For Openers
The TV commercials for Heinz and Black and Decker, with assorted cans, jars, and workbenches flashing by, are a good example of the way the boys in the backroom arranged this issue's Nationals coverage. F.O. thinks of it as National Hell Week. Reports pour in: mountains of negatives, prints, copy to be read, marked up, selected, printed, proofed, laid out. It is devil-take-the-hindmost. Tempers grow short. Endearing words are spoken. And as the Nats' charge goes wildly up San Juan Hill, the Scale World Championships also demand attention. And from Lakehurst, NJ, the SAM Nationals. Circle the wagons! You ride to the fort and get help. We've got a week. It is now, each year, that we think of retiring. When we said so, Worth answered, "What, so soon?" You don't get hardly no respect!
But we thoroughly enjoyed it. One gets into every nook and cranny of the Nats this way. Fascinating things sift from the miles of copy—machines, guys, humor, trends, what might have been; it is all there. No one actually at the Nats could possibly observe more than 10% of what you can find in this year's coverage. We hope you enjoy it.
The "Monster, Monster" Model Problem
The time has come to face up to the problem of the "Monster, Monster" models. We must define what is reasonably safe, and what is not. Distressful mishaps could lead to outside action that could ground you and your RC airplane, monster or not. Nor can insurance, at Lord knows what future cost, be extended to everybody in the future who insists on flying a quarter-scale B-29 with four chain-saw engines, or 100-pound, 100 mph-plus airplanes. What we have attained so far with 80- and 90-powered, or prop-drive 60's, and possibly things like Nosen Aeroncas with a Quadra — seems (to F.O.) to be a reasonable limit.
The problem is highly complex. Sizes, weights, power, and speeds of a wide variety of subjects do not lend themselves to an instant formula. Nor can AMA legislate this situation from on high. It doesn't work that way. You must have an input, too. Write your AMA district vice presidents, contest board members — and Headquarters. The AMA Executive Council will be taking a hard look at the situation, with particular attention to the question of whether insurance coverage should be limited to "reasonable" size models, when it meets in early November.
F.O. wants to make it perfectly clear that it is the threat of ever bigger, and faster monsters we talk about, not the nice quarter-scale sort of thing we have been flying in perfect safety so far. Our remarks cannot be construed as official AMA policy — as yet there is no such thing regarding the big birds. That will be shaped according to your wishes and best interests. F.O. thinks the Quarter Scale Association could put its shoulder to the wheel, for it is among its members — and similarly interested people — that a loss can be particularly poignant. And, finally, even AMA can't control those who are not members. Let us hope that some motorcycle gang doesn't take a fancy to some terrifying aerial go-kart. Why tempt them? Once more, into the breach!
Flying Aces Flying Scale Nationals (Johnsville N.A.S.)
As a radio flier we were mesmerized by the doings of these rubber and schoolyard scale guys we've told you about. They even persuaded us to join their trek to Johnsville N.A.S., just north of Philly, to observe the Flying Aces Flying Scale Nationals. Nationals? You'd better believe it! It was the first contest in 45 years that we totally enjoyed. A hint of things to come: our three fellow passengers had 21 airplanes in the trunk! We would join over 100 contestants with 200 to 300 ships. They filled the skies for two days.
When we first heard of Flying Aces, a Connecticut group whose newsletter hinted that a little group got their kicks smaltzing a World War I atmosphere of Vons and Aces, we were more puzzled than impressed. But this contest was incredible. Linked together in the fun spirit of the thing, other Flying Aces groups have formed. From as far away as California came still other skilled entrants. How about a rubber-powered Ford Trimotor? Or a Junkers trimotor? Both were impressively flown by a guy in goggles and a black cape who talked in various "accents" to his models while they flew — to one of them in Russian. (Somebody said he was a Harvard Phi Beta Kappa.)
These models do not float and flutter, but groove like Pattern jobs. They remind one of rubber endurance models. A Stosser circled delightfully overhead, higher and higher, eventually vanishing in the clouds after 25 minutes. A Thompson Trophy type came down on the field after 18 minutes plus. On straight runs—when the circle didn't quite hold—all sorts of ships would fly in a beeline right out of the area!
A twin-engine Tigercat got off to a long flight that brought cheers from the crowd. One might have thought that Jackson had hit a grand slammer. A twin-engine A-26 got more cheers. There were all kinds of events:
- World War I
- World War II
- Thompson Trophy types
- Jumbo
- Profile
- Embryo
- CO2
- No-Cal Profile
Embryo is BIG.
Unique were the exciting scrambles — like Thompson Trophy Race, WW I Combat, and WW II Combat. Heats of maybe six guys fly at once, and the last guy down is the winner. With each round, they drop one or two of these guys, so tension builds for everybody, fliers and spectators alike. The crowd whoops it up, cheering their favorites: "Come on Fiat, come on Spad, come on Folkerts!" Like a day at the races. Luck is a factor. If a launch is not perfect, you are dead.
Organization was all but invisible, yet this flying circus went like clockwork. There were no ropes. Everybody wandered everywhere. Planes went up from all parts of the area. Once, a contestant handed us a watch and said, "Here, time me!" They trusted each other. They wandered up and down the long line of autos, enjoying endless variety of "real" airplanes. Everybody was reluctant to go home. If Alice in Wonderland had slipped into a file of Jane's All the World's Aircraft instead of that hole with the crazy rabbits, this is what she would have seen. The pictures did come to life as the shades of the planes of yesterday sailed off into the friendly skies at Johnsville. For more about the techniques, and all that jazz, please join us next month.
The Grumman Wildcat and Schoolyard Scale
As friendly as Dumbo the elephant, the chubby Grumman Wildcat is truly an understated model. Very few airplanes get into print just because some editor grabbed it desperately as "good enough to publish." This Wildcat is one of the great ones. It is the epitome of schoolyard scale. Its flight is dream-like.
We are conditioned to think in terms of baby "pattern" airplanes when we see schoolyard scale things that zip and dart. Now there are excellent balsa-block-and-sheet machines, like the delightful House of Balsa stuff, but there is a choice of ways to go. Light, built-up structures — rather like rubber model stuff — yield buoyant fliers that are not at all fragile. Two of our finest practitioners of the art — Hurst Bowers and Don Srull — combined on this Wildcat. Hank Clark, who is not given to raves, found himself sentimentally moved as he drew that cutaway. Good airplanes reflect the subconscious of their designers — a feeling which comes through.
Hurst Bowers
Hurst Bowers, a 53-year-old retired Air Force colonel, began modeling "Golden Age" aviation in the early thirties. On a remote island after the war he had recourse to his scale modeling and has been at it ever since, publishing over 30 articles on the subject. After 31 years of active duty as a pilot (6,900 hours), commander, and staff officer, he manages family businesses and properties, and is co-owner of Flyline Models. He has been into big-game hunting, and shoots an occasional round of golf. To Bowers, scale models are an art form and a means of relaxation.
Don Srull
Don Srull is a 48-year-old research scientist with a beautiful sense that model flying has to be enjoyable. He, too, was bitten by the aviation bug at an early age — which means literally everything that flies. At Convair he experimented with early RC system design and construction. He delights in anything from indoor free flight to RC scale — and, always out for the fun, manages to win and place everywhere, including the Nats. Scale appeals to him especially — he's placed way up at two Nats in both Rubber Scale and RC Sport Scale. He took first this year in Rubber Scale.
Duke Fox and Beginner Instruction
Talking about Duke Fox is like the blind man trying to describe the elephant. Duke is many-faceted, more a thinker than a talker. And the way he thinks puts him on the flying field head to head with the competitors in action, and this relates to his everlasting introduction over more than 30 years of special-type engines for a multitude of purposes. (Free flighters may not even know that Fox has a Combat engine bored to .29 displacement — for FF. It isn't advertised.) Duke is quietly, deeply involved in all the needs he perceives.
He has this Top Flite Streak Trainer, set up with a big bellcrank and a long horn and powered by a side-mounted 15 Schnuerle — perfect with a 15 or a 19 on .52-ft., .012 lines. This excellent trainer kit appears to be the last survivor of its type — you may remember the upright-engined Trixter Profile Trainers, Guillow models designed by Lou Andrews. With his Streak, Duke taught upwards of 50 young people to fly. If there are problems in getting people to fly CL models, he wants to find out for himself what they are, and how they may be solved. In some thousands of flights he has instructed with his trainer there has not been a crash. How does he do it?
There are three people: the "student," someone to release, and the "instructor." Duke uses a D-handle, puts his left hand on the outside portion of the handle, and his right hand around the student's shoulders. The key, Duke says, is not to let the student fly too long — no 40-lap stuff. The beginner is pooped after 10 laps. Let him do it for four or five rounds, making four or five laps each time — allowing him to calm down. Duke is convinced that one reason we do so poorly with beginners is that we are too sophisticated to think like a beginner.
While he doesn't talk about it, his thinking extends to the beginner problem at the hobby shop level. There, control line is a big thing. But what does a guy ask for? Some hobby shop clerks are helpful, but most are too busy, and few can focus on a CL package concept. The customer often ends up with a mixed bag of parts and accessories. So to help the newcomer, and the harassed clerks, Duke conceived a packaged concept that includes the proper families of parts — engine, bellcrank, lines, horn, handle, etc. — and put them together at cost-saving prices. The packages are geared to his various engines from, say, a baffled 15 for a profile, to a .35-powered fuselage stunt job. So whatever the level, there's a package. Duke practices what he preaches. He puts himself in the beginner's shoes.
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
