“To test my narrowband effectiveness, I
went to Mr. Douglas’ house with my plane and radio. He brought out his rig, tuned to an adjacent channel on the 27 MHz band. Even when his Tx antenna touched my plane’s receiver antenna, no interference was observable! “Now, confident in my equipment, it was
time for my first R/C flight. There was a va- cant field adjacent to our neighborhood, but also adjacent to a construction area to the west where a local freeway was going to pass through. I fueled the engine’s tank with only a couple of minutes worth of Cox glow fuel, attached the battery, started the engine, tweaked the needle valve and prepared for launch. “Jeez was I nervous! My first R/C flight,
with my own design! Slightly trembling with a mix of fear and excitement, I launched the plane into the gentle afternoon breeze and watched her climb gracefully into the sky. I gave the stick a little left turn to keep it away from the street, but she kept turning right. I inputted more left turn, but she per- sisted in turning right. “Now I was nervous. She was slowly churning upwind in big right circles, totally ignoring my radio commands. Eventually, mercifully, the engine stopped. I painfully, but hopefully watched as she began her de- scent. Then it happened! Oh no! I lost sight of her as my view was cut off by the roadway embankment where the freeway was being built. “I first walked, then ran, to see where the landing spot might have been. Nothing. Then I noticed a car up on the roadway em- bankment. The trunk lid went up; a uni- formed figure appeared. The trunk lid closed. The car drove off. “Then it dawned on me. This was an his-
toric moment. I had performed the classical mistake of a beginner. I had forgotten to turn on the receiver! Putting two and two to- gether, I surmised that the ‘uniformed’ fig-
ure was a construction company guard. He had just found a new toy for his son, I guessed, but failed to see if someone had lost his new toy! “It was several years before my next foray
into R/C. It was now 1971. The days of digi- tal proportional radio control were here, and boy, was I ready. Goodbye escapements, reeds, relays and wiggling,
waggling, jig-
gling, wob bling actuators! (No matter how much I look back and admire the innova- tion). One day, I saw an ad on the back of a model magazine for World Engines. They had just introduced their Blue Max 4-chan- nel system, and offered a version as a semi- kit! I bit the hook, and about $220 later, I was an R/C modeler again! “I have embedded a picture of the Tx I
made, sitting beside the Whiz Kid, under construction. Notice the fancy center-loaded antenna I made, and the home-made field- strength meter in the upper left of the TX case.” Ah yes! Those letters brought back many
good and not-so-good memories of my own early days in R/C. I still remember walking through the corn fields around Allentown, PA looking for my escapement driven Royal Rudderbug which didn’t quite make it back to the landing area. Hey, it was good to go home with the plane even if some repairs were needed. Frequently search parties were formed to find planes that either ran out of escapement power or the engine stopped running while the plane was downwind. Today, with the popularity of electric and
small receivers and servos it is possible to recreate the R/C designs of the past in small- er sizes. One prolific modeler who has done this is Bob Aberle of Happaugh, NY. Bob has written to me about some of his creations as follows: “The Jr Falcon, at 100 square inches and
3.8 ounces, and the Bootstrap A-RC also at 100 square inches and 5.3 ounces. Just added another reduced size, electric pow-
PHOTO: JIM KELLER
Here we have a home-built transmitter and a Whiz Kidunder construction by Jim Keller in the early ’60s. Notice the center-loaded antenna and the home- made field-strength meter in the upper left of the transmitter case.
ered vintage R/C model to my growing ‘fleet’. This time it is a 1957 Smog Hog reduced to 100 square inches and weighing 4.7 ounces. Attached are a few photos, one of which shows me in 1957, at age 19, holding my full size Smog Hog. That’s a 1953 Buick in the background. At any rate over the past year I’ve done
the DeBolt Live Wire Cruiser (both LG and on floats), DeBolt’s Kitten at 100 square inches and just recently Norm Rosenstock’s Electron at 125 square inches and 7 ounces. Norm’s design was the first R/C model to appear in FLYING MODELS (December 1950).” So, you see that we can still have fun with
those great designs from the past by either reproducing them exactly as they were de- signed or shrinking them as Bob Aberle has done. Whatever your taste, build a vintage R/C design and bring back the memories, but do it with modern equipment so the trips through the corn fields are forgotten. Vintage planes, like vintage cars, have
class!
Another of Bob Aberle’s downsized planes (above left). This one is the very popular early multi design 1957 Smog Hog. It has 100 square inches wing area
FLYING MODELS
and weighs 4.7 ounces. In 1957, a young Bob Aberle was flying his full size Smog Hog. Note the 1953 Buick behind him.
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