What is the Kansas Flyer?

Once upon a time, many moons ago when I was a carefree student in college (I can't believe it was actually many years ago), a harebrained idea alighted into my small head, which, these many eons later, has resulted in me typing these words.

With the money I made during one of my many summer jobs in college I decided to get into the wallet-robbing hobby of RC aircraft: something I'd been keen to do ever since I was young enough to feel disappointment and yearning fully. I played around with these fragile contraptions for a while, but over time simply making balsa airplanes, chopping my fingers off by fiddling with gas-spewing engines, and crashing my creations all over town, began to be less than fully satisfying - I always felt there should be more gizmos in my model planes, or at least heat-seeking missiles. The missiles I experimented with but to no great success, and so what finally came to me was that I should imbue my own wisdom and intelligence into an airplane, making it into a flying Frankenstein, and send it flying off back to my hometown - presumably to pay a visit to my parents since I never could, having lost my car to unfortunate circumstances brought upon me by the indifferent hand fate some time earlier. Certainly that kind of project would involve a whole host of cool gizmodry!

Well being in college certainly didn't make me rich, or give me much spare time, nor did I really possess the requisite knowledge to even begin such a stunt, so nothing ever came of those mental wanderings of mine. However, the years since have brought me slightly more time, money and know-how, at least enough to where I've begun to engage with this project in earnest; hence this website. The other thing the years have brought is a change in location - I now live in Oregon, and the distance back to 'home' (Wichita, Kansas) has increased to about 2,000 miles (3,200 km). All the same, I know it can be done and I intend to do it, though I don't have nearly the simplistic view of the challenge as I did in college.

The Kansas Flyer? That's the name of the flying robot that will make this trip.