OldtimerTopics A
s I write this column, I’ve just fin- ished preparing a letter of recom- mendation for the SAM Hall of Fame for a fellow (who shall re-
main nameless) who designed five models on SAM’s Approved Gas Model List—all of them between 1934 and 1938. I hope he gets into the Hall of Fame, but that’s up to the committee. But the individual is a winner anyway. He was 16 years old in 1936 when he sold one of his designs to a company to be kitted—and he did that because he wanted some money to be able to take his 14-year- old girlfriend to a nice place.
That worked out okay. He and his girl- friend enjoyed a sixty plus year marriage to- gether. It reminds me of Sal Taibi’s selling some of his model designs and using the money to buy his beloved Nan a fur coat. I think there’s a pattern here. Guys who can be passionate about model airplanes can also be passionate about the love of their lives.
Now that design that the nominee sold when he was 16 was a good one. I’ve seen several of that particular model on modern day flying fields, and I’ve personally built and flown two others of the five models he designed. I’ve sometimes gotten in trouble with some of my readers for pointing out that many of the SAM legal models we love and enjoy were designed by young men with little aeronautical or indeed other formal ed- ucation. But it happens to be the truth. Sal Taibi dropped out of school before he was 14 to support his family—and look at the mod- els that Sal designed! The point is that these early designers were passionate about mod- el airplanes, and their legacy lives on. Today things can be different. Youngsters can and do still design airplanes. But there are other more formal design competitions. The Society of Automotive Engineers has
PHOTOGRAPHY: MIKE MYERS
John Pratt launches his Smith Stick at SAM 27’s regular Thursday morning flying session at Petaluma, California. The Smithlooks like a Gollywockon steroids, and the design is a solid performer.
been holding annual aeronautical design contests for college senior engineering stu- dents for at least 20 years. They typically hold one contest on the East Coast and an- other on the West Coast each year. I’ve been lucky enough to see several of the West Coast contests over the last half dozen years.
This year, SAM electric guru, Dave Hard- ing, came west with the Widener University team from the Philadelphia area. To the ex- tent that these college teams “design their own” to meet the designated task [see how much weight you can lift with a .60 glow en- gine, take off in less than 200 feet, make one circuit of the field and land within 400 feet] they’re doing the same sort of thing that Frank Zaic, Chet Lanzo, Sal Taibi, Henry
Struck, Ben Shereshaw and others did. The competition is fierce.
This year, at the Aero Design West con- test, teams came from India, the Middle East, South America, Canada, Poland, France, Mexico and all points in between. These are untested designs, so controllabili- ty issues and crashes were frequent. Dave Harding has a blog about the effort of the Widener University team. It’s at http://
dhaerotech.com/Widener_2012-13.htm. This column has a picture of Dave with the Widener University team right after they assembled their model for tech inspec- tion. The three-day contest is as much an en- gineering contest as it is a flying contest. The teams make oral presentations of their work to a panel of engineers and submit
by mike myers You can reach Mike Myersat 911 Kilmary Lane, Glendale, CA 91207, or via e-mail at
mikemyersgln@charter.net
Mike didn’t get the modeler’s name (above), but he does admire this Evolution .46 powered New Ruler—one of the prettiest of the old time model designs. Richard Irwin (at right) holds his ½A R/C Texaco size Cloud Chopper. Richard has interchangeable mounts for this model and also flies it in the Speed 400 Class.
30 MAY 2013
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