For the Use of All You Instructors Out There..."Official Solo Certificate" !!!

As I continue to assault the 2nd bedroom in my little house (with an eye toward it actually HAVING a bed in it), I'm coming across all manner of Days-Gone-Past Artifacts, and with who better to share these precious pearls than those of a like-minded ilk here on CEF !

"Back In The Day" (early 1980's - 90's) I was what could have been described as a somewhat Rabid Radio Controller.  Other guys had bigger, fancier airplanes and radio gear, but NOBODY had more passion for this "Extension-of-Thy-Soul" pursuit than myself.  I dragged banners and flags and other airplanes, dropped bombs and ping-pong balls, fired JATO rockets, pulled smoke trails, flew crazy high, and down back alleys.  I flew planes off city streets, swamps, ponds, tiny backyards, ball fields, churchyards, airport ramps, and even the occasional legitimate R/C Field, somehow never accruing a lawsuit along the way.

The Holy Grail of Flight, in my world, wasn't the knife-edge, loops, rolls, lomchevaks, or other such big-sky flopping around.  It was the ability to place an aircraft PRECISELY where you intended...power or deadstick...wind or no wind...trees or lightpoles or doghouses notwithstanding.  PLANT the wheels of that plane where you called it...THAT was what impressed me!

As with ANY burgeoning Cult Leader, I needed a following of True Believers...so...I became an "Instructor".  I bought two, identical Airtronics Radio sets, along with a trainer-cord to connect them, and set about creating my church. If you so much as made direct eye contact with me, it seemed, you'd find yourself with your thumbs on the sticks of a transmitter, and me grouching at you, "You Got It!  Now, TRY to keep the sucker level!"

I WAS a task-master...under my direction, you weren't allowed to wander aimlessly about the sky, chopping power and HOPING you hit the runway.  NOOOOOO...you were REQUIRED to fly a "pattern", exactly like the ones hammered into the psyches of fledgling full-scale pilots.  Failure to obey these rules could, and sometime did, result in expulsion 'till the time you realized that your Instructor possessed much more wisdom than yourself...

Anyway, IF you did manage to get your plane (or my personal trainer if you proved to be a particularly bright student), into the air and return it to Earth (the part covered by a runway) with a measure of control and minimum of wingtip scruffing or nose dragging, you were awarded a cherished certificate (pirated from a similar one sold by Sporty's Pilot Shop) to document your newly-achieved stature.

I just found some copies of this precious parchment, and am willing to pass it on for use by all my fellow sufferers who choose the difficult path of trying to bring order to a new world; where technology will allow an fairly bright chimpanzee to easily do the things so painfully learned back in the day when guys built and flew their own planes...and fixed them when they broke them...