Purchased this recently,
How to Design and Build Flying Models by Keith Laumer, 1960, republished 1970. It is lacking the colourful publisher's cover but is very clean, an ex-library book. Appears it wasn't checked out much as the pages lack temporary bookmark corner folds, pencil erasures, with only the slightly dog eared original binding upper edge.
The book is a favorite of mine since the mid 1960's. From various libraries, I checked this book out many times as an 11 year old until 15 years ago.
Out of circulation library book purchased from Thrift Books through the Biblio.com website.
Here is a 63 year old photo of R/C then from this book:
Winter was not an obstacle to R/C flyers even 63 years ago. Photo shows an escapement cabin plane, possibly a DeBolt Livewire Rebel. The wing trailing edge shows shims inserted nearby to reduce decalage, a technique to trim a single channel (rudder only) aircraft to better penetrate windy conditions.
It has an interesting forward introduction. The late William "Bill" Winter, then Chief Editor of the American Aircraft Modeler magazine had this to say:
Originally Posted by Bill Winter
The great failing of the hobby, as it is practiced by millions of men, boys (and girls!) today, is the withering away of resourceful initiative, a natural result of the trend to prefabrication, ready-to-use items, and things that require little or no basic know-how. The modern hobby overlaps more and more with the toy field. If model planes are to remain more than toys, keeping traditional values of training and worthwhile accomplishment, it becomes highly important to understand why and how a plane flies.
Spoken 63 years ago and with today's proliferation of ARF's, how much more true is that today!
