I am the inventor of CA hinges even though several people make that claim when confronted they all admit they got them from me. Let me tell you how they came about.

I worked on Formula I racers with two other modelers in Fayeteville Arkansas, Gary Heithold and Gary Howard. We had quite an assembly line process and we built some very good airplanes. I have great stories about our famous prop machine which was a router motor mounted on a parallelogrm that we could measure RPM, thrust, and current draw on. Made a lot of racket but my point is we worked hard on developing and perfecting our Formula I airplanes.

Gary Heithold worked at Standard Register printing company and he would bring home end pieces and cutoffs which they gave the employees for scratch pads. We had always wanted a way to hinge our airplanes without swelling the wood around the hinge area as the planes were judged for takeoff position by appearance. We had laminated .0064 plywood between a balsa sandwich with hinge slots cutout and that worked well but was very difficult to do.

One day we were all working and Gary Heithold told me to tear off a piece of that scratch pad and hand it to him. Both Gary's had a good laugh as I struggled to tear the paper and was unable to do so. I asked what kind of paper is this and he told me that was a special paper that was a paper and mylar sandwich and that you could not tear it unless you happen to get a sharp fingernail to start the tear. They had recently had a print job that used this and these we scrap pieces. I started fiddling around and soon discovered that it would glue to balsa easily with CA glue and I saw a use as hinges for our Formula I's. This immediately became a hit and I started taking it around to the contests and giving pieces away. At the time Gale Helms who is Steve Helm's father was flying FormulaI and I gave some to him which he passed on to his son. Now Steve having a better business mind than we did immediately saw a commercial use and started selling CA hinges but we used them first and still claim to be the inventor of them which Steve will readily admit..

Now if someone will start a forum on who was the first to use a V' tail on quickie 400's I will be glad to tell you how that came about. I was flying V tails two or three years before anybody else and first flew them at Wichita and I'm sure a lot of the older members can remember that.