About the Inventor:

Captain Willy started at age 5 to assemble things like toys he acquired and soon went on to designing his own toys like a model airplane built from peach crate wood and newspaper for wing and fuselage covering material since he had no money for the right materials like balsa wood. He loved to read RC model airplane magazines he found at the school library. He also had a great interest in slot cars that you build yourself. At the age of 12 he was given a real gasoline engine that was sitting outside in the rain and snow for many years. This 1 1/2 HP motor was used to run a washing machine and had a kick start. After tearing it down completely and cleaning it up, he got it running well, and a mechanic was born!

Later at age 12 he would start learning another skill that would be even more challenging, electronic assembly and design. He found a large vacuum tube electronics home study course his father had left him in the attic along with a TV kit he attempted to get built. After spending days reading the course and building the TV set he realized there were major parts missing from the kit like the expensive cathode ray tube (CRT) and he soon gave up hopes of ever finishing the project. He spent many hours over the years working on electronic projects like stereos, record players, power supplies, home wiring, automotive wiring, aircraft avionics installations, vacuum tube projects as well as solid state projects.

At age 21 he continued with his love of airplanes and built and flew real RC model airplanes and some with retractable landing gear. Two of his planes were RC model Cessna 172 airplanes.