As previously mentioned I was an American 17 year old control line flyer living in Izmir, Turkey in 1973 where RC flying was strictly forbidden by the martial law military government. With the help of a Turkish modeler/stereo builder who had fixed my 2 channel radio which I had poorly assembled from a kit, I had a working radio and one servo.
I had never before seen a radio controlled plane up close, only pictures in magazines and an occasional "drive by" of a model field once or twice with my father when we lived "stateside". There were no RC models in Turkey and there were no RC modelers or fields, I was on my own.
Not to be discouraged, in anticipation of my Turkish friend's success in correcting my radio assembly mistakes, I mail ordered a Sterling Minnie Mambo kit and set to building it. I was a fair builder and the directions were pretty clear and soon enough I was the proud owner of a Sterling Minnie Mambo covered with WAY too heavy Super Coverite and painted with even heavier Turkish automotive lacquer applied lovingly with a brush. It was beautiful but very heavy.
The Minnie Mambo is designed to fly with a Cox .049 engine, but as a control line flyer I was certain that there was no way a little .049 would fly an RC plane like my Mambo. Heck the .049 models I flew on control lines had wingspans of 18 inches or so and weighed 5 to 10 oz. My Mambo weighed at least double this amount and looked 3 times larger. I wanted my Mambo to perform! No way this little engine was going to do what I wanted.
Fortunately my Turkish friend had a Cox .09 and was willing to let me use it as he had only seen an RC plane once before when he visited Germany. He was as keen to see this thing fly as I was.
Without any experience or help, we installed the repaired radio and single servo as best we could figure from studying our magazines. So with the Cox .09 mounted on my shiny blue and white Minnie Mambo, we considered our options for flying fields. As we were bent on breaking the law in the pursuit of RC we required a field obscure and remote enough to allow a flight or two before the police or military figured out what we were up to.
As luck would have it my Turkish friend had recently attended an "open house" function at a Turkish Air Force base about 45 minutes away. Perhaps we could fly there! Telephones were rare in Turkey then, so we decided to just drive out and take a chance.
It was a cool winter day in the low 40's when we loaded up the Mambo in a yellow Murat 124, which was a cheap fiberglass Turkish copy of a Fiat 124 sedan, which itself was a copy of a Toyota Corolla. We set off for the air base along with a couple of other Turkish friends crammed in for company.
As luck would have it, the commander of the airbase was excited at the prospect of promoting aviation to his fellow Turks through model aviation. He was indeed receptive to letting us fly on the property and in fact was almost as excited as we were to see the thing fly "ALL BY RADIO CONTROL" WOW!
Plane assembled, dry batteries installed in the transmitter and receiver, radio on and range check complete, we were ready to start the engine. I should take this moment to explain that none of us had EVER seen a single channel plane fly. Single channel means that the only control you have is rudder, the engine runs FULL BLAST until out of fuel. But many years later, having now flown them myself, I should tell you that they are normally VERY under powered by today's standards. The idea is a hand launch followed by a gentle climb up to altitude. My experience with control line models convinced me that the more power the better, resulting in a Cox .09 on the snout of my Minnie Mambo instead of the recommended .049.
Soon the Cox engine was screaming that song we all know so well and with my Turkish friends at my side and with a small crowd of Turkish officers including the base commander looking on from a few steps away, I felt the pull of the .09 as I faced the bitter cold 10 knot wind. I handed the screaming Mambo to my friend for the launch.
He tossed it forward into the wind and the plane climbed straight out smartly at a 30 degree angle or so. I blipped the rudder to keep it straight and up it went higher and higher, steeper and steeper. All of us gazed up in amazement, our heads tilted back nearly all the way as the plane climbed and clawed slowly forward into the wind. As we watched, the plane continued over onto it's back into a loop and was now headed upside down traveling downwind FAST and soon headed straight down as it started the down side of the loop. By now the plane was behind us headed straight down and picking up speed fast. Except for a blip of rudder at the launch I had not touched the stick as we were all astounded that it actually flew.
Within a few seconds the plane started to pull out of the loop and recovered straight and level 4 ft off the ground setting up for a perfect straffing run on the Turkish officers who were now overcome by their instinctive military training and were either running like heck or hugging mother earth! The plane flew just inches over the officers as they covered their heads with their hands while in the prone position.
The plane began a second loop and started climbing as before, but this time I had the presence of mind to try the rudder. A short blip and I managed to kill a bit of the climb and in the process changed the aircraft heading by 90 degrees before it again climbed up and over onto it's back for another loop.
About this time the Turkish officers were picking themselves off the ground and were brushing the dirt from their crisply starched uniforms, but in their effort to retain their military decorum they lost sight of the "Hun in the sun". The Mambo was just pulling out of the second loop but this time it came from a different direction, again at about 4 feet it pulled out and headed directly for our Turkish allies who just now regained sight of the plane and were once again forced into the dirt.
I finally regained enough composure to try the rudder again at the beginning of the third loop and in so doing I over controlled it and power spun into the ground destroying the plane.
My Turkish friends and I fully expected to spend a considerable amount of time in front of the base commander's desk as he chastised us for high crimes and misdemeanors, or even worse a few days in the base hoosegow! Instead we were treated to lunch at the officers club where we were the subject of great conversation throughout the club with much pointing, laughing and fighter pilot type hand motions of airplanes in flight.
I didn't much care about my demolished Mambo. I had a story to tell for the rest of my life, all for the cost of a bit of balsa!
I would have to wait another year or two till we returned to the states before I successfully flew an RC plane under full control with my very own Orbit Propo rig.
Last edited by 049flyer; 10-23-2015 at 08:17 PM.