Do You Remember?

[R.F.Bennett]

Do you Remember?. . .              

[spider web]

I'm thankful to be on this side of the sod and remember so many of the good experiences as a kid.  We were no different than the "Our Gang" group.
 
Not encumbered with a TV set and only a radio as our connection with the outside world, we sharpened our imaginations.........."what did the Shadow actually look like.  New York's Mayor LaGuardia use to read the funny papers on Sunday morning over the radio.   The only visuals we got were in the newspapers, the Saturday matinee and comic books.

I think I caught the modeling bug by watching some of the older kids in the neighborhood flying stick and tissue airplanes. Lucky I was in having a couple of the older kids show me how to read a blue print and manage to glue some little sticks together into some resemblance of an airplane.
There was some magic connected with the first smell of dope and the sting of airplane glue getting into the little razor cuts on the fingers.  Not to mention the effort it took in getting the dried glue off your fingers with your teeth !

What's your rememberances ?

   

[lastvautour]

Being in rural Canadian maritimes, those radio program and many of the early TV programs were not availbable to me. However there was a TV program called "The Adventurers" It was a serial based on some brave teenagers who battled evil wherever they found it. The most memorable scene is when the pilot is locked in the back of a C-45 or maybe an Electra and the aircraft is diving into a volcano. As the plane disappears below the lip of the active volcano we break til next week. That was a long week. Why the pilot was locked in the aft compartment with the lock on his side is beyond me but then that Television. Regardless we all know now that the pilot revived himself, unlocks the door and saved the day. Wow, what a save. But that airplane inspired me to do one for myself and as I recall it was a simple Garet type profile plane made of cardboard. Man those were the days when it did not take much to make one happy.

Lou

[spider web]

C-45, Twin Beech.....Now there was an airplane design that has survived well from the early thirties. The Canadians built some magnificent over the years like the Otter, C115 Buffalo and the Canberra, which the US used.

Yesterday, I opened another long forgotten box of stuff that contained a few blueprints of the "Jimmy Allen" stick and tissue aircraft.  Resurrection time !
F.Y.I.  I invite you to visit www.rubberbandit.org  where to view an extreme rubber band powered airplane.

What's amazing about early aviation was how model airplanes were the benchmark of aircraft development. One example was the first tailess glider model the Germans designed in the late twenties.  This was the bench mark for what the Hortens developed.

I was fortunate to have been born in an aviation pioneering area that surrounds Philadelphia. Aviation advancement was built block by block.
Piasecki's PV-2 Forum was built around the developmental break throughs by Kellett Autogyro, Pitcairn, ( Mailwing ) and more importantly, Prewitt Blade.
The engineers in those days flew what they designed. Building model airplanes as a youngster prepared me well for when I started working for Piasecki as a bench mechanic just after graduating from high school.  There was little difference between the stick and tissue models and the full size aircraft. Only the balsa stringers were replaced with tubular steel.  Now I was cutting out aircraft formers in furniture grade plywood instead of balsa sheet.

Piasecki only had about three-hundred employees where everyone was expected to do many jobs. Engineers, secretarial staff and janitors worked on the assembly line at times or paint shop. Piasecki was paid by the government when he delivered an aircraft.  We were a family of sorts.

[Mark Crowel]

Reading the above posts, I would say that you fellows lived in an enviable era.   Kits were wood and paper, and if there wasn't a kit for what you wanted, you scratchbuilt it.

I remember watching the bigger kids flying balsa and tissue control-line airplanes, in the late 1950's and through the '60's.  I started my model building with plastic kits, in the early 60's.

Being a "car guy", I feel I missed something, because I came along too late for the balsa car kits by Ace, Berkely, and Hudson miniatures.  I now collect these whenever I can.

I've resorted to scratchbuilding to get models of the cars I want.  I also build cars of my own designs.  I'm not a woodworker; I use cardboard because I enjoy it more, and my solid models are made by laminating layers of corrugated stock.

I derive a satisfaction from scratchbuilding that I've never gotten from a plastic kit.  Also, when I scratchbuild, I feel a connection to those model builders of the pre-plastic days who used wood, cardboard, and ingenuity to build the models they wanted.

Most of you are aircraft modelers, but I believe I am among kindred spirits, nonetheless.

[Balsabasher]

Yes the connection between model building and full size was apparent when reading those great pulp magazines 'Flying Aces' the emphasis was on start with models and progress to the real thing,there were advertisements for things like 'Come fly with Uncle Sam' or you could embark on one of many aeronautical colleges arond the USA at that time,when flying was a real novelty in the Golden years of flight really made great by Colonel Lindbergh, model building was encouraged as a real starting point,even the British Air Training corps built flying models unlike today when all they assemble is plastic kits,nothing wrong with plastics as such but they are not true building we know that and are no comparison really,genuine skills are derived from using materials and learning how to shape them after marking out,those very same skills apply to real airplanes as pointed out by Spider web.
I can proudly say thay my own progression into full size aviation was also due to my own interest in building model aircraft from wood and tissue etc,that joy of flight has never left me even today after 65 glorious years,even now when I look up into the skies I marvel at how something so big can suspend itself in flight.
Keep on carving and making real models.
Barry.