as a customer.  But, when they tell you how long it takes to get a plane in the air they are talking from experience, years of experience.  What they can assemble in a morning is something that may take you all weekend.

Where I come from is this reality.  It's 2:00 PM, we get the new barbecue home from Home Depot.  It's in a box in many pieces.  There is 3 pounds of chicken in the fridge and my wife informs me "Oh, Ed and Lisa are coming over. at 6:00PM."   That's two hours to set the thing up, one hour to find propane and one hour to shower and get the house ready for their arrival.


Thus, when it comes to assembling a plane my old tactic was to build it quick and get it into the air.  That didn't work well.  A hasty build leads to all kinds of issues.  Even if you can get it to fly, it won't fly as well as if I were to simply take my time.

I first learned this lesson at a young age.

Pinewood derby day was the event that I took what little dignity the family still had left in our community and destroyed it.   When I showed up every kid had his own masterpiece of a car.   There, hanging in the background, in large block letters was a banner with the words "Game On."  These cars  looked nothing like the block of wood I got the week before.  One in particular was molded down to a classic 1940's race car design.  It was Union 76 orange, and not only that but it looked like it was hand sanded for weeks at a time.  The paint was perfect and it had a clear coat of lacquer on top.  It was worked by hand to perfection.    Hand painted numbers by an artist along with 1mm white pinstripes.   Of course, a 9 year did that.  I recall hearing him say "So I said Dad, when I checked out the bit in the router it was a Roman Ogee.  I was like 'what, are we making cabinets?"      Sure the kid made it just like the size one model with the size D rack claims she didn't have any work done.  She can always insist you were referring to her house.

The point of the Pinewood Derby days is that the kids don't build the cars . Well, they really should but they don't.    Maybe at one point they did but all it took was one father to break out the power tools and show up to a race with a better looking, faster car and it was all over.  From that point on every dad used the opportunity to show up the other fathers.  "My dad can beat up your dad" is what boys used to tell each other.   The problem is, they can't without ramifications.  The next best thing to show off male superiority is to drop three weekends on a $4 piece of wood.     This is suburban dad's version of cage fighting.  Today they snap images with the cell phones and send them to the other fathers with the words "Game on."   Men who are building the cars should be left alone.  They are on a strict diet of  cold pizza, Budwiser and sports talk radio.

For those unfamiliar with the Pinewood Derby car it's sold in a kit.  it's around seven inches long  and during my era it was a large rectangular piece of smooth pine with a notch where the driver is supposed to sit.  It comes with axles and wheels and overall it's quite simple.   The basic idea is that you supposed to reshape the car, paint it, make it look cool, and make it go fast.   You can think of it like an oversized Hotwheel where there are two aspect of the car, the first being how cool it looks and the second is being fast enough to come in first place.  The objective is to have the  best looking car AND to win the race.  Anything less is a complete failure.  Oh, and your son who is supposed to build the car really shouldn't touch the car, ever.  Well not until after the father dies because it's locked up in the safety deposit box with  the family stocks and bonds.

My car caught everybody's attention. but not in  a good way.    First of all I had problems having the axles stay in place, so I used Elmer's glue.  The glue got onto the axles and slowed down an already slow car.  The car was the factory original pinewood color.  Not only that, it was in it's original rectangular shape.  I went for that stock car, "right out of the box" look.   But no, I did decorate it as my mom suggested.  At the time there were these four inch by one inch trading cards that they sold at 7/11.  It was a strange shape for a trading card, and I am proud to say that NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was glued to the front of the driver's cabin along with some other NBA star.  The car was looking a bit bare so I put on stickers all over the car.  Race decals?  Nope, one liners from Rowan and Martin's Laugh In.  "Here comes da judge" and "Sock it to me" and "You bet your bippy." Of course some of the stickers started to peel off so I glued them down with Elmer's glue.   So the car had this soiled spots look to it  like the bottom of a hotel mattress.  That and the Fritos grease on my fingers while I built the car.    Kareem may be a basketball legend but he was sticking up about three inches from the car and that  was adding to my drag coefficient.  That and the somewhat glued axles made a car that drove as bad as it looked.    Needless to say, it was very interesting.  As I handed it to the man to put the car on the wood track he held it, turned it around carefully to admire the fine workmanship  and asked "What the hell?"

One race and I was done,  Not only that, Kareem's lawyers sent me a cease and desist letter.

So, let me tell you something about men.  We don't remember birthdays, anniversary, and we don't cry unless the Packers lose the Superbowl.  But when we spend 25 hours working on a $4 piece of wood with wheels you better bet we remember every car at the race. To this day there is someone saying every Thanksgiving  to  his son "Do you remember that 'sock it to me' mobile?"    Oh yeah, it was legendary.


Back to the planes

There seems to be two distinct worlds when it comes to flying. On one end there are people who pride themselves with taking a piece of foam and getting in the air as quickly as possible. They are seldom painted, perhaps they will use color tape. But they seem proud to talk about how fast they put it together. The other world is the planes at the RC parks. These are people who have a lot of time and money spent on the planes and they worry about the smallest details. It's very much game on. I am now somewhere in between. Part of the fun of the hobby is figuring things out along the way. To answer the question, how long will it take to get the plane in the air? Whatever it takes, I am in no hurry.