Tagging along with his model aircraft-making brother, Danny Brown 11, was still figuring out how to keep a Denny Dart II plane in flight longer.

 “I don’t think I wound it enough,” he said.

 After twisting the rubber band, which powered the craft, Danny learned he needed to wind it another 50 times.

 “A really good flight would be like one minute,” instructor Bill Kuhl said.

 Kuhl and fellow aeromodel enthusiast Richard Bain helped Danny and other children fly model planes last Saturday inside Gostomski Fieldhouse at Saint Mary’s University.  The two also showed the youngsters how to make the rubber-band-propelled lightweight planes, through a class at Rock Solid Youth Center .

 The middle-age men choose to spend their free time with the kids out of a desire to pass on their love of flight, and interest in physical science.

 Now that he’s tried it, Mark Brown, 13, said, he plans to try his hand again at making planes.

 “(Bill) made it really simple for us,” he said.

 By assembling the kits himself, Kuhl said it only cost about $1 for each plane’s materials – thin balsa wood for the frame, tissue paper and a propeller.

 “The lighter you get, the longer it flies,” he said.

 Teaching children like Danny isn’t new for Kuhl, who has shown Cub Scouts and more than 100 students in Cochrane-Fountain City science classes how to make model planes.

 Students learn about the principles of motion, he said, which is important because one must understand aerodynamics in order to adjust components for optimum performance.

 “(I’m) fascinated to just watch anything fly,” Kuhl said.

 Through aeromodeling, Kuhl said, students could gain an interest in engineering or maybe enter the airline industry someday.

 “That’s what my hope is,” he said. An information technology coordinator for the city of Winona , Kuhl, 47, picked up the pastime when he was about 10.

 “At that time, more kids were doing that sort of thing,” he said.

 Bain, a Winona National Bank portfolio manager, discovered modeling at age 12; he said it was especially popular with his father’s generation, when flight was coming of age.

 “In the ‘30’s, it was really big,” he said.

 While plane-making’s popularity has waned among youth who are more likely to spend their free time playing a video game today, Bain thinks the craft still holds valuable lessons.

 By making planes, children learn delayed gratification and how to solve problems and work with their hands, he said.

 In the process, he hopes they aim even higher than the sky their planes are flying in.

 “We used to dream about flying to the moon, and we did,” Bain said. “I think dreams should stay alive in American youth today.”