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"Challenge of the Mountain" part 1 (01/27/73):When Dale's home-made radio controlled airplane loses contact with the receiver and flies off toward Pine Lake and Boulder Mountain, he saddles up Midnight and he and Lassie take chase. After camping overnight, they are successful finding the plane at the edge of a ravine, but when Dale reaches for it, a rattlesnake alerts—and he falls back down the cliff. Midnight trained by Robert Davenport.


"Challenge of the Mountain" part 2 (02/03/73) Dale is bruised and concussed by his fall, and Lassie injured by falling rocks, so the collie chews Midnight's hobble through and sends him back to the ranch while she defends an unconscious Dale from the vultures who have begun keeping an increasingly bolder watch on his body. Midnight trained by Robert Davenport.
• Note: There's a teeny blooper just as Keith gathers Lassie up in his arms; a cut to a concerned Midnight is shown. Midnight is already bridled and saddled with Dale on his back, but in the cut Midnight has no headstall on at all. Opening narration by Bonita Granville Wrather.


Regular Cast:
Keith Holden: Larry Pennell
Sue Lambert: Joan Freeman
Ron Holden: Skip Burton
Dale Mitchell: Larry Wilcox
Lucy Baker: Pamelyn Ferdin
The Boys:
Mike Bishop: Joshua Albee
Willy Carson: Radames Pera
Lane: Stuart Lee
Andy Lopez: Mark Miranda
Semi-Regular Cast:
Carl Birkholm: Karl Swenson
Elaine Baker: Jay W. MacIntosh

http://episodes.lassieweb.org/lassie19.htm

Robert Davenport was the animal trainer in this TV series.

Dale, the young Holden Ranch cowboy, (actor Larry Wilcox), in this television series had a model plane with a large orange radio transmitter box. What company would have made a radio with that description in the early '70's? In the episode, he was flying a non-scale looking glo-plug plane with tricycle gear and he had a wooden open flight box. The radio lost input response and the runaway plane sailed about 60 miles fully fueled and crashed into the rocks up in the mountains with hardly sustaining a scratch as if by divine miracle. Dale finally finds the airplane and recovers it thanks to help from the collie dog and her apparent sharp nose for glo fuel and carries the model back home on his horse.

I have this special two-part episode on DVR and have seen it twice lately. I really enjoy Lassie, the American western outdoors and RC models.

This is the only TV drama I have ever seen featuring an RC airplane.

porcia83

My Feedback: (8)

I can't think of any in the past other than this one that you note, however there was one a few years back from Modern Family. I believe it was a Parkzone Corsair but they dubbed the sound of a nitro motor on it. Funny show.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1520618/

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I think old-fashioned glo fuel had ether in it.

rgburrill

Tool Time had an RC helicopter in one of the shows. It was even flying in the house.

BelAirBob

I may be wrong, but I think RS had an orange Tx box. Most manufacturers had a unique color.....Kraft gold, Proline white, EK red, Royal purple etc

There was a movie or TV show in the 60's that had a two or three channel RC plane. I think Sandy Dennis was the female star. It was set in NYC and she was on the cover of Model Airplane News with the plane. Come on, someone is going to remember and have the copy of MAN

BelAirBob

I think it was Sweet November. I still think she and Anthony Newly were on the cover of MAN with the plane

BelAirBob

What a memory. It was on the cover of August 1967 Model Airplane News. They were holding a Testor Skyhawk which was an early ARF. It had a Cox .049 engine. In the movie, set in NYC, they flew the plane across the Brooklyn bridge or something

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I got a Cox U-control plane for Christmas when I was 10 in 1974. .049 glow engine. The Cox glow fuel then had ether in it which accounted for its hospital smell. Was a purple-red trainer model. The new so-called Cox U-control planes have a thin fuselage that makes them look more like cheap balsa hand-thrown gliders than scale aircraft. Those 1970's Cox ready-to-fly U-control planes had a 3-dimensional fuselage and more of a "scale look" to them. My Cox trainer was quite heavy as a model.

flyinwalenda

My Feedback: (5)

I remember a late 70's episode of CHiPs where they were chasing a vehicle through a large group/club flying RC planes. The planes weren't the main story but showed a lot of the flying group in several shots.
The A-Team had an episode where they used an RC plane to get out of trouble.
Then there was a move based on RC planes in the '70's ,,,,"Sky Pirates" !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmriLGO1WWQ

grotto2

My Feedback: (2)

There was an episode of Disney in the late sixties where an eagle defends it's territory against an RC plane. The pilot trips and the innards come out of his transmitter!

One episode of 'The Avengers' had a mysterious foreign agent who was a model airplane enthusiast. Another episode had an RC boater whose RF interfered with robot Christopher Lee.

tjordan

My Feedback: (122)

Yes, RS Systems were orange. I owned and flew several of their Radio systems, they were very good systems and had some of the smallest receivers and servos available at the time. TJ

MaverickJetJockey

I believe Magnum PI had an episode with an R/C aircraft being flown on Master Robbin's estate.

scottrc

I think that was the episode when Higgins shot it down with a shotgun.