swift bill

I found a few photos of models built during the police action in Viet Nam, otherwise known as the south east asia war games. Do you have old model pics to share? this is a sky master built from parts from an old partial b25 kit. I used the nacelle for the fuselage. two 049 td s from a crashed sterling control line p38. If I look a little green in this picture it's because I just got back from a flight in the mountains spotting bunkers and marking them with willy pete. We stayed on station and watched the F105s come in and lay napalm down. Got a little air sick after doing some aerobatics, I was in the back seat.

GrnBrt

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Well I didn't have the time to indulge in my addicition while I was there but on a stand down in NhaTrang me and some buddies went over to harass some donut dollies at the Red Cross building and hanging from the ceiling was a Veco Thunderbird in the bones. Now talk about making me homesick as I had one waiting at home with a Torpedo .35. I never did figure out how the guy was able to get it there in one piece and more or less build it, but where there's a will there's a way!!!!!

5th Special forces. 1st Mike Forces. Project Delta, A-125 (callsign-Assassin) Sniper. One shot, one kill, no exceptions!!!!!
'Nam 66&67

swift bill

I was an Air Traffic Controller and had way too much time. My Airplane addiction replaced the other Hobby many were involved in.

BILL

Veco T bird

GrnBrt

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It looks like the T-bird, or possibly the Smoothie, been one hell of a long time since I have seen one. Got to LZ English a few times but it was different in my time then it was in '70!!!! My playground took me to the DMZ, down the Delta and to the line all the way up North. The Ho Chi Minh trail was also a nice tourist stop but the accomentations really left a lot to be desired!!! The one place that I did get to a lot was the A-Shau valley, valley of death as we kept trying to put a base in there but was never really successful. Oh well, long time ago!!!!

swift bill

I have a smoothie new in the box. A Dumas! I had a smoothie kit at LZ English and when we closed English down I shipped it to Phu Bai. By the time I got there someone decided they would keep it. Last year I found one on Ebay, so I bought it. I have a few control line planes but have not flown uc for a long time. Do you fly UC now?

GrnBrt

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No I haven't flown U/C since I got out of the Army and got into R/C in the 70's. Veco kitted those planes prior to Dumas in the late 50's to the early 60's if memory serves me right and lately I have been having a lot of senior moments, ah getting older, what a joy!!! Now that looks like a Ringmaster you're holding there, am I correct??? Had one of those in high school and flew the snot paste out of it with an old McCoy .35 red head, darn, could buy that engine for $5.95 back then! I lived only a few miles from the McCoy factory in Culver City (S. Cal) and they were plentiful for sure.

probligo

Just a slightly different twist to this thread.

One of my favourite rubber power models is an English 1941 (publication date) design called "Wattie".

The story behind it as I heard it was that the designer had materials and built and flew the original in Normandy before evac in the early days of the WW2.

It is a pretty little model and is competitive when built right.

swift bill

Hi Probligo

Every Wednesday a plane from new Zealand would land at Lz English to bring supplies to an orphanage in Bong Song. The crew chief would bring model airplane fuel to me. He also would bring a few bottles of Victoria Bitter. I loved that guy.

Bill

GrnBrt

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Well hello there Probligo, good to see you here! I have never heard of that one and would love to see a picture of it if you could as I love obscure type of planes. I try hard to build something that no one else is doing at the moment but that's becoming a bit more difficult as kits are slim, time to get the old plans out I suppose. I do have an old KeilKraft Super 60 kind of sitting in the corner waiting for me to finish it. The engine for it was designed by my good friend Tony Cincotta in Australia and he only made a limited amount of them and they are a thing of beauty. It's a 2.5 cc and has yet to see fuel in it. The plane is an English design F/F from the UK and he has kitted a few from the original plans using contest grade wood and all hand cut.

Grampaw

This is not about war time model building, but it does involve an airplane, a Marine Stinson L-5. When this happened we were in line for breakfast, with the line stretched across what looked like a road, but was really a dirt runway. We were right in the middle when an aircraft engine cranked up. We saw an L-5 warming up down at Div. HDQ. We paid little attention. Then a voice yelled "aircraft on the way!" Looking around we saw that L-5 coming, tail up and snarling for all it was worth! A voice yelled "Make way, make way!" and the line parted in an orderly fashion, splitting in two, one half swung to the right side, and the other half swinging to the left, opening up just enough to let that L-5 go roaring through the gap and take off!. As the line rejoined we watched the pilot roll that L-5 inverted, make a right turn to head toward a river, where he made another right turn to fly down river still inverted for a mile till he got opposite Division HDQ. area. Making another right turn he flew straight towards the General's tent at flagpole height! Directly over the General's tent he rolled right side up, banked hard left and flew down the valley to disappear behind a hill! He got a big cheer from us! It was our own personal breadfast airshow! I'll bet no one told him that L-5s can't fly very long inverted or he wouldn't have done it. He brightened our day though!

swift bill

This is a photo of the best boss I ever had.

probligo

GrnBrt,

Well, I had to cheat with this...

http://www.rcuniverse.com/gallery/sh...php?photo=9528

I do have at least two photos of my builds of this model (I have built three) but with 17 shoeboxes of film to wade through I got this from the Aeromodeller mag.

(A filing clerk and/or organiser I am not...)

GrnBrt

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Now that's cute!!! It kind of reminds me of one we had here called the Sparky. When you build one of these it really does take more then just slapping pieces together and then have them fly. A friend of mine is into the real small rubber models and I mean real small and it's an art at what he does. He weighs each piece of wood before he uses it and if it doesn't weigh what he thinks it should then he doesn't use it, and he usually sells those to me. Thanks for taking the time to find and post the picture, brings back a lot of memories for sure.