{"id":200,"date":"2019-03-18T22:57:04","date_gmt":"2019-03-18T22:57:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pngyoung.com\/Flying\/?page_id=200"},"modified":"2024-12-06T21:49:52","modified_gmt":"2024-12-06T21:49:52","slug":"me-and-my-models","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/pngyoung.com\/Flying\/me-and-my-models\/","title":{"rendered":"Me and My Model Airplanes"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>The Early Years<\/a> – 1950s
\nThe Middle Years<\/a> – 1960s – 1980
\nThe Later Years<\/a> – 1980 – 1983
\nSilly Things<\/a>
\nSailing<\/a> – 1966 – 1983<\/p>\n

One manifestation of my interest in things aviation has been activities with model airplanes. This began with a collection of plastic model airplanes, gravitated to U-control during my high school years, and later to radio control (RC) years later.<\/p>\n

<\/a>The Early Years<\/h3>\n

In the early ’50s, WWII was recent history and there was great interest in planes from that era.  I was entranced by articles in newspapers and magazines about aviation. I even subscribed to Air Progress magazine, read each monthly edition eagerly. At one time I had every issue covering many years, until it went out of publication. I also had a few issues of Model Airplane News (MAN).<\/p>\n

Reading wasn’t enough, so I turned to plastic scale model airplanes. Since there was no source in Hoxie, the small northwest Kansas town where I grew up, I would save my money from delivering the Salina Journal newspaper until the next trip to Topeka to visit the Grandparents Forbes. There I would make a visit to the hobby store and purchase Revel kits of the planes I was interested in at the time. Or I would ask for kits come Christmas or birthdays.  I collected a model for nearly every Army Air Corp and Air Force airplane of that era – B-36, P-51, B-47, F-80, etc. I wasn’t into assembling them for show; I would assemble them, apply the decals, maybe paint some details, but mostly see them as replicas of the real thing.  My “shop” was formerly the coal bin in the basement, a small enclosed space that was “all mine”; when finished, the models on their stand sat on a table next to the desk that I used for a workbench. (Oh, how I wish I had not succumbed to disposing of the models, and their boxes which I had also saved, years later when Mother thought it was time for me to totally vacate the house. But that was for the best; toting that collection around through the many moves since would not have worked.)<\/p>\n

My next endeavors to “fly” were to “put something in the air”.  I started with a goal of building an airplane, a U-control model that one would fly in a circle at then end of a pair of strings that controlled the elevator (ascend or descend). The first step – purchase a motor, propeller, fuel, and some balsa.  I had picked up a few issues of Model Airplane News (MAN) and found an article for a scratch-built U-control airplane that appeared simple enough to start with. The airplane was easy enough to build. But I struggled with the motor. I just didn’t understand: I thought often that the battery used to get the glow-plug glowing was dead, or ?? I just didn’t know. (Hindsight has led me to the conclusion that my fuel had become stale. The motor started readily for a time after returning from Topeka with a fresh can, but after a few weeks I found myself struggling again.  I believe that the ether or whatever was the more volatile component of fresh fuel had evaporated.)<\/p>\n

Ultimately I was successful (fresh gas) and made a few flights on the school yard north across from the Grade School.  But the airplane, constructed entirely of balsa, didn’t have enough power from the .049 engine.  I’d seen examples of JATO (Jet Assisted TakeOff, but actually RocketATO), so I acquired two small Jetex rocket motors, affixed them to the rear of the fuselage, and voila, that gave me two or three minutes of ‘real’ flying (even if on the end of the U-control strings).<\/p>\n

I had two more experiences with flying models in those early years, before leaving home for the Academy.<\/p>\n