Radio Control: Old-Timers
Jack Bolton
IT'S NOW official; the 1977 SAM Championships will be held in the Las Vegas, Nevada area. There has been considerable comment and controversy concerning the Vegas site. Many West Coasters were pulling for the Taft, California site but to quote from Al Hellman's correspondence ". . . The SAM Championships are now of such large caliber, all considerations must be made regarding accommodations, sites, local tourist attractions, and the availability of host clubs). To this end, the Las Vegas area offers the best attraction for a nationwide contest."
Al writes that he will be Contest Manager; Gene Wallock, Free Flight Contest Director; and Tom Bristol, RC Contest Director. Make your plans early because the Champs are scheduled to start on Monday, June 27 with the welcome aboard and the Bean Fest, and active contest flying will cease at 5 p.m. Thursday, June 30. The annual awards banquet will be held that evening.
So fellow old-timers, get it together and let's all muster at Vegas and make the "77" Champs the best ever. The social life will be great and, lest the purists become offended, please remember that old-timer flying is fun and a trip into nostalgia, not a super effort to be competitive—unless it's a martini competition at the Circus-Circus. Anyway, it will be fun and the West Coasters are congratulated on their site selection.
Contest Reports: Once again we hear from the mighty pen of Marvelous Marv Jaster. Really Marv, Jaster that is, we're sure your contribution to the old-timers is greater than Thornberry's was to baseball, otherwise the movement would be extinct. Anyway, Marv reports on the fall Aeronauts Old-Timer contest. ". . . a great day weatherwise with the temperature in the 80's, wind 5-18 mph. The two-minute max was on and models were dumping in near the highway to the north of Bong. Around 3 p.m., the wind calmed and there was plenty of fine air for those who could tell. Contestants totaled 37, representing five states.
Lots of familiar faces about, plus a number of younger people. As usual, it was a treat to see superb craftmanship blended into the OTs, not to mention the flying.... Same old winners... but, without all us losers where would they be? First place winners: "A" ignition—Mitch Post (Snuffy the 6th); "B" ignition—Mitch Post (Alert); "C" ignition—Buck Zehr (K.G.S.); "A" glow—Bob Yurkowski (Ranger); B/C glow—Art Suhr (Buzzard Bombshell); .020 Replica—Art Suhr (Playboy); Rubber Stick—Charlie Sotich (Korda Sticker); and Rubber Cabin—Tim Banaszak (Korda Wake). Thanks for a fine report Marv—even though you all aren't flying RC Assist—we appreciate the report and are interested.
Now for my own contest held at Pensacola over the Veterans Day weekend. The Gordon "Scotty" Murray Memorial came off in fine style with very reasonable weather prevailing. The site was the mile-square-plus Navy outlying training field, Spencer Field, located at Pace, Florida. There were 26 contestants and 48 entries. The meet was a combined old-timer freeflight and RC Assist event. AMA and FAI free-flight special events were also scheduled. Tommy McLauglan (our new number one man on the FAI Power team) was the CD. All hands had a great time.
The meet was nicely supported by the industry, particularly Model Builder magazine, Model Airplane News, Flyline Models, and, above all, by P&W Model Service (Gene Wallock). We can't say enough about this outstanding support. Thanks!
The Scotty Murray Memorial was organized to honor and remember a great modeler and human being. Walt Schroder, of MAN, passed a story to us which bears repeating. It seems that Walt and Scotty were neck and neck at a meet held in New York along about the summer of 1940 and they both launched their ships into a booming thermal. Walt's was the lower of the two and ultimately landed, off the field, before Scotty's. Scotty was chasing his airborne ship in his car and passed by a lake in time to see Walt's ship land in the water. He stopped, jumped from the car, stripped down, swam out and retrieved Walt's model. By then, he had lost his own model so he sped back to the field, gave Walt his ship, and helped him prepare and launch it to win the event. That was Scotty Murray.
Event winners: OT Pylon—J. D. Singer (Out of Sight); OT Rubber—Ralph Hannegan (Gollywock); .020 Replica—J. D. Singer (Brooklyn Dodger); OT RC Assist—J. Bolton (Playboy Jr.) and RC Texaco—J. Bolton (Powerhouse).
J. D. Singer was high-point winner. By the way he sent us copies of letters he had sent to the various sponsors thanking them for the support they gave the meet. Way to go, Doug!
More on Scotty: We received an extremely informative and interesting letter from Carroll Moon, 910 S.E. Fourth St., Boynton Beach, Fla., 33435, concerning Scotty. He writes ". . . from SAM Speaks, I note you are holding the Scotty Murray Memorial...he would have loved that.
"You see Scotty was one of the members of the old Sky-Scrapers Club in Brooklyn. There were some real builders in that group, including Scotty, Maurice Schoenbrun, Sal Taibi, Leon Shulman, Jerry Stoloff, Mickey Beitchman and about 70 others...Taibi was probably the most accomplished builder but Scotty was certainly the best (builder), and, by far, the best adjuster. At one time, Polks, in New York City, was marketing the Topper and he built five models complete in four days on a bridge table in his sister's bedroom. Another time, he and Stoloff brought a kit and an unopened engine to the field at 9 a.m., built and test ran the ship and flew it to third place by noon.
"He could adjust the most out-of-trim model to contest proficiency in a few flights. He was equally adept at gliders, rubber and gas models...at the World's Fair he tried the skeet shoot and, although he never fired a gun, scored a remarkable 95% which later on probably accounted for his ability as a wing shot...he used to carve props, out of old orange crates, while riding on the subway to the flying field. And they were damn good..." props too.
"...After going to Canada and enlisting in the RCAF, he soloed almost as soon as he got his hands on the control stick. I had some correspondence with his instructors, commanders, etc. and the instructor said Scotty knew more aerodynamics than he did. Despite the fact that he was grounded for three months for trying to see how fast one could fly a Fleet into a landing (the Fleet gear collapsed at 90 mph), he finally made it to the Battle of Britain.
"From various sources, I learned that he shot down 27 Germans over the Channel, and later was brought by carrier to Malta where he notched six more. He was shot down and killed while taking off after refueling. He flew Spitfires... Upon his death, he was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross — the highest award in the British Empire which corresponds to the Congressional Medal of Honor."
Carroll goes on about how Scotty was a very scrappy young man as a youth and cites several examples which are evocative and inspiring; but it's best we don't comment on these as we get into ethnic groups. Just picture Brooklyn in the late 30's.
We thank Carroll for his remembrances of a fine modeler that we would have all liked to have known. We remember Gordon Murray.
Parting Shots: That's it for this column. Next we will publish an updated list of Old-Timer suppliers. Drop news and photos to:
Jack Bolton, 8007 Ferncliff Ct., Springfield, VA 22153, Tel. (703) 455-3809.
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
