Mr. Aamer Waheed

Someone said if you mount an engine and radio on a donkey's head and handover the transmitter to Mr. Aamer Waheed ... the donkey will be torque rolling in no time! I have seen radio control flying turning into ballad dance sequence that is a treat to watch and learn.  I need not to say more about Aamer Waheed's flying skills, he is a true champion and has proved it again and again.

 Tell us about yourself in general (outside of the hobby e.g. family, childhood, education, profession etc.).

Aamer W.: An architect by profession,

I run a firm by the name of Construct® along with two partners. We do civil constructions and commercial interiors. Graduated from NCA in 1994. As for the family, I am happily married and have two sons. My better half, unlike the mythical typical aeromodelling wife, is very supportive of my involvement with the hobby – I suspect most are, they just claim otherwise. My parents have been very supportive all along, especially during the formative years because they saw how constructive this was – couldn’t ask for more.

 What made you come into this hobby and when did you start?

Aamer W.: I was always fascinated with flight – flew all sorts of catapult planes, ornithopters, kites and the likes well in to my teens – my favourite racquet sport is badminton. I started out with model planes when I was around five years old, taking after some of my older cousins. Rubber powered skeeters, Guillows models and our local brand of Scalex and such followed. Had a few control line models by the time I got into my teens and then graduated to Radio Controlled flying when I got into college.

 What do you enjoy the most in this hobby? Is it designing, building or flying?

Aamer W.: When I started out in RC in the early 90s, scratch building was the way to go, so I built a few models by enlarging plans from magazines. I still have the first plane I ever built which was a ‘stand way off scale’ model of the Eurofighter. It was a hot looking delta – the canards were just for effect and I didn’t know how to fly yet. So, I built a powered glider to begin with and then a low winger and then progressed on to some pattern ships.

Once I got the hang of things, I began designing my own machines but usually did not have the time to build them. I did some design work for Aerotech, which was a setup run by a couple of fellow modelers based here in Lahore targeting the export market. We did some interesting planes like a Christen Husky for a trainer, a composite P-51 Mustang (which just blew everyone away at an airshow that it was sent to), a sport plane we called the Christen Canary - the concept behind this was ‘ what if the Christen Eagle biplane was a monoplane’ – flew rather well. My most recent design venture was to modify a CAP 232 to be a little more user friendly so I made some changes like stretching the fuselage so that it wasn’t so short coupled and lowering the horizontal stab position without spoiling the looks so it wouldn’t pitch so much to the belly in knife edge, etc and gave the design to someone to build. He took his fine time (they all do) but what a sense of achievement once it flew.

As of last month though, I feel that there is no need to design and build anymore due to the quality of ARF planes available, if you are into aerobatic machines. My latest bird is a 121” wingspan 37.5% YAK 54 from Pilot-RC and it is everything that I would ever want to design and the build quality is way better than anything I have seen before. Obviously, there is some building and rigging up involved which is enough to give you your building fix. So, here on in, I would like to be able to spend more time flying and putting together a routine to music (finally) which is something I have been toying with for sometime but have not been able to do because I wasn’t totally happy with the equipment I was flying, in order to graduate to that level.