OldtimerTopics A
nother great modeler and SAM legend has passed on. Sal Taibi died peacefully in his sleep on December 14, 2012. He was 92 years old, and his health had been in decline for some years. He will be remembered as a legendary designer, a great and constant competitor, a SAM President, and an all around good guy. There’ll be extensive cov- erage of Sal’s life in the modeling press in the next few months.
There’s a photo of Joe Elgin and Jack Hin- er in this column taken at the 1999 Musko- gee Champs. Joe Elgin was being honored there with two of his designs, the Cleveland Gull and the Playboy as models of the year. Jack was fairly new to the SAM Champs competition at the time. In the photo Jack is holding his Baby Playboy. Jack saw a stranger holding a big Playboy and asked him if he knew who had designed this, “great flying model”. The stranger smiled a bit and said, “I did.”
Speaking of the SAM Champs, here we go again. The 2013 SAM Champs will be back on El Dorado Dry Lake on October 6 through October 11, 2013. The headquarters hotel will be the Hacienda. SAM Western VP Mike Clancy will be the overall Contest Manager. Old Champs hand, Dave Meri- wether, will be the contest registrar. Details are or soon will be up on the SAM website. Bill Hannan noticed my mention of the Zaic “orange books” in my September 2012 column and e-mailed me to let me know that he still has a full line of the orange books available at Hannan’s Runway. If you’ve ever wanted the Zaic yearbooks (and you should) it’s best to buy them now. One of my favorite building tools is called “The Notcher”. It’s a simple device—a collec- tion of different hard plastic pieces each about 1 inch by 3 inches of varying thick- nesses, each with a strip of sandpaper glued to the bottom. They’re fixed to a piece of alu- minum angle by thumb screws. If you
PHOTOGRAPHY: MIKE MYERS
Jack Hiner and Joe Elgin holding Playboysat the Muskogee SAM Champs where the Playboywas the model of the year.
scratchbuild stick and former airplanes the tool is a wonderful thing. It allows you to set the depth and the width of the notch, and you simply sand it in place. I got mine years ago through the old Shorty’s Basement. The sandpaper finally came adrift from the 1⁄8- inch notch plate, and I was not having much success using adhesive backed sandpaper to glue it back on.
A little quick work on the Internet, and I found Chris Boehm, who’d designed the Notcher. For those of you who’ve got the tool and need to replace the sand paper, the trick is to get the bottom of the plate clean. Then put a few drops of CyA on waxed paper, and draw the plate through the CyA. Stick the
bottom of the plate to the back of a piece of the correct grit sandpaper. When it has bonded, use some scissors to trim to fit. Boehm told me that a pair of scissors will do this about 50 times before being worn out— but if you borrow your wife’s scissors to do the job, well—you’re on your own! If you don’t have a Notcher yet, Chris tells me that it is available at the “new” Shorty’s Base- ment. I’ve heard good things about the peo- ple who run that operation.
There are a lot of different glues that a modeler can use these days. If you’re like me, you have half a dozen different types of glue to choose from on your building bench. I’m a big fan of “horses for courses” and us-
by mike myers You can reach Mike Myersat 911 Kilmary Lane, Glendale, CA 91207, or via at
mikemyersgln@charter.net
Al Pardue’s Aristocrat (above) graces the Birmingham, Alabama skyline. It looked even better at the 2012 SAM Champs where it won the Grand Concours Award. Jack Hiner’s Super Buccaneer(at right) climbs out at Muncie.
54 JANUARY 2013
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