From Gliders in Trees to UAVs

摘要

I recently had an experience that took me on a nostalgic ride back to my childhood. Many of you can probably relate to this story. Remember when you got your very first Balsa wood glider? You had to carefully put the wings into the slots cut into the fuselage. You immediately ran outside, threw it into the air and watched it promptly fly onto the roof or into a tree where you couldn't retrieve it. What a waste of a hard-earned 10 cents. (I'm dating myself.) Then you graduated to the high horsepower rubber band model with the wire landing gear and the plastic tundra tires, and it promptly ended up in the same place as the previous model. Then, about BB gun age, you had lofty dreams of flying that all powerful .049 gas powered beast that you controlled by hand with a couple of strings, if you were lucky enough to get it started and even luckier not to chop your fingers off while fine-tuning the engine into a deafening scream. You ran to the flying handle, tightened the strings, and around and around you went until you puked or crashed it and spent the next 30 minutes picking up rubber bands and plastic pieces of your supposedly unbreakable plane.