I have long been intrigued by this particular design and may well build one one day. A modern programmable radio could emulate the switcher boards operation and much detail is given in the original article in American Modeler July/August 1966, particularly about which rpm to adjust for each flight phase (take-off, cruise, stunt, etc...) I love the warning about not applying full throttle for take-off, and can imagine the quick resulting loop into the runway with all that power and up-thrust. An electric version would allow for fine control of the rpm.
Do you remember how well it flew?

The large amount of rudder area below the fuselage looks very modern.

First "flying" model was in 1952 or so with a Comet J3 with a 3 or so foot wingspan. Rubber powered and tissue covered. Did not ever get it up very high. Lots of test glides and such. Problem might have been the wind in Kansas (all the time).

First powered plane was ringmaster Jr. with a Wasp .049. Really did not have much success with 1/2 A, maybe again the wind in Kansas.

First success was Sterling P-51 with a K&B .29 Greenhead. Then on to scratch built combat with a Fox .35, and a Kenhi Bobcat with the K&B. The Bobcat was the last CL I ever flew. then on to RC much later in 1983 with a plans built Big Bird II and a Kraft KP-5c.

Richard

My first ever plane was a 14 in span scale Stampe biplane which never flew other than suspended from the cloth drying line - notice the clothpin and the plastic disk rotating prop in the picture :cool:!
I was 12 at the time...
At the end of the year (1955) my friend and I built each a 36 in span glider named Zinzin from a series of articles published in the full-size French magazine Aviation Magazine. The picture is of one I built recently.
This flew well and many times from the side of a hill wherefrom we had hitherto only flown the neighbour's hens.
(Just take a hen, put its head under one wing, hold it tight while rocking it like a baby and walk to the top of the hill. The hen seems to fall asleep. That's where the fun part is: throw the poor animal off the side of the hill and watch it wake up in mid-air and flap its wings desperately to slow its fall. We eventually had to give this up when a hen broke a leg and the neighbour got very annoyed :mad:)
The following year, I bought a Jaguar 2.5cc diesel engine during a student exchange stay in Germany and flew it successfully many times in an own design controliner. The model was 26 in span, weighed just under 20 ounces and the prop was a 9x6. In those days, it was no problem to get ether from the local pharmacy :cool:
Then my friend and I joined the local model club and flew much free-flight glider, rubber and power as well as controline.
Radio control came seven years later in 1963 with home-built radio and own-design rudder-only Tee-Dee 020 powered low-winger named Bombette. It flew well and many times at first with escapement, then pulse propo. After that it was all plain sailing, or was it :confused::) And I have never stopped building and flying models ever since.

Wonderful stories, JMP, thanks!

I remember being almost desperate to get something to really fly after many, many failures with Keil Kraft, Guillow and small Jetco kits. Finally I scratch built a tow line glider from plans in FM magazine, took it out to a cow pasture at the end of my street, climbed over the barbed wire, and towed it up like a kite. It sailed off circling and drifted over a newly plowed field. I slogged after it in my galoshes when I realized it wasn't coming down. Every so often I'd pause to admire it as it circled overhead with the sun shining through the tissue. It went 3/4 mile, slowly drifting and circling, and I got it back. What a triumph!

Jim

First RC was in 1973, Top Flite Headmaster, Enya .29 and Kraft 5 channel sport.

My actual FIRST plane was an Astro Flight Malibu glider but I was trying to teach myself and didn't have much luck. The Headmaster was the plane I "soloed" on.

Don

I do remember seeing a little bit of that Windmill flying. Wild would be a mild term. Continuous loops almost superimposed. Off the ground in about it's own length. Things nobody at the club field had ever seen a single channel plane do before.
And the pilot and builder sold it off a couple days later. I think it took him that long to get he knees to stop shaking, and to start breathing again. Apparently, setting up and handling that switching position set-up on reeds was almost as bad as remembering how to thumb a cascaded compound escapement. For those who never experienced one, there were two specially constructed escapements (explained in other posts and threads) that were constructed to allow joining to provide left and right rudder, and up and down elevator, and even the ability with what was called "Quick Blip" to drive a 2 or 3 position throttle escapement depending on how many times you pushed and held the transmitter button I always seemed to find the timing of the button varied as the rubber bands wound down, with the rudder changing at a quicker rate than the elevator. I was always somewhat jealous of the guys who could fly one of those equipped planes about as well as if it were equipped with reeds.

First RC was in 1960 - a local rudder-only design called the "Separator".. the designer (Ben Harr) said "it separates the men from the boys".. single channel, Bonner escapement and a home built transmitter (it was in a garden cart!).. http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=1942232

Later, I had a foam winged Fokker D7 with Rand GG: http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=1942233 Then, a Goldberg Falcon 56 (this was my first "digital" - 4 channel CitizenShip): http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=1942234. Then, in the early 70's, it was a TF Contender and a Midwest Sweet Stik: http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=1942235http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=1942236

Things have improved so much today, but it was still fun learning and experimenting back then!

My first plane was a Goldberg Falcon 56 in 1969 and the radio was a secondhand homebuilt Digi-Trio. I put a bunch of flights (and crashes) on it until I enlisted into the Air Force in '71. I've still got the Falcon but due to the age of the glue joints, it's no longer flyable.

I sold the Digi-Trio to an AF buddy in order to buy a newer rig but got reassigned to Alaska before I could do so. I can sure kick myself for letting that old Digi-Trio go! Not that it would still be useable, but for the nostalgia.

Harvey

My first plane was a Falcon 56 with an OS 19 RC engine controlled by a kit built Kraft receiver 4 channel and Kraft 4 Channel transmitter.
The first flight was a 12 foot loop back into the 12 inches of snow. That plane survived moving to Arkansas only to hit a flatbed hay trailer
several months later: only the receiver came through.
John Smith

My first R/C plane was a Thermic 50 with a Mattel pulse single channel radio. My first powered plane was a Sig Kadet 3-channel with a Veco .35 and a World Engines Blue Max radio I built from a kit with help from my Dad. Great memories in this thread!

Steve

My first RC plane was Ace pulse proportional equipment installed in one of those supermarket foam gliders. I winched the glider in the air by running. That was enough for about a 20 second flight.

My first glow R/C plane was the Midwest Lil' Tri-Squire with a Cox Medallion .049 (1970 or '71, I believe). Flew well on a single-channel MRC escapement radio. Memories!

Your very Ace pulse transmitter is still in use, flying an Ace Whizard with Adams actuator.

Its nice to know its in good hands JMP. That's the same actuator too.

First r/c plane around 85 without much flying was a Schweitzer motor glider with an MRC digital 2 channel on channel 4. My sister would tow it down the street in front of the house with her bike. Managed a couple 10 second flights. Eventually moved up to receiving a crashed Hal Debolt Live Wire Jenny in 86. Fixed it up with a 4 channel Futaba Conquest and on OS 30, and with a little bit of a fortunate occurance, Norm Goyer - former editor of Scale R/C Models, wasn't sure as it's been a while, but was able to get some initial instruction from him and was soloing 3 months later. His son, Robert Goyer is the chief editor of Flying magazine, got to fly some of the vintage ibm flight sims with him at their house for a while.

My first RC was a Goldberg Ranger 42 with a Heathkit GD-19. Power was an O.S. Pet .09.

I got very adept at gluing foam parts back together while learning to fly....usually the tail would get snapped off during landings. Eventually built uip a balsa fuselage and tail and used the ranger wing. This was powered by an OS Max 15 III

Second plane was a MIdwest Little Stick with an OS 25, same radio.

http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=1954459

1973 - Falcon 56, Enya 45, World Engines Expert 5 ch. A few Sterling, Guillow's, and Cox control line kits before that.

Why would aybody put a .45 on a Falcon 56 when it was designed for half that much power?

Harvey

I bet it was fine with that engine. By 1973 Goldberg had beefed up the design a bit for larger engines, plus a World Engines radio was quite a bit heavier than current radios and an Enya 45 of the time had about half the power of a current 45 and was much lighter. Sounds pretty reasonable to me.

Jim

My first so called RC plane was scratch built from Mechanics Illustrated plans and I don't remember what it was called. This was in the early 60's. The airplane was quite large with a 70 something inch wingspan and was powered by a McCoy 19 C/L engine. It was covered with silkspan as I couldn't afford silk and was doped with airport leftovers my brother brought home. Being a ham, I built my own single channel radio and it used an escapement for rudder only control.

I sort of flew that airplane several times on the family farm .... or at least I got a few what seemed like controlled turns and circuits of the field ... that is farm field! It would always end in complete lack of control when vibration would get to the escapement, it would chatter and unwind the rubber band. The resulting crashes were never too bad as the airplane was extremely forgiving. Later I gave up on that radio and just flew that big airplane free flight with far greater success than when I tried to control it. Later attempts with different equipment were more successful and of course everything changed when I got my first proportional radio in 1970.

A Mk-II with a K&B 45 doesn't sound unreasonable. I had a later version which I flew with a modern Futaba 4 channel and a Fox .40. I remember my first proportional radio from World Engines had an airborne weight of 28 ounces. You needed power to fly anything with it. In fact, before I went into the USAF, there were people at our club field setting up the original Falcon 56 with Kicken' Duck systems with loads of relays and Mighty Miget motors to get rudder, elevator, and throttle from single channel radios. They had so much wiring and components, and batteries, they needed to hand launch them with OS .30 and .35s. That first version had a narrower fuse than the later versions.

Harvey,

That was when I was in the Army, station in Korea. It was a Falcon 56 mk-II and the Enya was the only engine available in the craft shop at the time. My instructor wouldn't let me touch the throttle so it was flown nice and slow. It was a nice flying plane with the Enya.

Ron

Korea? When and where? I was at Osan in 1996. Interesting assignment.

Harvey

In 1968 my dad got involved with the guys who founded Delta Systems RC cars. They also wanted to produce RC plane radios. Our first RC plane was a Midwest 'Lil T modified to two channels flown with a Delta Systems HOME BUILT 7 channel RC Radio. We just donated this radio to the Golden Years RC Car museum in California

http://static.rcgroups.net/forums/at...27T%201967.jpg