Mr. Bob Sawyer (Location: Texas, USA)

 Tell us about yourself, outside of the hobby e.g. family, childhood, education etc?

Mr. Bob Sawyer: My Name is Bob Sawyer; and I have lived in San Antonio, Texas since the late 80s. I grew up in a family with four home built full scale airplanes and countless control line, free, flight and RC models in Lancaster, California and spent most of my time at Mojave airport or the local flying field. Burt Rutan lived just four houses down the street so I also spent much of my time in his garage.

 What made you come into this hobby?

Mr. Bob Sawyer:  When I was 18, I went to work for Lockheed, Palmdale California where I spent the next four years working on L-1011s. I then made my way into employment at NASA Dryden Flight Research Center located at Edwards AFB California. I started as a flight line mechanic and moved my way up to assistant crew chief on the F-104 Star fighter; I then was promoted to crew chief on my own F-18 Hornet. In the end I worked my may into the Research & Development department as an engineering technician and in charge of all aerospace composites at that facility.

As I stated before, I Moved to Texas in the late 80s, when I did, I opened my own aerospace composite

company called Fiber Art Inc. In 2004 I sold my company of 75+ employees and stayed on as a consultant for the next couple of years. Today I am the Vice President of Jeff Bonner R&D, inc. We develop aerospace components for the military, corporate and commercial markets. For more info, go to www. Jbrnd.com

 What do you enjoy the most in this hobby? 

Mr. Bob Sawyer: What I enjoy most about this hobby is designing and scratch building prototypes, to me, building is the hobby and flying is the sport. The chase of designing and building the lightest airframes on the planet is just what I love because I know that lighter really is better.

  How many aircrafts have you bought/build and which one is your favorite aircraft and why?? 

Mr. Bob Sawyer:  I guess I have built and completed over 100 models and several full scales over the last 45 years; so I really could not say that I have a favorite, I love aviation as a whole. My aspirations from this hobby were met long ago, building model airplanes and self learning aircraft composites, sheet metal, and machine got me through the door at NASA by association with the right crowd of people in this hobby and that set my overall future as to where I am today. I have done several build threads over the years on RCU and Flying Giants in an effort to share construction ideas.