Sitting in the plane or not ?

[Del K. Rykert]

Jon.
    Thank you for sharing. I never will forget the time I was at my first nats and your Dad made some very constructive comments about my flying which I was for ever in his debt as I had no one to use as a reference where I was on what I was and wasn't doing. His comments helped my placing move from 28th place to 11th place within 3 rounds.  What made such a dramatic difference. I wasn't standing square to the runway and none of my maneuvers were centered. Basic and so simple but something I was not aware of. Your dad and his comment kept me in the sport and made me want to return to the Nats again and again. By the way he was judging and many fliers wanted to know what he said to me. I didn't know who he was or the significance or the importance of what he shared till later in the day. 
                          del 
               NSRCA - 473 
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: JonLowe at aol.com 
  To: discussion at nsrca.org 
  Sent: Sunday, February 08, 2004 9:33 AM
  Subject: Re: Sitting in the plane or not ?


  In a message dated 2/7/2004 7:47:56 PM Central Standard Time, xavier.mouraux at sympatico.ca writes:



    If someone could give me a small resume of Don Lowe, I will appreciate.


  I'm probably in a pretty good postion to do this since he is my Dad.  He has been in model airplanes literally his whole life, and RC since the early 1950s.  Some of my earliest memeories where him at a flying field with a ground based transmitter flying rudder only with rubber powered escapements.  He progressed as radio technolgy progressed, up thru reeds, analog and finally digital proportional.  He and another member of our club in Ohio bought one of the first, if not the first, digital proportional systems in our club, an F&M.  That system spent more time back at the factory that in the air as it went thru upgrade after upgrade to eliminate glitching.  Each time it came back it had another little circuit board added into the already huge receiver.

  He was involved in the earliest days of pattern and still has a trophy from winning an Air  Force RC championship in the early 50s (1952?).  In the mid 60s, he started designing the Phoenix series of airplanes, then very radical due to their swept wings.  Starting with the Phoenix 5 in the late 1970s, and progressing thru the Phoenix 10 in the 80s, they were one of the standards, if not THE standard that other pattern airplanes were measured by,  were flown by hundreds of pilots, and various versions were kitted by several companies.  He's got a photo that was recently published in RCM that shows about 20 Phoenix's at a single contest.  He competed all over, won a lot of contests, but unfortunately never made the US team for the World Championships.  He was the team manager a few times in the 80s.  He also competed in the early TOCs and was close friends with Bill Bennett who founded and sponsored the TOCs.  He has since had the Masters at Triple Tree, where the Joe Nall is held, named after him, the Don Lowe Masters.  By the way, the event this year will pay significant money and is invitation only!  He is very active in the organization of the event, and there will be some innovations in how the sequences are structured.

  Dad was also the President of AMA just prior to Dave Brown for several terms.  He is still the head of the AMA Safety Committee.

  He is still very active in RC, and flys everyday the weather is nice, but no longer competes. However, with a little concentrated practice, he could still do very well at contests.  I wish I could fly as well as he does at age 79!  He now flys big birds almost exclusively.  When I was down over Christmas, we flew everyday.  You can expect an article from him soon on the new Hanger 9 Extra 330S  (a VERY nice airplane, BTW).

  Jon Lowe
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