This is my personal R/C airplane website. Most topics are about F3A models since that is my main interest. My name is Jon Gunnar Wold and I live in Moss, south of Oslo with my wife and two daughters. I am a member of Vingtor R/C club which is based in Oslo but our field is located at Kroer near Kråkstad, about 40 minutes from my house.
I started flying very early. My father flew control line and F1B Wakefield gliders so I had access to expert help and glue whenever I needed it. Unfortunately he did not fly R/C so we lost a few planes at first but after getting into gliders with two friends of mine we got the hang of R/C flying. Gliders really are a perfect way to get started. Next I had some mentoring from a former Norwegian F3A champion who taught me basic aerobatics on an EZ Decathlon. After that I flew sporadically, using up lots of F3A models and not really progressing much for about a decade (!). Things took off when I met an F3A flier at a local club who convinced me to try my hand at competition flying. He told me that I’d stop crashing if I started practicing schedules. And he was right, I have not lost a plane to pilot error since. He also had a nice comparison regarding the cost of F3A models: playing Golf or riding a Motorcycle is 10 times the price, and nobody ever reacts to the price of either despite the fact that those hobbies have zero useful value, just like modelling. It’s about not thinking of our planes as toys, they are sporting equipment.
In my professional life I work as a design and usability consultant. I used to be the head of design at FINN.no, Norways largest classified site but now I enjoy working for Steria, helping clients build useful and effective web solutions through carefully planned design processes. I have also written a Norwegian book about usability testing that will be published in the spring of 2011.
When I’m not in the basement building stuff, I like to relax and read something. I read of lot of novels as well as military non-fiction and biographies. I also subscribe to a ton of model airplane magazines, mostly German as they are the best. Other interests that usually don’t make the top of my list of priorities /(because F3A is always #1… ) include cars and motorsports, skiing and just being outdoors. Being outdoors flying is the greatest combo ever.
You’ll find me at Linkedin, Twitter, and many other places on the web.
This website has been live for many years, it started as Aerowold in 2005, changed to Blogspot in 2006 and now it rests here on my own domain, Aerowold.com.