donnyman

Skylark

I think that history site is unique, I was surprise to see that the c/l p40 stunt was made by two manuf, I had the Berkeley version, a christmas gift. in the late 1950's

The large number of kits was another pleasant surprise. I saw several kits I still have. It was a pleasant and interesting read. especially with the pictures of the bird the boxes and plans. nice!

are you going to do any others?

BTW I left the A.F. One year before you joined (two enlistments)

skylark-flier

As I understand it, SIG bought out most all the Berkeley designs around 1960, both CL & RC so many of the early SIG designs started as Berkeley. In several cases that I've found, SIG scaled the original Berkeley designs UP.

I doubt if I'll do other manufacturers. First, no real interest. Second, no starting point because so many of them are already gone. I AM thinking of Sterling, maybe. The Sterling Skylark (1956) CL plane is the source of my moniker here. Still flying 3 of them.



Ahhhh, the A.F. GOOD DAYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

donnyman

Skylark

I am not as familiar with the sterling version of the skylark but I have a real fondness for the Carl Goldberg version Of which I have built several, I still have the plans for it. my first one was a modified Falcon 56 that I mounted the wing on the bottom. It flew like a advanced trainer.........Lotta fun!

I found in some of the sterlings kits The wood was harder and less finished but I was never unhappy with any of them. I flew tons of their controline birds.

Lone Star Charles

Since this post was started a little over 1 year ago, do I have to be 51 now?

Merry Christmas, y'all

Rocket-J

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Is there a section for over 70 and still modeling.

donnyman

Only If thats the way you want it for yourself!

donnyman

YES.....It started on page one..... But younger folks have and do respond.

brner

You're not alone, right in here....

spaceworm

And I am another one.

rt3232

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Rocket

I am 84 3/4, and building kits cense I was about 7, So just join in ware ever it fits


Cheers Bob T

Telemaster Sales UK

I returned to France yesterday after three weeks in England visiting old friends and picking up furniture, books, records and old and new models. Total kilometrage 4012 or just under 2500 miles in my two tonne VW van.It rained on every day except two! I went flying once using my friend Kit Davidson's SLEC Fun Fly which is very similar to a Super Hots and a lovely flier but the cloud base was only a couple of hundred feet! When I was in England I received an email from Tim at Model Markings to say that my original package had been returned by a combination of the French and British postal services but that he had sent me another. I asked him to mark the envelope "Lourdouiex St Pierre, Pas La Foret du Temple, (Lourdouiex St Pierre, not La Foret Du Temple) so that Mrs Davis should not receive my post for a second time. On opening my mail box there it was. I must get on with building the Gemini's wings.

I've got lots of nice projects to get on with and I'll keep you posted. I will return to England twice more next year to pick up my motor cycle and my 1974 Rover, but the sun is shining here, it's not raining and I realise now why I decided to move!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all who visit this thread!

GallopingGhostler

For a time, Duke Fox had an agreement with Berkeley from what I understand in the late 1950's / early 1960's, investing in the company (details fuzzy). Bill Effinger moved Berkeley from the east coast to Fort Smith, Arkansas, which Duke came to regret. Compared with other kits, Berkeley's die cutting seems inferior and some wood selection in the kits I have are unsuitable, don't fit correctly, need serious trimming in some cases or just replace. Some of their designs have odd ways of construction. My Berkeley Interceptor (similar proportions to Sterling Ringmaster) has nose of red oak butt joined to balsa for a profile fuselage. There are no joiners or plywood planking to strengthen the joint. Wing is built into fuselage instead of fuselage being slotted to hold wing. A nonstandard spar of about 3/4 inch square hardwood is used. The red oak and spar arrangement adds excess weight.

Plans are missing the finer construction details, requiring the modeler to improvise. (Comet rubber powered designs were similar in most their kits. Landing gear for example needed replacement for flight, otherwise they wouldn't survive normal flight.)

Not sure when Sig purchased Berkeley's remaining inventory of kits, tools and plans, but must have been not long after Duke Fox got involved and lost his shirt in. In the early 1990's Sig was clearing out the remaining Berkeley plans, I bought about a dozen. Berkeley 36" span rubber powered / free flight gas scale light planes became Sig craftsman series kits. Those seemed decent.

Then you basically had a Skylark 56.

Overall I have no complaint about Sterling. Some of their wood wasn't the greatest, but overall still built a decent flying model. Goldberg seemed to have a better edge on kit quality, have no complaints about their kits. Midwest and Top Flite also seemed decent.

Merry Christmas, all!

donnyman

Yes what I ended up with was a skylark 56, and it flew very well more to my style because I reduced the dihedral and used tri landing gear I built several of them, all scratch built. A friend recently gave me a set of senior falcon plans and if I weren't so tied up with other builds I would scratch up a low winger version.

Have you seen the news report of a privately owned company (spacex) that launch a rocket that put eleven satelites into orbit then returned to earth and landed close to it's launch site? It looked like something from a science fiction movie.

The best part is it is reusable, it cost 600 million to build but only 200 thousand to reuse, space flight just got a whole lot cheaper.

There are several private space flight companies with their own rockets. we are truly in the space age. I am tickled

acdii

I started just recently in actually flying RC back in 11, but I always had my head in the clouds. I remember building those sheet and stick rubber powered planes, with the wire landing gear, winding them up and launching them from the stone railing at a neighbors house. They would fly up and around and rarely did we loose one or have one break. That was in the early 70's. Then Black Sheep Squadron came on TV, and I fell in love with Corsairs, and that hooked me on flying. My first plane kit, I dont remember what it was, never finished it, nor do I know what happened to it, but I do still have the radio and servos, a Futaba 4 channel AM radio. The first plane I flew, well for a few moments, was one of the very early ARF planes. Basically a thin foam covered balsa rib wing, and slab sided fuse. Just a basic high wing trainer type deal with a .25 2 stroke. Crashed it on take off the first time, fixed it, then had someone at a flying field near Schaumburg IL help, he took off trimmed it, and then had me fly it a bit, I made a lap and was getting excited that I was flying, then nothing. I lost the plane due to a pager hit. Apparently there was a tower nearby that was used for paging, this was mid 80's when everyone carried a pager, and with my old AM radio, it shut me down, the plane wound up in a tree, and that was it.

I also had a Cricket heli that I was learning to fly and did OK with it, had just got it to the pint where I could hover it and something happened, it pitched backwards suddenly and the blades both blew off and it landed with a thud. There was a dent in the tail boom so whatever happened caused the blades to hit the boom, it broke the wire to the tail rotor inside the transmission so that was the end of that bird. After that I started a CG Cub, this was when CG was still making them in Chicago, as I recently found the plans and manual for the plane. The plane was nearly finished, but I didn't have money for the rest of the stuff, and sold it to a friend. He may or may not still have it, he has so many planes he lost count.

I have built a lot of Guillows kits, no idea what ever happened to them, but every time I open up a dope can, I have a flash back of building them. Same when working on plastic models, I built so many back when I was a kid. I still remember the first plane model I built, a P-47, all painted in camouflage with the invasion stripes. I found a picture of it recently, and it does not look as good as I remembered. LOL

So for years I had left the hobby while doing other things, then I finally decided, Dammin I am going to learn to fly, what a mistake that was, I now have so many planes and no room that I needed to buy a trailer to store them. Of all the planes I have, most are kit builds, a few are ARF, only because a kit wasn't available or I really liked it. The SIG T-Clips is one of them. A fun flyer but a real PITA on the ground. I have three that were given to me, only one which has flown, the Twin Otter, really nice looking and flying plane, but had a hard landing so it is in need of repair. The only other ARF I bought are two P-51's, a small one, which I never flew as the engine I have is way too big, and the Top Flight P-51, so I could fly it ans learn its bad habits before I fly the kit built one that I am spending way too much time on. Started it in 2011, and it is still sitting on a shelf, mostly done. The big hangup on it was the landing gear, I wanted working wheel doors, and well, I got them now, took me two years to get them working, but the work, but the air retracts suck so going to replace them with electrics, hence why it sits on a shelf.

I took an inventory this year after putting all my flying planes in my truck, all 5 are SIG, 3 are kit builds, a 1/5th Cub, an LT-40 and 4*120, the other 2 is a Something Extra and the T-Clips. I have a Second Cub under construction as a stagger wing bipe, hoping to have it done by spring, and on a board at my friends is a SIG Citabria.

Took me 48 years to get a plane off the ground with my fingers on the controls, but damn its such a joy to fly. Although I have not decided which I like most, Flying or Building. I did find my original radio, and it is still in good condition, and still works. I can guarantee if I flew with it, I would not get shot down by someone else turning their radio on, since its AM. Though with all the other AM crap up there, bet it would get hit by something else. I might use it in a Sterling Missouri that I have sitting in my shop. Now that would be nostalgic.

Joe Fisher

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Acdii, I see you have a gallery I like seeing the planes. Merry Christmas. Joe

acdii

I forgot all about that. The plane I have there is no longer alive, I traded it to a friend for an engine and he got nearly a year of flying until the RX glitched(or the TX) and lost it. Its a pile of dirty greasy wood.

GallopingGhostler

Here's the listing of Berkeley plans on the back of an envelope that contained a plan I purchased from Sig when they still had them, with front of the envelope, too.

Super08

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I just stumbled into this thread by accident. Looks to be rather interesting. I am 55 btw and have been building and flying since I was about 10.

Joe Fisher

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Welcome Super08

Joe Fisher

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Welcome Super08 I like your gallery.

Super08

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Thanks, it is a little out of date though. Not too sure of what I still have that is in there.

Super08

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There I just uploaded some more recent photos. I hadn't updated them for 6 years. Many of the other planes had met their demise or had been sold to friends. Yes I know I am an addict. I am currently building a 4*120 kit.

Mad Man Marko-RCU

I am currently staring at my 59th year and have been connected with aircraft modeling since I was 6. My first model was a Wen-Mac U/C Turbo-Jet ?? given to me by my Cuz Mark when he went off to college. From there I went through the usual assortment of Cox RTF's with mixed success until the local (at the time 1971) hobby shop owner told me of a C/L group that flew locally in Clinton, CT. After seeing a whole bunch of good flying there was one fella who totally impressed me by flying the AMA C/L stunt pattern. His name was Len Minnick and he flew a Sterling Skylark with a Fox motor and it was just like wow there is more to planes than just flying in circles. After that we met up with 3 people who were very influential in my flying hobby. One was a local scoutmaster who was also a Free Flight and RC pilot named Bob Berringer the other 2 were hobby shop owners Frank Castiglione at Branford Hobbies in Branford, CT (who's son Mark still owns the business in the same spot today) and the other was Ed Avena (Shoreline Machine in Waterford, CT who assisted and directed me during my startup years. Bob was involved with some local clubs on the Connecticut shoreline one was SCAMA who along with the ECSF flew at a private airport on the Madison Guilford CT line and the other was the RC Propbusters who flew at the Waterford Airport in CT and in Ashaway, RI. The SCAMA guys had a club trainer that you could fly with a buddy box (Blue Max radio) for a fuel cost of $.25 per flight. Needless to say I flew many flights with the instructor named Hank until he signed me off and then continued to let me fly the plane (Andrews H-Ray) for the same fee. After learning my first new RC plane was a Midwest foam Cardinal with a Cox Medallion 15 and a Hobby Shack Cirrus Sport II radio which I bought new for $119 for the combo. I still have the radio and engine downstairs sadly the Cardinal is long gone. I remember going flying in a hay field near my parents house with my buddy Walt and flying so much that the receiver batteries were so low the servos would slow down. We also flew a lot (tons) of single channel flying in the 70's. Time went on and I did pattern, scale, giant scale and helicopter flying while continuing to fly C/L stunt and combat. I still fly with the RC Propbusters in Salem, CT and lately I have been bit by the single channel bug again and I am currently building some single channel planes to fly next summer. It's amazing how sometimes things come full circle.

Super08

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I don't know if all you guys have noticed but I find that there are not a lot of younger flyers getting involved in the hobby anymore. At least that is what I am seeing up here. I hope this trend turns around in the future.

FlyerInOKC

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So guys what did Santa bring you? I didn't get any R/C stuff but I got a beautiful little airplane ornament for the tree and the Mel Brooks Collection on Blue Ray.