Laird (left), Masura (right) at Bluff Cove circa 1986
	Laird goes "In-Your-Face" with his Aircobra
	Masura tries to hand catch his Tucker F-20
	They had better fans in those days
	Top: Laird's very first ME-109 from the Masura mold Bottom: Laird's pink Tucker F-20
	Masura knocking down cans and pulling a P-51 limbo
	The Slope Scale boys begin to dominate the skies over Bluff Cove and Point Fermin
	News of the Day: two early RC mags feature Slope Scale models (1988)
	Masura's Wall of Shame, kitchen table and legendary ME-109
	Bluff Cove with North Face in the distance
	Point Fermin
	The Fermin launch pad
	Top: Fermin launch pad, park, landing hill Bottom: the view from launch to LZ
	Top: The Bunker - concrete slab in the LZ Bottom: last thing your plane sees if your landing approach goes long
	An early Fermin fleet (circa 1990)
	Fermin plane in classic form
	Johno and Andy

JW: Do you remember how you guys first started flying together? Was it at Bluff or Fermin?

BL: Wow, your asking a lot of us to remember that far back. Most of my brain cells from that time have long ago been killed off.

PM: at that time no one flew fermin... it was just stupid... look down, nothing but cliff, rocks and ocean... only a total fool would fly there. (that came later).

BL: We met at Bluff Cove which was the hot slope spot back in those days. Few people actually flew Fermin back then, most of the hot shots flew at Bluff.

P.M.: Brian and I hooked up because we both liked to fly...we didn't actually meet but just kept showing up at the same place at the same time. The locals liked to smoke dope and then fly... we were "outsiders", we were tolerated but not part of the "group". The other reason we hooked up was we both got off work about the same time (3:00) and we flew nearly every day when the bluff was usually devoid of other flyers. Because we flew during the week we racked up hundreds of hours flying together... you fly with someone that long you get pretty comfortable flying in close proximity, you also learn to "trust" each other... you learn just cuz your flying fast n close, you don't need to be getting all "twitchy" with the stick. you learn pretty fast that two planes traveling in the same direction can "touch" but rarely "crash".

BL: I remember the first time I saw Paul he was flying a House of Balsa Me-109. It was a nice looking scale plane which was why it caught my eye. We started hanging out because we both liked scale stuff and we were about the only two pilots that did not smoke weed. All the hotshot pilots would disappear into the trees to smoke a fatty leaving us two and some of the older guys at the slope. I was flying kit planes back then, made by the local slope god and Paul was making his own from modified power kits. We both started making our own slope planes with the help of Jerry Tucker. Jerry was one of the old guys that knew how to make molds, cut wings and build planes. He taught us the basics of cutting our own cores and making our own molds. From there we went on a plane building frenzy.

PM: I guess when you get down to it, we were forced into learning to build our own planes because we just couldn't afford to keep wrecking planes on a regular basis. a hundred bucks for a kit was a LOT of money back then, I think I only made about $300 a week. once you started building from scratch you could get the cost down to around $30 bucks (plus labor).

JW: Around what year was all this?

BL: I don't recall the exact time frame but this was around 1984~85 I think.

JW: So Jerry Tucker was a big influence on your building careers – isn't he the one with the F-20s? I remember him, one of the first guys I flew formation with at Bluff. Hardly said a word but sure knew what he was doing.

BL: Yea, he taught us the basics of cutting foam, making molds and such. I don't remember what Jerry's first planes were but he was making his own stuff way back then too. He never sold much and he was very picky as to whom he gave a fuse too. I remember I got one of his first F-20s and I painted it pink and swept the wings. He was not amused and I think that was the last fuse he ever gave me.

PM: Since he was a TWA mechanic we tended to listen. He explained how to really balance a plane and more importantly, he demystafied the whole wing core cutting and mold-making process. Kept saying "oh thats easy".. you just do "such n such"... once we had the basic knowledge we were off... and never looked back.

BL: I don't remember who made what first. I know the first plane Paul made was the Me-109 and I did either a Spitfire or an F-15. I honestly don't remember which I did first. The spit flew great the F-15 flew ok but not nearly as good as the other stuff on the slope. Looking back now its easy to see that the big fat low aspect ratio wing had no chance of flying like the smaller WW-II fighters but I was young and dumb.

Our first molds were made using Ultracal, a type of concrete. They were heavy and a real pain in the ass to deal with. We moved on to fiberglass molds much later after we started selling kits on a regular basis. We started making our own because the better fiberglass kits were over $100 at the time. That was a lot of money for a 20 year old making $4 an hour working at a golf course. It was simple economics that drove us to make our own, that and desire to have better planes than those flimsy $110 Advanced Glider Concepts F-16 kits.

Paul's first sctatch built was the Me-109. I was lucky enough to get one of his fuses and made a nice looking plane complete with a home made clear canopy. I actually still have the remains of that plane! This sentimental old fool just can't chuck them nor the remains of my first Spit. (picture attached as proof!) Yes, Paul I still have it!

Once Paul had the Me-109 and I had the Spitfire we flew the wings off those planes. We flew nearly everyday there was wind and that's when we became real slope pilots. We honed our skills flying together for hours every day, every week for several years. We would fly till dark, then head to Paul's apartment and fix our wrecks or build new planes. It was a great time.

JW: Why were the early molds top and bottom rather than side to side? And why did you switch to side to side molds?

BL: The early molds were all top and bottom. I switched to side and side when I started adding fillets and seaming the fuses in the mold. No way to do that stuff with a top and bottom mold.

PM: The first couple of plugs were more or less "box" structures sanded kinda round... they were built up, not solid wood.
Both the 109 and Mustang had "flat" sides (literally) this allowed us to cut the plug in half with a band saw.

JW: So at this point, what kind of wingloadings or all-up-weights were you looking for? What were all the hotshots flying?

BL: Before me and Paul started making kits the hotshots were flying kits by a company called "Advanced Glider Concepts." They had an F-16 kit and later an F-20 kit. The kits were real pieces of work. For $110 you got two light fuse halves that were not even trimmed. You had to trim them and Zap these together using scrap plywood sheeting as tabs to align the fuse halves. The finished planes flew decent enough but they were eggshells and would break with the slightest provocation.

Back in the early days the planes were all light. We had not really made the connection between wing loading and performance. Also Bluff does not generate the power that Fermin does so heavy planes were more of a no-no back then. Most of the glass jets that the guys were flying were in the mid 20 ounce range. I remember I made a DC-10 out of a F-80 fuse that weighed 30 ounces and they heckled me, told me it would never fly but boy were they wrong. That funky DC-10 flew great and would blow away most of the light jets. We kept most of our planes under 40 ounces until the very late 80's when we started flying Fermin. That's when the wing loadings really started to climb into the stratosphere.

PM: couldn't even tell you how to figure out "wing loading", planes didn't get heavy untill "Fermin". At that time the "hot" plane was a local designed kit by advanced glider concepts, he made a F-16 and an F-20 kit. Jerry Tucker made his own F-20 kits, but it had a symetrical wing and didn't have the speed and climb of the others though it was unmatched in aerobatics. I think Jerry didn't care much for the "local hot shots" and I think thats why he helped us so much... kinda like he was grooming us to put the locals in their place... (it didn't take long)  I didn't realize at that time, but the locals were deliberately ramming my planes for fun...their stuff was way stronger than my balsa stuff. it wasn't until I got better at flying that I realized this.

JW: I remember watching a Bluff local do a barrel roll right down onto the tail of a guy's Coyote - blew the Coyote out of the sky but the local just kept going. At first I was just shocked and thought the local had been lucky to survive – then I realized he did it on purpose. Those guys were hooligans!

Did you guys start selling kits right away or did you keep them to yourselves? Did you fly each other's planes back then?

PM: we never really flew each others stuff... no "Glory" in finding out your adversary's plane flies better... to be honest, our flying skills and planes were perfectly matched.. it made it "oh, so fun" !

BL: It was not long after we started making our own planes that guys started asking if they could buy them. We started off selling fuses and cores at the hill shortly thereafter. I think we charged $40 for a fuse and cores. There were no plans to speak of other than a tracing of our tail feathers. We did this for quite a while before we started putting the planes in boxes with labels and instructions. Man it was great to sell a kit at the hill. It gave us cash in pocket that we wasted no time in spending on dinner and drink!

PM: the big breakthrough in design was when we went to a semi-symetrical airfoil (EP-374) thinned a bit... this thing KICKED ASS !... with this wing, on the planform we were using,  DOMINATED everything out there... it could out climb, out dive, and carry more weight than anything then available... it was SWEET REVENGE to fly the locals, each, one by one, into the ground... the new design was better than anything you could buy and it was CLEARLY the future in slope design...excellent lift, low drag, high climb rate !

JW: Were all the early designs molded, or did you still build any of them up from balsa/ply?

PM: at that time I was flying House of Balsa 1/2 a power plane kits as gliders, they looked cool and they were cheap, you could get them on sale for $20 bucks. can't say they flew all that well as gliders but they definitely were more scale looking than anything out there. then one day they stopped making them and I was SOL.... no more cheap kits... at this point it was quit the hobby or learn to build from scratch.

BL: I pretty much flew glass fuses/foam core from even before I met Paul. I was flying the AGC F-16 when we met. Once we started making our own stuff it was all glass fuse, foam wing. The builds were very similar to the stuff today except that they were lighter.

JW: Seems like you were both into PSS-style planes from way back. Did you fly anything else before? Any Ridge Runts in your past?

PM: Oly 650, Katie 2, HOB 109.... last kits I ever paid for.

BL: I started out with a Wanderer and then moved on to a Ridge Rat and then to the glass PSS stuff. I had one or two other floater type planes along the way too but once I discovered PSS planes I was hooked.

JW: I'm always interested in how people got started flying RC, especially slope. Did you see someone out there flying and decide to give it a try? Did you like flying things when you were a kid?

BL: When I was about 15 I was riding my bike up in PV one afternoon and I saw guys flying at the old Nike Missile Base (now Del Cerro Park). I already had a RC power plane that I had creamed on my first flight. I thought that sloping looked a helluva lot easier and I knew I could buy a glider kit for $12.99 which was right in my price range.

PM: I first got interested when I was riding in a car on the coast (I was like 15 ) I saw this "glint" of silver on the coastal ridge and it was a silver glider ripping up the coast, it was going faster than we were in the car ! I thought that must be so cool to do. later, I hiked from Torrance (on foot) up to Bluff where I knew they flew gliders... it looked like great fun... I asked a pilot if I could pick up and look at his plane and when I did I couldn't believe how HEAVY it was !!!... but I was kid n didn't have any money so I started buying RC magazines and "dreaming" about one day getting a plane of my own... besides that, you must have to be an electrical engineer to make all those electronics work...

My very first plane I built was the Olympic 650... pretty much same thing as a Wanderer. I had never built a real "flying" plane before but the guy at the shop said this was the first step. I followed the instructions to the letter. The instructions even had full size plans and everything. I really didn't understand the written instructions all that well but the drawings on the plans made everything seemingly clear – problem was the plans only showed one side view of the fuse... I made two, identical... LEFT SIDE fuses. This was before "zap" and after soaking the fuse in the tub and separating the parts I made good my mistake.

I built the plane straight and true and was really quite proud of it... I was sure that it would last me a long time because I promised myself I would be extra careful with it when I flew... problem was, I didn't know HOW to fly it... but the guy at the shop said it was a "beginners" plane so surely it must be easy...

So one day I muster the courage to attempt to "fly" my beautiful creation and I go down to the beach where I had seen people fly before and I stand and watch.... trying to build up the courage to "launch" but couldn't.... then a local guy seeing my plight asks if I would like some help. I eagerly say "yes" and he begins to check out my plane... he tells me the "C.G." is "off" and I ask.... "whats a C.G.?" He fiddles with my plane and checks all kinds of stuff....I'm eager with anticipation. I really just wan't to see if it will even fly... he picks up my plane, stands up on the sea wall facing the wind, and launches it straight and true!....

Plane goes straight down into the jagged rocks and breaks into pieces...

Seems the elevator servo was reversed.

Welcome to the "slope world" Paul.... thank you, may I have another.

JW: Yep, that sounds familiar. Oh, the pain of those balsa wings on contact with rocks.

PM: In the beginning, your the "new guy" on the slope, the knucklead with the "wanderer" ... you don't get to stand at the "point" where the "locals" fly... you're off to the side (way off), you fly on the edges...in the "dirty" air... you don't wan't anyone getting mad at you cuz you got in their way... "stall turns" are the game the locals play, better stay out of the way or things could get ugly... your "floater" drifts into the "killing zone" and you get "accidentaly" mid aired... all the locals laugh as you look for the pieces.

JW: Well now we're up to the point that you've started building your first kits and the two of you are flying PSS almost every day at Bluff Cove. How did things progress from there? Your skills are improving, the planes are getting faster - what was the next breakthrough?

PM: it was never a "breakthrough"... it was more like constant refineing and improvement: plywood wing skins, hardwood leading edges, solartex wing hinges, reinforced fiberglass fuses, standard (big n strong) servos... all this gradually brought the weight (and strength) up to the point where you could literally DRIVE your plane into the ground on landing and as long as you hit "relatively" flat you could pretty much count on little if any damage.

BL: Yea, I don't recall any breakthru's it was more of an evolution. The glass stuff improved on the previous balsa stuff but after the small glass PSS style planes hit the scene they just progressed. Now after 20 years and a few hundred planes we've got them pretty well dialed in.

PM: up until that time, common belief was, make it as lite and streamlined as possible... save weight at all costs (including strength)... every plane I saw had a repaired break rite in front of the tail ! we started makeing planes that didn't have a "weak spot"... the whole plane was more designed to absorb the shock of landing (and midair).... time n time again we would have mid-airs, tumble to the ground, and with a crowd of spectators looking on just pick up our planes and launch them again... (unheard of at that time).

JW: Do you remember your first attempts to fly Fermin?

PM: I remember a bunch of us going to Fermin after a day at Bluff because it was on the way home... we lost 4 or 5 planes in about 15 minutes... (welcome to Fermin).

BL: I don't remember my first experience at Fermin...... I remember my first flight at Bluff, it was more traumatic as I had never flown anything that steep and gnarly looking. By the time I started flying at Fermin I had already chucked planes off several unrecoverable slopes so I guess that's why I can't remember the first time I flew there.

JW: This is where it all started to get crazy, right? Who else was flying heavies and how heavy were they?

BL: We started flying Fermin regular around 1989 or 90 and flew there regular until Paul moved up North. At first the planes were not that much heavier than the Bluff stuff. Well at first they WERE the Bluff stuff. But since we flew pumps and not much else it became a game of who can go higher. It did not take much time for us to realize that the heavier plane usually went the highest. So the planes progressively got heavier. They went from 40 ounces to 70+ in about a year. Then we started making ships that were topping 100oz dry and if it was blowing we would start strapping lead anywhere we could. I had a B-17 at 135oz one day. I calc'd the wing loading at 53.3oz/sqft which is still my personal best as far as loading goes.

JW: Wow, 53oz wingloading! So were all these planes about 48" wingspan?

BL: Yea they were mostly all between 45" and 55" spans.

JW: Monsters!

PM: one thing you have to keep in mind, during this whole evolution, not only were the planes gaining higher and higher performance, they were also looking more "scale"... unheard of at the time... a semi scale plane with not only high performance... but cutting edge performance...

JW: Must have been some madmen willing to throw these monsters off at the most unrecoverable slope on the coast!

BL: Our "crew" was Paul, Marco, John, Andy and me. There were a few other guys flying Fermin but back then Fermin was known more as a spot where the crazies flew. It was the same way on those boomin North Face days. Back then there were only a few guys that would have the ballz to throw off a plane in a 40 mph wind at Northface or Buff.

PM: Marco... is a character, he was the first one to "copy" a fuse mold... not so he could sell one but rather, they were near impossible to get so he bought one and pulled his own mold... Marco had one HUGE advantage at that time, he worked in a "boat yard"... had access to resin, fiberglass, bondo and a shop where a mess was not a concern... Marco introduced us to "bondo" wing fillets and 10 oz. fiberglass "boat cloth"... what Marco lacked in "polish"... he more than made up for in shear "brute strength" in his builds... his planes were the first "heavies" of their day.

Johno was a refugee from Vietnam... we used to call him Tijuana Taxi John because he drove, I think, an old Datsun sedan with colorfull hand painted decorations on it !... probably would have fit rite in, in Tijuana...

BL: Tijuana Taxi John's car, yea that was a beauty. And if I remember right didn't he paint one of his planes with Michelle's nail polish!

PM: Johno just loved flying... (anything) gliders, power, choppers... it gave him a very multi dimensional way of flying... he can do stuff with a glider I won't even attempt. there are Very Few people I will allow to fly my planes. Johno is the one I will "ask" to land my stuff at Fermin.

Andyman was a guy from Pacific Palasides who had somehow heard of myself and Brian and our antics at Bluff... first time I saw him at Bluff he had a very cool looking "Shogun"... pretty well built and painted for the day. I think Andyman was used to being the "best" at everything he did but was just astounded at how much faster and closer to the cliff edge we could fly than him... he went directly to "Chucks hobbies" and bought one of the first "kits" then available. Eventually, he became one of the very best pilots, especially at Fermin... he used to always 'push the envelope"... when others were doing "beach runs" at Fermin, Andy was doing "wave rides" where he would dive his plane over the water and attempt to put his plane in front of a CRESTING WAVE using his planes shadow as an altimeter !!! all Great fun but he tended to lose planes doing stuff like that...

Brian and I were two knucklhead kids who absolutely loved the thrill of flying gliders but just couldn't afford to keep buying yet "another" $100 dollar kit every time we "pounded in" because we were both always trying to "out do" each other...we tended to collide a lot. We both didn't make squat for money at that time.

Brian is much more of a "do'er" than me... I tend to look at stuff when I build and take my time... I try and figure every step out before I start anything... Brian starts multiple steps at once and doesn't let "details" slow him down. We're very different in that respect.

Where we are similar is in our competitive nature, our first goal at Bluff was just to be able to get into a proverbial "stall turn" with the local hotshots who up until then had a field day with us... that was shortlived once we developed our first really good designs. up until then the "hot" planes were AGC F-16, SR-7, Son of Savage, Penetrator... with our new design and hours and hours of practising against each other we began to outstrip all the competition in the "stall turn" venue... to the point where it was so obvious that we were "punching out" so much higher than everyone else at that time that people started asking if they could "buy" one... and THAT was the birth of "Slope Scale Gliders"....

JW: Were you guys learning cleaner builds at this point?

BL: Cleaner builds? I don't think this had much to do with it. By the time we were flying Fermin our stuff was all pretty clean. We did learn early on that building them right was the key to having them fly right. We may not have picked up all the aeronautic mumbo jumbo but we certainly knew how to build and set up a clean ship.

JW: And why more scale - were you guys doing more research?

BL: Research....more like dumb luck. Someone would make a plane more scale and we would simply notice that they still flew fine. With some of the much bigger planes there was a noticeable difference in speed but it was surprising to us that they still flew really well. Yes, the extra weight certainly made a difference in making the fat planes fly better. I'm not sure they would have worked if they did not have the mass to overcome the added drag but back then I doubt we made the connection between weight and drag. Now, the fat stuff was not quite as fast as the sleek skinny planes but early on we had been led to believe that everything had to be skinny and glider-like. By building more scale stuff and flying it we did discover that you could make stuff more scale and still have it fly reasonable well. Eventually there were big fat Bearcats, Fw-190s, Hellcats and bunch of other rather portly designs being flown.

JW: It's amazing that the fat-ass spinner on the front of a Hellcat doesn't slow it to a crawl – or at least cause it to waggle all over the place.

BL: Funny thing is that the Hellcat is actually one of the best fliers. In fact nearly all of the short fat planes flew great. The Zero is also one of the best flying ships we ever made. I think it's my second favorite behind the Aircobra.

JW: The Hellcat is on my list - I'll have to talk you out of a fuse one of these days. Love the look of that thing. So, among all those now famous slopers (BD-5, Aircobra, B-17, etc.), who made what fuse?

BL: We've had so many fuses and variations of fuses that it's hard to remember who made what. Paul did the Me-109s (there were 4 of them from tiny to big), Paul did the P-51s (B and D) and the BD-5, I did the P-39, P-40, F-20 the B-17, F-80, I did the first Spit plug and Paul did the second, Gary Kawamura did the Zero and the Hellcat. Andy did the Fw-190. Gary Kawamura made the sweetest plugs of any of us in the early days. He was an artist and really made some nice stuff. Andy was another artist that could really carve a nice plug. His Fw-190 was very scale.

There were also quite a few we made that were never kitted. Paul made a nice little Ki-61 plug and a smaller skinny P-51D. We built a few of those small P-51s but never kitted any. I did a couple of F-15s early on as well as the first spitfire. There was a P-38 that Gary did that was never kitted. Not because it did not fly, it was because it had parts and was a real pain in the ass to lay-up and seam.

Much later when CSD started making the fuses most of them were completely reworked by me and Carl Maas. Some of the reworks were extensive, in fact all of them were. We made the fuses more scale, straighter and added scale details like the canopy frames, exhaust stacks, scoops and fillets.

JW: I remember seeing Slope Scale planes in the old Northeast Sailplanes catalog along with his description of these planes being able to "land downwind onto rocks."

BL: Yea, NSP actually sold quite a few kits back in the early 90s.

JW: So do you have any particular great memories of your days flying at Fermin?

BL: Most of the flying from back then is a big blur but there are a few memorable days I remember. I remember the day we were doing beach runs and blowing up plane after plane trying to knock a can off a stick. Dutchy had gone down to the beach to retrieve his crashed plane and while down there he put a yellow penzoil can on a stick. Of course it did not take long for us to start trying to knock the can off the sick. Well we destroyed quite a few planes in that endevour. When I got down to the beach I realized why it was so hard to hit the can. We were thinking Paul had put the can on a 6' high stick.....NOPE the stick was about 18" high. There were a few other memorable days like when I got my Me-109 stuck in a Palm tree or the time Andy tried to fly under the jungle jim. I remember most of my really bad crashes like the one where Paul was flying my old B-17 and I was flying my new B-17. A recipe for disaster and it did not take long to materialize. After about 5 minutes we midaired destroying both my B-17s.

Other highlights include me drilling a Pelican, hitting the bunker in the landing field at Mach-3, and too many more to list here.

JW: Who got the whole "stall turn/formation" flying started? Care to describe what it's all about?

PM: I don't know who invented "stall turns" but I do know that it became very popular at Bluff and later at Fermin... it was the game the "big boys" played... it separated the normal (casual) pilots from the ones who wanted to show they could build better ships than anyone else, fly them faster and higher and in the end prove, without a doubt, who the "Top Dawg" was....

A "stall turn" is nothing more than a repetitive series of vertical U turns at the point of the slope where the greatest lift is generated. with each dive and climb out the plane generates more n more energy, the higher the climb, the longer the dive, longer dive = more speed... more speed = more G-force on the pull up. if you time your pull up at the point of the cliff where the most lift is generated (the "juice" point") you get the most lift which launches you "ballistic" back up into the sky. the winner is the one who consistently out climbs everyone else. there is no doubt about who the winner is because everyone can see who's on the top of each stall. and everyone knows who the top dawg is...

	Masura with his freshly modified Shark, award-winning ME-109, and indescribable mess

The stall turns are a real crowd pleaser, not only for their "aerial ballet," but for the not uncommon collisions and catostrophic crashes. it's kinda like NASCAR... it's not so much the race as it is the crashes ! Stall turns have inherent "risk factors". the first is the fact that the "juice point" typically is REALLY CLOSE to the ground... how low are you willing to you go to "dig" out the most lift ? the lower you dare, the more the reward... go TOO low... and it's "game over" (spectators love "game over").

The other risk factor is the other pilots... take two pilots with similar planes and equal ability and you are likely to see lots of "contact".... no collisions mind you but kinda like how NASCARS bump n rub... the reason is simple, there are "lanes" in the sky, specific routes that offer the best lift and least drag... part of the "game" is picking the best lane.. really good pilots typically pick the same lane because it is the most efficent path and so contact is not uncommon.
the fun (editor's note: fun?) starts when you mix good pilots with not so good pilots and then you mix n match different types of planes with different speed ranges... there's no shortage of "wannabee" pilots who think they can jump into a stall and mix it up with veterans. thats when the carnage starts, you went from an oval track with experienced pilots to a figure 8 track and "demo derby"... it's fun to watch

JW: And even more fun to do! One of the reasons I come down to the PSS Festival every year is for the chance to fly stall turns with guys who know what they're doing. I'm sure you've heard other pilots say it's boring to just go up and then down (which it is when you're all by yourself), but there's nothing like flying tight formation with fast planes being driven by top pilots. Dang, I've got goose bumps just thinking about it! Let's fly!

BL: Stall turns are boring as hell to watch on video but flying them is far from it. The pucker factor when you get in with a few guys that actually know how to fly is great. Of course on the flip side flying stalls with a bunch of bozos that can't fly is like driving the wrong way on the freeway. It's a great feeling to be able to tuck in under a guy a foot away from his plane diving out of a pump and know he's not gonna do anything stupid. Indeed, let's fly!

JW: Paul, when did you move away from Southern California? Did you stay connected to flying at that point?

PM: I moved up to Nor. Cal. in 1991 for a better job opportunity. first thing I did was head out to the coast to look for good flying spots... Coyote hills, Pacifica, Fort Funston... I learned real fast about Nor Cal."micro climates"... just because it's a hundred degrees inland (Livermore) don't mean squat at the coast where it could be in the fifty degree range and usually foggy too. I would drive over an hour to the coast only to stand in the cold windy fog and see clear blue skies about 50 yards out... Toto, we ain't in So. Cal. any more... so I tried my hand at the local inland spot, I remember standing up there with one of my 50 oz. fermin planes and thinking who am I fooling, this thing aint never gonna fly here. so I built some liter stuff and tried it a few times but I never cared much for "inland" flying... they used terms like "cycles" and "sink"... what the hell was "sink" ??? these were terms I knew nothing of... I'd catch an occasional "thermal" and fly in circles slowly climbing... bakeing in the hot sun... trying to avoid the rattle snakes and ticks in the LZ... I pretty much lost interest after that . no more cool breeze in your face ...no more ballistic stall turns... no more beach runs...no more sunsets over the Pacific Ocean... no more hot chicks in roller blades... and even sadder than that... no more ice cream man (Fermin has a regular one). some times I miss So. Cal.

JW: Do you have any video from those early days at Bluff and Fermin?

BL: We used to have loads of great video but we let a guy borrow some tapes and he vanished with them. He had our best stuff from Fermin – guys blowing planes up on beach runs and stuff. I still have a few good tapes of the early Bluff cove days and a little Fermin stuff from way back. There are a couple on Youtube that I posted and if I ever get some time I will make a few more.......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kII_6BkGsY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNvjGuwX3YY&mode=related&search=

JW: So, what was it like starting Slope Scale? Talk a little about the experience of building kits.

BL: Slope Scale was started by both me and Paul. Initially we just sold kits to the locals and from a couple of local hobby shops (Like Chuck's Model Shop). We did that for a few years until Paul's life/wife got a little too complicated. Then I started doing it on my own. I never sold all that many planes, the best year I probably sold about 100 or so. There was never much market for these glass PSS ships.

Building kits is definitely an experience (both good and

	Laird in various poses

bad). I enjoy seeing one of our kits when it's built well (and flown well). On the flip side it's like a kick in the ribs when someone just butchers a build. You never like to see your stuff built into a steaming pile. The most interesting part of the kit biz is dealing with all the nutjobs out there. The guys that want to know if you can highstart them and thermal with them. You tell them no and then they tell you that they think they can. Six months later they are yelling at you because they can't launch them on a histart...DUH! Or the guys that ignore the instructions, build everything wrong and then have the ballz to tell you your design is no good. In 20+ years I've seen and heard it all!

I've made a lot of great friends through the kits and the flying and that's probably the most rewarding thing that was a result of the kit making. I doubt I would have gotten involved in shows and traveling to all these events if I was just flying planes and not making them. I think the events that I attend are the best part of the hobby. I dunno if it's the flying or that fact that I get to hang out with all my flying buddies. Either way slope events are a great way to get away from the grind.

Making the Slope Scale kits was fun for a while, later it just became an irritation. Having to make a plane for someone when you'd rather be flying or golfing or whatever is a drag. That's what eventually happened and that's why I let CSD (Robert Cavazos) take over the kit line. Unfortunately he also found this to be the case and got tired of working for .65c an hour. So I took all the stuff back and once again I'm offering the kits. As long as I can get the fuses made for me and the quality of the parts are good I will keep selling them. I would never do it if I had to make the fuses myself. So let's all pray that Dan does not develop an epoxy allergy!

JW: There you have a good argument for there never being JART kits! I have too much other stuff going on to go through all that – and I like the idea that people who fly hi-performance slopers might also discover how simple these planes are to build!

Beyond Slope Scale, you're also a founding member of the Inland Slope Rebels and are instrumental in creating the ISR PSS Festival in Southern California every year. What has that experience been like?

BL: I was one of the original ISR founding members. There were about 8 of us that broke away from the La Sierra Slope Soaring club. The club was a little "old" for our tastes and we decided to start a club for the guys that were more into the cutting edge stuff. We started the PSS Festival when the Los Banos scale meet restricted their event to scale sailplanes. We enjoyed that meet when PSS and scale was flown and so we decided to run a PSS event of our own. The first one was a real learning experience for us and from there it just grew and grew. We've worked hard trying to make the contest something special. It's a lot of work and I know most of the guys that attend really appreciate the work that we put in. I think the one thing that is holding us back is the lack of a good place to land the planes. We are working hard trying to get the forest service to approve a landing area and we are making progress. I think once that happens you will see Cajon become a world class slope that attracts a multitude of pilots.

JW: Ok, since we're doing this for the JARTWORLD folks, I should ask what you think of the whole JART thing?

BL: I dunno what to think. It's one of those unexplainable phenomenons. I think it's cool that it actually inspired a few guys to go out and build their own. I think we should be asking you that question though!