Pilot of the Month: Lynn Burks, Diamond Bar, CA

Hello fellow Pattern Pilots: My name is Lynn Burks and I was asked to write a little about myself and my interest in Pattern.

It all started about the age of five, when my mother’s boyfriend took me for a ride in a yellow Piper Cub, then I got out of the airplane and I still remember the plane with my mother in it doing rolls over the green trees. That day really set the seed for the love of airplanes.

Over the next few years, I flew U-control and then my grandmother bought me an Aero-7 RC kit for Christmas, and that was my start in RC flying, as it was in those days with single channel (MinX) equipment. I attempted to fly several airplanes in this mode, but they all seemed to crash, whether it was me or the planes, your guess is as good as mine!

Then came the big move from Southern California to Kansas and then to Western Oklahoma working in the oil fields. At that time, I was sending money to Joe and Betty Streams hobby shop to buy new radio equipment to start flying RC again, but I found out about the small airport in town (Fairview Oklahoma) where I could take flying lessons. I started that and later received my Private flying license after I moved to Tulsa Oklahoma, while attending Spartan Aviation A/P School. From there, I moved to Houston Texas, obtained my CFI-A, and taught primary students for private pilot license which was a lot of fun.

Yet another big move back to Southern California in 1971. At this point, I started building RC airplanes again and went through the normal planes, Ugly Sticks and Khaos; my first pattern airplane was an Atlas by Wolfgang Matt. I built several of his designs and was flying in Sportsman and doing pretty good. Next I built a few of Hanno Prettner’s designs and did well with those.

Along with owning a Hobby shop and then getting married and raising a family, RC took a back seat for a while. In the meantime, I built a Burt Rutan design (full size) airplane, called the Long Ez with two friends and flew that for years. I returned to Pattern in the early 1990’s.

Now that I am retired from the Elevator trade as an Elevator Tech for 35 plus years, I have a lot of time to practice. I really enjoy flying with my buddies, Bill Sheets, Steve Kaneshiro, and Jarvis Johnson. We help each other as much as we can but we could always use other inputs.

My goal at this point is to become competitive with the time I have for practice, and I hope it will make a difference in my flying while enjoying every minute of it. At this point, I am in Masters class at which I was forced to fly in the mid 1990’s, but this is good because again I enjoy it and would not have it any other way.