The wing fell off...

Oh boy, this week's strip so strongly reminds me of my childhood. Up to a certain age I always wanted to do the same things my big brother did. So when he built scale model planes, I built some too. When he wanted a radio controlled car, I wanted one too... So naturally, building our first radio controlled airplanes was also something we did together.

Actually there was a third kid from our neighbourhood, also called Michael, who jumped in on this project. So one day we all got ourselves the same RC glider called "Robbe Rofly", which was probably the cheapest model out there. It took a lot of time to build it! I remember having to glue all the ribs of the wings together and ironing on the covering. It was a painstaking task. But we were able to shorten the time and keep us motivated by picturing in our minds all the great things we would do with our awesome flying machines. We would discuss the formations and aerobatics we'd fly with the three gilders of ours. Yes, the sky was going to be ours for the taking!

The day of the maiden flight finally came around. I don't know if it was a bad balance of my plane or if my steering was too violent (probably both), but my glider, Rofly #2, stalled and crashed about 3 seconds after takeoff. So much for aerobatics and formations. The other ones crashed too, of course. We went home and repaired the planes and then went back flying...

It was a ratio of about 5h repairs to 5 seconds of flight. The ratio improved slowly but surely by trial, error and practice, but somehow I couldn't muster the patience required to overcome these aronautical challenges and was so frustrated after a couple of weeks that I gave up. So... to cut a long story short, my brother continued to fly, and I started looking for other hobbies, some at which I was actually good at. And that's why my brother became a pilot and I started playing guitar and became a cartoonist. :-)