I like anything that flys real fast.

From a very early age I knew that someday I would be involved with airplanes. I am a retired Technical Instructor from Alaska Airlines but also taught for 17 years in the Oklahoma Career Tech and 14 years at AAR Aircraft services at the Willy Airport.

I built my first model rocket (Estes Alpha I) when I was 19. Shortly thereafter I built the Estes Sprint, Big Bertha, Cherokee D, Interceptor and Mars Lander.  I quickly learned that it was “The Big Stuff” that really got me going.

It was not too long that I quit model rockets and started flying “Control Line” model airplanes. I flew control line combat competitively for several years well into my 40s.

During my vocational teaching career I used model rockets to teach trigonometry.

We used an Estes inclinometer to track the rocket to Apogee then use the tangent of the angle times the distance to the launch pad to compute altitude. We would sometimes use two people with two different inclinometers and take an average of the two measurements.

Through my grandpa years I have helped both of my grandsons build and fly model rockets and I also built one with my oldest daughter for her science class in high school.

I have been retired from Alaska Airlines since April of 2020. My wife and I moved back to Oklahoma and bought a new house that June. I spent the rest of 2020 getting the house and lawn in order. The latter part of 2021 and through most of 2022 I did quite a bit of contract teaching for Alaska Air.