DAVE REMEMBERS getting the perfect spot to watch the Red Devils B R p c
tumble through the sky. He was so close he could see Charlie Hillard, h h h H d
Tom Poberezny, and Gene Soucy’s faces in their cockpits. “I dreamed
of flying aerobatic competitions with a plane that I built and returning
to Oshkosh to fly in the show,” Dave said.
Thirty-five years later, his dream is
becoming reality. In September, Dave, EAA
540157 and IAC 24053, completed the first
flight of a Pitts S-1S that he built and will
compete in this summer. What’s remarkable is that it was all made possible by
making a career out of teaching people
how to fly radio-controlled (RC) models
at the only full-time RC flight school in
the United States.
One summer afternoon while swimming
with friends at the county pool, he heard the
buzzing of RC planes. He called his dad and
asked if he would pick him up at the field
where the models were flying. By the time the
afternoon was over, his dad had ordered a Cox
.049 powered Cessna 210. Little did the nine-year-old boy know, that afternoon would lead
to the foundation of his career, and provide the
path for his dreams to take flight.
LOOKING SKYWARD
Aviation is a Scott family affair. “My father had
it in his blood and started it in me,” Dave said.
Even though he wasn’t a pilot, his dad inherited a love of aviation from Dave’s grandfather,
who was a flight instructor during World War
II and had Stearmans and PT-19s that he flew
from his grass strip in his backyard.
Dave never flew with his grandfather, as he
died when Dave was about five. That’s about
the same time Dave started building cardboard
control-line models, before trying his hand at
the rubber-band powered balsa wood models—the kind with the tissue paper covering
that you can never get to stick quite right.
FROM STUDENT TO TEACHER
“No less than five guys offered to teach me
how to fly [my model],” Dave said. While his
first instructor, Darwin, was teaching Dave,
the other four guys were telling Darwin he
was doing it all wrong. “I crashed,” Dave
said. “They let me do that, claiming it was
my initiation into the theory that crashing is
how you learn.”
Darwin thought the key to flying well
was learning how to recover and employed
the “three-mistakes-high” method of flight
instruction. “In theory, you could make a
mistake, make another mistake trying to
recover, and make even another mistake
