D7 Pilot of the Month, Jim Oddino

I always loved to watch airplanes fly.  My dad would take me to the local airport on Sundays just to watch them take off and land.  When I realized years later that I could not only watch them, I could control them, it was like a dream come true.

Bill Salkowski and Jim Oddino with Californian at the 1971 Nats

I flew my first RC plane in Mishawaka, Indiana in 1955.  I built models as a kid and after getting married I went to the local hobby shop to buy some balsa to build a hand launch glider and spotted this electronic stuff in the counter.  The owner told me where they flew RC.  I went out the next day and watched and was hooked.  In those days, we built our own radios with some help from kits.  My first receiver had a single vacuum tube and a relay that weighed more than our present multichannel receivers.  Control was rudder only with a single momentary push button switch at the end of a cable that plugged into a transmitter that sat on the ground with a nine and a half foot vertical antenna.  It was powered by my 1951 Mercury 6-volt car battery so I couldn't get too far from my car.  You young folks don't know how good you have it.  Around 1959, I helped a guy build a Galloping Ghost pulsed rudder system, and after flying it, knew proportional control was the only way to go.  I built a system with multiple audio sub-carriers but never flew it.  I had gone to the DC/RC symposium in 1960 and seen the Space Control proportional system and bought one of them after moving to California in 1961.  It had many problems until I built a transistorized transmitter with more power and I started my competition flying soon after. 

I flew Bonner, Kraft, EK, and Proline RC systems until Bill Salkowski and I started S&O RC Products in 1970.  You can read about that if you look us up on the RC Hall of Fame web site.

At the 2014 Miramar contest

I had my best contest success in the 1970s, getting into the finals most of the time at the Nats and won the District 7 championships in 1979 and 1980.  I flew at the first few TOC's in the 70s but didn't threaten Hanno Prettner.  I can probably fly better now but many others have far surpassed the flying of those early days.  I like to point out to Chip, that I was older then, than he is now.

I believe it was 1974 when I started an RC column named RC Spectrum in RC Modeler magazine.  It was a lot of work but I enjoyed communicating with folks all over the world.  I dropped out of modeling in 1981, including the magazine column, the S&O business and building and flying.  The Pattern Animals, a bunch of Southern Cal guys talked me into going to the Nats in 1984, and I think that was my last one.  At some point in the 80s I started another RCM column called Airplane Stuff that I continued until the demise of RCM.  That let me delve into all aspects of RC, not just the electronics and I really enjoyed that.

I continued to fly in local contests until 2001.  I went through all the early YS four stroke engines and then the OS 1.40 two strokes with pipes.  I then spent a few years flying IMAC type gas powered models but nothing over a 100cc engine.  I figured out quickly that you really needed a 40% model to compete, so I decided to go back to Pattern.  I bought a Webra 145 powered plane from Tony Frackowiak and hated that glow engine so much after flying the consistent gas engines that I sold it after very few flights.  In the mean time, Tony had let me fly his electric powered Partner, and I was hooked all over again. 

Second place in FAI Silver at 2014 Miramar contest

I love fooling with the latest technology as long as it makes me fly better.  Currently I fly a Jeti DS-16 radio with integrated telemetering and a Contra Drive propeller system.  No more guessing when to change the glow plug, where to set the idle, where to set the mixture, and most of all, no bending over to start the engine.

I believe RC modeling has been a great benefit to my education and therefore to my success at my day job which was engineering guided missiles.  One needs an obsession to drive you to learn all you can, and I must confess I have been obsessed with RC modeling.