Quite to the contrary, some of the people mentioned are alive, the others I knew before they passed, and there is the harsh realities of what really went on that was not ,nor ever will be published in a magazine because the hobby periodicals are basically trade advertizements. But this does not change what happened. The history of R/C development is fraught with many unfortunate deeds of individuals taking unfair advantage of each other and the competition, it's fairly cut throat dog-eat dog business that unless you are actually in the industry, you never would know about. The sad fact is I don't have to have an axe to grind for these things to happen, and in reality it had no impact on me directly, as they happened in the 1960s, but truth be know it was not a very rosy picture behind the scenes. If you think the post above is lurid, go read Joe Martins accounts of his days at Micro-Avionics, and Kraft, for some real hair raising stories. What I mentioned is well documented in many sources, so it's not a slanted memory, if you dare go research the F&M and Galatron debacle where one guy tries to steal away Hoovers employees, ugly.

I worked in the R/C industry from 1977 until 1993, at first as a tech, then later as a designer and production engineer. Yopu would not beleive the things that happened, it was really under handed. For example: My boss told me to go buy the competitions product, take it apart, reverse engineer it(meaning draw a schematic and make up a parts list) so we could copy it with some changes and undercut the competition. I was also directed when writing instructions and promotional literature to make exagerated claims and sometimes some flat out false claims about what our product could do. It shocked me until I realized everyone did this to some extent, and then I saw what most public hobbyists would call the "dark side' of the electronics R/C manufacturing industry. I could tell many stories about some of the top R/C car drivers sold their allegiance to the highest bidder, to these guys nothing was sacred.


So therefore, hate to burst your bubble, but even our hobby is not imune to mans continued inhumanity to his fellow man, and the lasting impacts these less than noble deeds ultimately had on our hobby. The Japanese were able to exploit the situation much like Pizarro exploited the fact that the Incas were in a civil war: it weakened them so he was able to divide and concour. Had the Incas been united, he would not have stood a chance. Our R/C industry here in the USA could have done much better and survived to control the technology had it not been so weakend and fractionated by the end of the 1970s. Orbit, died with a fizzle, as did Micro, Citizen-Ship, Min-X, Logictrol, and many more. Each was too buisy competing with each other to get on the same page and work together towards fighting their common enemy, and that weakened them to where they had nothing left in the end and basically left the door open to foreign competitors. Here we were once world leaders and innovators, and it all slipped right out of our hands. Thats not an axe to grind, it's just really tragic, and avoidable.