Telemaster Sales UK
Posts: 52
Joined: 4/20/2008
From: ShrewsburyShropshire, UNITED KINGDOM
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When I was twelve I built my first powered free flight model, a Veron Cardinal, powered by a Mills 75. It's a high wing cabin monoplane design of 35" (90cms) span. The wings were covered in yellow tissue, doped and fuel proofed. I wanted to paint the balsa fuselage in purple but dope in that colour was not available then so I mixed up red and blue dope. It came out brown! But I was really proud of this model, I had built a rubber powered model and I glider before, but this was the best model I had ever built up to that time. I took it to show my Uncle Geoff, who was a great builder and the man who had first introduced me to the hobby and showed me how build. He approved of the model but never saw it fly as he was in the terminal stages of cancer and he died soon afterwards. He was only 35. With my father and another uncle, also an aeromodeller, I took it to Forton Aerodrome, a WW2 training field about eight miles from where I live and where I still fly with the Shropshire Model Flying Club, (see www.smfcinfo.org.uk.) We stood at the intersection of the runways, it was a windless day. After trimming flights I found I could fill the Mills' thimble-like fuel tank which gave an engine run of what seemed like five minutes, and the little model would climb in left-hand cicles until it was a tiny cross in the sky at least 500 feet (150 metres) above our heads before the engine would cut, then the model would stall and it would slowly glide back towards the ground in right-hand circles. I can still see the sun shining through that yellow tissue.
From then on I was hooked. Sure I gave up aeromodelling for years due to the usual reasons, leaving home, going to university, moving to London, sex and drugs and rock'n'roll, and in my case, I really was a semi-professional rock singer, on and off for more than forty years, but aeromodelling is like gonnorreah, once it's in the blood it's there for life: it will burst out again.
I built a Sopwith One and a Half Strutter control-liner in the Seventies, it was too heavy, it flew twice. Then one day, when living in rural North Devon I saw a man flying a model. I stopped the car, asked lots of questions, bought a second-hand radio which had never been used, was given an Irvine 20 car engine which was later converted to aircraft specification and knowing that the Super 60 was the classic British radio I trainer, I went into the local model shop to buy one. The proprietor did not have one in stock but offered me a Junior 60, a 1946 free flight design as an alternative at a discount. I built it and finished it in a rather drab scheme of black, white and Olive Drab parachute nylon, but it flew well and it taught me how to fly. My cousin owns it now, and rather like George Washington's axe, it's on its second fuselage and third tail plane. He still flies it occassionally but it's finished rather more attactively in orange and white these days!
That's why I like vintage models.
Happy Landings
David Davis
SMFC
BMFA Approved Club Level Flying Instructor.
P.S. I am convinced that for people aged over say 45 who want to learn to fly, the vintage/antique/ old-timer model is the best model to get "stick-time" on. Young people seem to be able to manage ARTF 40 powered four channel trainers but they're too difficult to fly for people whose reactions are not as sharp as they once were. Ok, a vintage model won't fly in a wind, but a beginner would not be able to control any model in a strong wind and a vintage model, given enough height returns to it's free flight heritage. If the beginner loses control, all he has to do is cut the throttle and release the sticks and the model will sort itself out.
I use a Radio Queen to teach beginners on. This is an seven-foot (2.1 metre) 1950 design powered by an OS four stroke.
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What does Vintage/Antique aeromodeling mean to you - 
