FREE FLIGHT OLD-TIMERS
Dave Thornburg is a great designer and flier of R/C sailplanes who also loves free flight, and who also writes like I want to be able to do when I grow up. In a paragraph or two he can center a thought with the same ease and grace he centers a thermal. In the December 1980 Model Builder magazine he wrote:
"As modelers, R/C or otherwise, we all pursue an impossible dream: the next model (or flight, or contest) will be the perfect one. It's a dream that, if we're lucky, always recedes in front of us, staying just out of reach. Like a mirage on the desert. Or our neighbor's wife. It's the dream that carries us through all those long, lonely, spine-warping hours at the building board, while the rest of the family is improving their minds with Charlie's Angels or The Dating Game. It's a dream we pursue in spite of criticism and condescension, through thick and thin. But only free fliers pursue it through dry corn stalks, through knee-deep mud."
If you have not read his Do You Speak Model Airplane? or Old Buzzard's Soaring Book you have missed a lot of reading pleasure and interesting information. Pony X Press, 5 Monticello Drive, Albuquerque, NM 87123. Each book is $20, postage paid.
One of the things you can learn about in Do You Speak Model Airplane? is the history of the Jimmie Allen models. One of the things I could add to his paragraph about free fliers is that they adapt and thus evade extinction (at least for now).
Adaptation and event types
When flying fields got smaller, we went to Category III: the two-minute max. And when even that is too high-performance, we invent P-30, or 14-gram Bostonian, Embryo Endurance, and on and on. Clubs adapt to the site limitations they have. When it comes to Old-Timers, some clubs do:
- "Dime Scale" or Indoor/Outdoor events for models built from the Comet and Megow dime kits.
- "Two-bit Scale" for the bigger 25-cent kit plans.
- Phantom Flash events (mass launch).
Other ideas include:
- 3/4-size classic Wakefields available from R/N (AcroDyne), 1924 E. Edinger, Santa Ana, CA 92705; Tel.: (714) 258-0805 — flown with P-30 propellers.
- Mini Old-Timer plan-and-printwood kits from A.A. Lidberg, 1008 E. Baseline Rd., Suite 1074, Tempe, AZ 85283; Tel.: (602) 839-8154 — suitable for small CO2 or electric motors.
- Jimmie Allen designs and other classic plan sets.
Jimmie Allen models and history
I am too young to remember the Jimmie Allen radio show, which was an action-adventure serial for kids, sponsored by the Skelly Oil Company, with dramatic flying adventures of Jimmie Allen. Kits were distributed throughout the U.S. (and Canada, I think) via Skelly Oil stations from approximately 1933–1939.
Someone has sponsored a Jimmie Allen Event at most SAM Champs for years, and recently some clubs are having a great time flying the models at club get-togethers. It is the sort of fun event (low-tech and low-cost) that will draw in fliers who may not be primarily Old-Timer competitors. The designs are not scale, but are scalelike; they resemble airplanes of the 1920s and 1930s. They are 24–40 inches in span, and while they will fly they are not duration models in the sense of, say, Wakefields. It will take a good one in good air to do two minutes.
The Michigan Antique Modelers have really been having a ball with their Jimmie Allens and probably have more experience with the type than anyone else. Contact: Michigan Antique Modelers, Karl Spielmaker, editor, 4690 Burlingame SW, Wyoming, MI 49509.
The San Diego Orbiteers recently held a club contest for Jimmie Allens. John Oldenkamp provided photos and notes: "Jim Alaback won, averaging just over two minutes with his Blue Bird, and also won the mass-launch event." A total of 13 flew officially. John Alling was CD under delightful conditions: low humidity, 0–3 mph drift, big thermals. Reference: El Torbellino, newsletter of the San Diego Orbiteers.
Sources for plans, kits, and supplies
Primary Jimmie Allen plan sources:
- John Pond's Old-Time Plan Service
- Address: Box 90310, San Jose, CA 95109-3310
- Old-Timer Model Supply (OTMS)
- Offers plans, supplies, and parts; catalog $2.
- Address: Box 7334, Van Nuys, CA 91409.
- OTMS has also turned balsa wheels, propeller blanks, and other items you need.
Up to 13 different Jimmie Allen designs have been identified; OTMS lists eight popular designs. Blue Bird is the largest and probably the best flyer. Some designs require lots of wire bending and might be too difficult for a first model, but all are a great change of pace from whatever you are usually obsessed with.
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
