jaymen
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Well Bob Dunham also owned a Cessna 172 according to Zel Ritchie, who borrowed it a few times. Bob worked closely with his brother Dick, who did all the early tone and multi channel Orbit radio developement. Bob was quite capable however and did the assembly work. The first formal Orbit factory in Garden Grove, on Anabel avenue, was more of a large hobby shop than a modern electronics assembly plant until about 1968. At one point in time, according to Mike Pezak, he merged his Medco line of products with Orbit. Orbit was so popular that they did not do much advertizing at all, mainly due to the fact that they were always back ordered on their radios.
Orbit supplied systems to the movie industry, Zel went to Mexico to film a movie about PT boat action during WW2 calledf In Harms Way. He and a team of other drivers controlled several large 1/3rd scale PT boats for the action scenes, they had Orbit 12 channel multi systems in them. This was around 1965.
Bob Dunham had a beautiful wife named Johhny, but he developed a pechant for asian women, Japanese in particular and eventually became divorced and married a Japanese gal. Zel went on a tour of Japan with Bob after winning the World championships in Sweeden. They visited the OS factory in Osaka, and saw all the sights in Japan. Zel and Bob both received the latest versions of the OS engines designed for aerobatic competition. Ralph Brooks, Cliff Weirick, and Ed Kazmirsky composed the rest of the 1965 USA team.
Bob was very shrewd and although he sold out Orbit to Datatron in late 1969, he kept the sheet metal stamping and fabrication, and the plastic injection moulding operations. You see at one point in time, Bob was supplying Tx. and Rx. cases, servo mechanics, and stick assemblies to Micro Avionics, Ace, EK, Deans, S&O, Proline, and many other radio manufacturers. He took a page from Howard Bonners book in this respect. Bob and his brother Dick continued to support Orbit under Datarons tenure, but they both had other jobs, and as mentioned, Bob was busy making cases and plastic parts for the R/C industry.
In 1962 Bob and Dick also worked for a while with Jerry Pullen and tried to develop the ill fated Al Doig ult- multi tone proportional system; like Pullen, they too were unable to get it to work simultaniously with more than 2 channels, and so they abandonend it. The RC Hall of fame incorrectly gives credit to Al Doig for developing a full house, 4 channel simultanious multi proportional radio using feedback servos...he conceived the idea, but could not implement it beyond 2 proportinal channels with positionable throttle. Pullen took it a step further, by adding a third channel, but you could only operate 2 channels at a time, and one would drop out if you signalled throttle. But Pullens friends from JPL, Spreng and Mathis had by this time absconded with the missle guidance control schematics from JPL, quit their jobs there, and had made a simplified version of it for model planes they tried to market, and called it the Digicon. Lacking manufacturing experience, decent servo mechanics, and as Hoover noted, a pulse on modulation scheme, the Digicon flopped. They sold the Hoover revised version (Digicon II) to Bill Cannon and proceeded to make better money selling their digital proportional design to Orbit, Deans, and others. The Dunhams struck a deal with Mathes and Spreng, who both wanted their own R/C manufacturing company: design Orbit a digital proportional radio, and in turn Orbit will fund and supply Spreng and Mathis with the servos, cases, and stick assemblies for what was to become known as Micro-Avionics. The Dunhams retained a controlling interest, albeit in secret, and this was not revealed for many years, it was made public when Dataron aquired Orbit, as Micro-Avionics was part of the transaction. Spreng and Mathis had by this time left JPL, but Pullen remained. To repay their friend Pullen for getting them jobs at JPL, which gave them access to the essentials of digital proportional top secret missle guidance systems, Spreng and Mathes gave Pullen their design services for free, which is how Kraft was able to suddenly enter the Proportional arena. Jerry Pullen stuck with his analog proportional design up to this point because he was still working at JPL, and could not ethically disseminate the top secret government information for his own uses. His out was that by this time, Spreng and Mathes had already let the cat out of the bag, so the green light was essentilally on for him and Phil Kraft to proceed. At this point Jerry Pullen quit his job at JPL and went to work for Kraft. As Pullen, Spreng, and Mathes have all passed away, we will never know for sure who the real people were who conceived the pulse position/ pulse width modulation scheme for JPL that eventually was used for hobby type digital proportional radios. The reason Mathes/Spreng could not patent digital proportional is because they stole the idea from JPL! So they made their money designing radios for eveyone else.
You will not read about this in any of the old magazines as it was considered taboo and was insider knowledge at the time.
The main reason Orbit was a late entry into Digital proportional radios was because Zel Ritchie went broke and gave them Space Control. They spent most of 1964 converting the Space Control transmitter from tubes to transistors, making the reciver and servo brick into seperate components for more versatility in installation and repair ( Dunham wanted this while Zel felt the bullet proof brick was fine as is), and they designed two different transmitters, a mode 1 and a single stick. This then gave them time to have Mathes and Spreng do the Digital Proportional designs for both the Orbit and Micro-Avionics radios. By this time, all the other manufacturers like Bonner (Digimite) and F&M had worked the bugs out of the design, and much improved silicon transistors became available at reduced costs. Orbit was able to capitolize on this and quickly became the radio of choice due to their reputation as a relaible "black box".
On a personal note, Bob was very easy going, he smoked, and was very thin. He loved his beer, and many will remember he was a regular at the local watering hole. Bob was also argueably, one of the best multi flyers out there, and a really smooth propo flyer as well. By the time Phil Kraft came on the aerobatic competition scene, Bob had already won a national championship and was effectively retired from competition...it is too bad because it would have been a sight to see them go head to head. Bob was also just alot of fun and was always availlable to help you test fly a new plane, or give flying lessons to a new pilot.
Once a year, before he moved his shop to Lake Havasu, I used to see Bob fly a reed multi ship at Mile Square, and he made it look so easy. I can still hear teh "thung-thung-thung.." chime that the toggle switches made as he thumbed them. Many years later in the late 1980's I worked for Tekin and dealt with Bob quite a bit as he did all our plastic cases for our chargers, speed controls and receivers. His knowledge of what would work, and what wouldn't saved us countless wasted dollars on developement as he could look at a blueprint of a case and spot all the potential show stoppers and correct them. His years of experience and R/C knowledge when it came to the nuts and bolts were invaluable. On the downside, I think sometimes he was still enjoying his beer a bit too much because at times, he was not reachable for days, or weeks. However, he never missed a ship date and we always had plently of cases in stock.
Yes, Orbit was the Hobby shop where guys like Rahling, Hayes, Pezak, Mathis, Spreng, Martin, Novak and Dunham himself all got their start in R/C and went on to greater things; Orbit was essentially the training ground from which many of Kraft's employees came from.
Bob was well liked and trusted by his fellow R/C manufacturers, because of who he was, and also because they were all fellow LARKS club members. I have found special F&M Digital 5 prototype recivers in my Orbit collection that Frank Hoover sent to Bob and Dick so they could test and evaluate it for him and give him valuable feedback. That would never happen today! They were hobbyists first, and businessmen second. The later R/C manufacturers were not from the same cut of cloth as these pioneers and with the closure of Bonner, Micro Avionics, and Orbit, a different R/C manufacturing environment emerged, never to be the same again.
< Message edited by jaymen -- 7/27/2012 11:25 PM >
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Bob Dunhams first radio - 
