History Dime Gliders

By Request
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Dime Gliders


Right up front I want to say that this little story is not a knock on the youth of today. To the contrary. I admire them greatly.

It not only seems like each generation is smarter than the one that came before, they are.
They live in a world much more complex than the one I grew up in and I feel the great majority of them are doing well. I am impressed.

Watching the youth of today with their ever more complex toys and gadgets is fun. No doubt they are learning a lot, but I wonder if they’re enjoying it as much as simple things from simpler times.

Who knows? Maybe the simpler times I’m talking about were complicated too. Complicated in a different way though.

Toys of the 50's were less complex than the toys of today are. At least most of today’s toys.
The computer chip driven games and the like.

Toys of the past had their own complexities. Many of them simple on the surface, but deep down, once you understood them and how they worked, they were as complex as anything around today. Granted, not many wires, resistors, capacitors and chips, but truly understanding them and how they worked and how to make them work the way you wanted them to is where the complexities lie.

And let’s face it, as intelligent and well versed as today’s kids are about their electronic toys, not many of them really know how they work and especially so, how to fix them. I’m not knocking the kids here, I can’t fix em either.

All of which, got me to thinking about one of the most popular toys of the 50's that ever came to be. At least popular as far as the boys were concerned. The loved by all and understood by only a few, the ubiquitous Dime Glider and it’s siblings, the Hornet and the Interceptor.

Never heard of a Dime Glider? Ask your grandpa. He’ll know. I’ll bet he has a few good stories to tell about them too.

For us, at eight years old or so, the Dime Glider was our introduction to the world of science.
Science in the form of aerodynamics. As simple as aerodynamics seems, and the basics are easily learned, it’s an exacting and complex science. With most questions answered today although there’s more than a few answers being avidly searched for. Advanced aerodynamics is not for the faint of heart.

The Dime Glider. Just three words, but ownership of the fabled Dime Glider gained you entry into a club of sorts. Depending on your neighborhood, a small club or perhaps a large one.

Dime Gliders were a simple, all balsa wood glider purchased at a for-real Hobby Shop.
Dime Gliders were never seen at the Dime Store. Which seems to be the most likely place where you could find them. Even so, never at the Dime Store. At least not in my hometown.

And seldom were Dime Gliders brought home by dad. Not unless you had an airplane loving dad that went to the Hobby Shop now and then.

The world of the Dime Gliders was usually introduced by a friend, many times an older guy.
Older as in, if you were eight, he was nine. It’s kind of hard to remember sometimes, but there is quite a spread of knowledge, experience and maturity between you and a guy maybe one year older. A couple of years older and they fell into the realm of "the big guys".
Always was and always will be.

Somebody in the gang would have the bright idea to head for the Hobby Shop. Sometimes it’d just be two of you and other times a whole darned bicycle posse.
Once at the Hobby Shop - and sometimes wondering just what the heck you were doing there - you’d follow the leader up to the cash register and look into a small and somewhat shallow cardboard box full of Dime Glider parts on top of the counter. These weren’t the difficult to build stick framed, tissue covered models, but simply constructed actual flying models of the F80 Thunderjet’s as rendered by Fireball Roberts, a famous airplane modeler of the 40's and 50's.
The deal was pretty straightforward, you’d lay your dime down and pick up the quarter inch thick fuselage, the much thinner wing, vertical stabilizer and horizontal stabilizer. The last two items being known by many, as they were to us, as the rudder and elevator, but on a real airplane the rudder and elevator are most times separate from the vertical and horizontal stabilizer. It made no difference, performance was the thing and this small collection of four basic parts, in most cases, would get you all the performance you could handle.

Performance you didn’t have a clue about, but if the rest of the guys were laying their dimes down and in effect putting their money where their mouth was, you’d invariably join in, fling your dime on the counter and draw out the components required to build your very own Dime Glider.
I say fling, but we were a polite group and the Hobby Shop owner was kind of a crusty old guy. We’d lay our dimes on the counter in a mannerly way and pick the components out of the box.
While he watched.

Later, when you’d learned how to fly the Dime Glider and perhaps gotten to know the Hobby Shop owner a little better, he’d let you dig through the box for the perceived as best components.
Not at first though, the first few times you had to take your chances with the rest and take the parts off the top of the stack.
It did make a difference. Invariably one of the guys in the group would get one that flew way better than all the rest and one of the guys would get one that didn’t fly worth a darn.
It wasn’t always the knowledge factor either. Sometimes you’d get one the Wright Brothers couldn’t make fly. If they couldn’t do it, what chance did an eight year old have?

Construction was simple, quick and to the point. Hold the well made and sanded to a nice round form on the edges fuselage, slide the wing into the through cut, center it, do the same for the horizontal stabilizer and slide the vertical stabilizer into the notch cut for it.

The Dime Store carried Dime Glider pretenders, but they couldn’t hold a candle to a genuine Fireball Roberts F-80. The best of these - and it wasn’t much - looked like a Mig and was cut out from a lesser grade of balsa, a bit rough on the fuselage and not sanded at all. The nose weight was a pinched on piece of tin as compared to the copper coated rod that slid into the drilled nose of the F-80 and was pretty much out of sight.

The Mig styled gliders, even though costing a dime weren’t worth the money and we recognized them as such. They were of poor quality, didn’t stay together well and worst of all they didn’t fly worth a damn.
Harsh words perhaps, but all the Mig could accomplish in flight mode was a simple loop of small diameter, a couple of stalls and generally a hard landing that soon had the nose weight loose and coming off.
Tossing one with a hard throw would many times result in shedding the stabilizers.
One or the other and many times both. Seriously impinging on what little flying capabilities it did have.

The F-80 on the other hand, especially the good ones, would get launched from a hand toss, generally as hard as you wanted to throw it and make huge sweeping loops. Most times one really big one and if you were lucky, another one. Throw it hard enough and you could do three loops. Once the loop was done, none of this stalling out stuff, at least not for the ones that were properly trimmed. When the loop quit, the best ones would bank back toward the owner and glide to a level and soft landing on the grass.
Even flying them over cement didn’t hurt them too much. About the worst thing that happened was the bottom got skinned up a bit. Easily cured by a very short session with a piece of sandpaper.

Trimming, absolutely important on full sized aircraft and equally so on the models, was easily accomplished on the F-80's and darned near impossible on the Mig’s. The Mig had a slot for the wing that was just wide enough for the wing and that was about it. The F-80's had a long wing slot that allowed you to slide the wing fore and aft thereby trimming the airplane how you wanted and if desired, altering the performance characteristics as well.
Wing forward, the F-80 turned tight loops, perhaps did one stall and then landed gently.
All the way back - the preferred position - and the F-80 did very large loops, sometimes another one, rolled off onto a wing on a glide and slid in for a gentle landing every time.

We learned a lot about the intricacies of aerodynamics with these little airplanes.
Slide the wing to the just right place, bend the back edge of the horizontal stab to trim it nose up or down as required and maybe tweak the vertical stab just so to keep it flying straight ahead.
Same thing with the wing, tweak it a touch to stop any rolling off on a wing and it wasn’t long until you had a very stable flying machine. The tweaking sometimes done over the steaming spout of mom’s best teakettle.

Seems like simple stuff, but it took a lot of know how as far as the basics went and you had to remember what you did last time when it flew so well. Owing to the area I grew up in - Ventura, California - a coastal city with widely varying humidity, the Dime Gliders would fly differently from day to day.

Like any other hobby or interest, the siren song of the next step soon beckoned. The next step in the form of the propellor driven, rubber band motor of the Hornet and beyond that, the high flying rubber launched Interceptor. Both of these also made by Fireball Roberts and for sure a step up in the world of aerodynamic complexity for sure.
And a step up in the complex world of finances as well.

A dime could take a kid of the 50's a long way although the Hornets and the Interceptors were a whole other story. These things cost serious money. Fifty cents apiece. It didn’t take much of a math wizard to see that a guy could buy five dime gliders for that.
Even so, it was money - hard to earn for sure - that was well spent in furthering our education as amateur aerodynamicist’s. We didn’t blink an eye at coughing up the fifty cents plus tax for the Hornet.
To some, the tax part was a total and unexpected shock. Dime gliders weren’t taxed as the tax didn’t start until about 24 cents. If you had only a quarter for a quarter item, the one penny tax was an ugly surprise. Welcome to real life I guess.

The Hornets assembled pretty much like our Dime Gliders, flying surfaces slid into the proper places, the wire landing gear with attached wheels placed on the plastic nosepiece, the propellor shaft with bearing slid on and then the nosepiece carrying all the critical gear slid onto the fuselage which wasn’t much more than a hard balsa stick. Make sure the bent wire hook for the rear of the rubber motor was in place and you were in business.
Now that we had performance characteristics and the science of trimming down pat with the Dime Glider F-80's, a whole other component was added to the mix. That of torque.

The Hornets usually flew ok right off the assembly line so to speak. The first flights usually done under the auspices of the older guys that had the powered flight thing down pat. The first flights, usually test glides were done at home in a few cases, but most times in the school yard.
Only a fool would fly these under power at home because most times they’d gain enough altitude to get lost. Or at the least land several houses down the block and getting them back could be tough sometimes. Neighbors weren’t real wild about letting a gang of seven, eight and nine year old’s up on their roofs. Most times though, they didn’t know about it until it was all over.
Test glides were done with the rubber motor unwound. Once it was decided that all was well and there really was room to fly the long legged Hornet it was wind the motor about half way and let fly.

There were some definite subtleties about flying these. No longer was the hard arm thrown toss required. These were two handed aircraft. One hand to hold the wound prop, the other to hold the airplane.
The drill was simple, face the airplane into the wind, let go the wound propellor and push the plane gently out front all pretty much in one smooth motion. If all was well, it would fly up and out in a climbing left turn. And if you were lucky, would glide straight once the prop stopped or best of all, turn right and glide to earth in a gentle circle. When you had one of these, it was usually the envy of the gang as most of them didn’t fly like that out of the box.
The best compliment of all was the utterance of "That’s a good one".

Simple praise in our little group being a touch rare and always appreciated.
Even better would be when you applied all of your hard earned trimming skills and figured out just what the heck the torque was doing to the trim of the aircraft and if you were lucky, you ended up with a good flyer.

The next step up was the full motor windup. Easily noted as the half wind was simply one row of knots in the single loop rubber motor and the full wind a double row of knots. It was fascinating to see the knots build one on the other during the winding, all the while hoping the rubber motor wouldn’t break.
The first few winds being a test of sorts as most times this was when the rubber motors would break. Sometimes solved by going back to the Hobby Shop and buying a new motor, but most times repaired by the simple expedient of tying a knot in it.

A well trimmed Hornet could out fly the Dime Gliders, but if you had one of the extra special, seldom found and not known about until the first test flight Dime Gliders with excellent flying characteristics the Hornet’s didn’t out fly them by much.

Like always though, there were guys who lusted after that last little bit of horsepower and would wind triple knots into the motor. When this was done, one of three things would happen.
The motor would break and many times damage something along the way. In most cases the wing. I never saw an overwound motor break a wing, but it sure took a notch out of a few.
The second thing that could happen would be that the simple fuselage couldn’t stand the stresses of the excess tension and would snap in two. Which usually meant the end of the airplane. And a good parts source for the guys that weren’t as daring. Or as stupid.
The third thing was, and surprisingly so, the whole shooting match would hang together and the most-brave owner would step up to launch. We’d hold our breaths expecting an out of this world flight. The older guys, experienced in such matters would sometimes just shake their heads.
They knew what was coming. They’d been down this road before.

The plane would get launched, the added horsepower, usually not figured upon by the hapless would-be pilot equaled considerably more torque on an overstressed airframe. The prop would spin way harder than it did with a more reasonable motor windup, drop a wing to the left, gain a whole lot of speed very rapidly and smash into the ground hard.
Most times with spectacular and unexpected results. At least unexpected for the brave owner.
The older guys knew what was coming and to a man would stand and watch.
Seldom saying a word. They’d been there. They knew.
History always repeats itself. Especially so for those who don’t listen and those who don’t remember.

Kind of sad to be sure. In just about every case, all the pilot of the hapless airplane wanted out of the extra motor winds was a little longer and a little faster flight. What he got instead was a lesson in torque, aerodynamics in the form of trim changes due to the added torque and the realization that high speeds next to the ground can be very dangerous. For the models as well as the full scale aircraft.

The Interceptors were a little harder to come by than the Hornets were. I’m guessing because the Hobby Shops didn’t carry them like they did the Dime Gliders or Hornets. More than likely because they didn’t sell as well as the Hornets.

Most viewed the Interceptor as just a scaled up Dime Glider and why waste fifty cents on that when a guy could have an airplane with a for-real powered propellor? Granted, the Interceptors did look pretty much like the Dime Gliders with each having F-80 styling although the Interceptor had a bit more styling due to a little more detail ink stamped into the flying surfaces and fuselage. The ink stamping done entirely at the factory.
We realized right up front, up front anyway after we had a year of so flying experience with the Dime Gliders that the Interceptor was much more than an outsized version of the Dime Glider.
It was a very sophisticated aircraft aerodynamically speaking. The best part was, it responded to trim changes and tweaking just like the Dime Gliders did.

The most interesting part to this airplane was it’s launching system. A simple dowel about 5/16" in diameter and 6" long with a strong rubber band at the end. The rubber band loop engaged a notch in the lower front of the Interceptor fuselage, the tail of the plane was gripped, drawn back much like a slingshot, aimed straight up and let fly.
Right up front, this doesn’t sound like much, but the big secret was the Interceptor’s folding wings. That, along with a vertical launch that put it about 150 - 200' up gave the Interceptor an altitude advantage that the Dime Glider and Hornet could only dream about.

The folding wing mechanism was a study in well engineered simplicity. The wings were hinged at the root - the root being at the fuselage end - and had a pivot as well.

Assembly was simple. When you got the Interceptor out of the box it came in, the wings were folded flush against the fuselage and the horizontal and vertical stabs were separate. You would carefully unfold the wings which now had the wings chord - or width - vertical as compared to the fuselage’s horizontal orientation. With the wings unfolded, you rolled them to the horizontal position as they would be for flight. Installation of a single rubber band in small hooks on both the wing and the fuselage would hold the wings in the proper in flight position. The horizontal and vertical stab were installed the same as the Dime Glider and Hornet.
Then the initial test glides would be made. If the airplane was anywhere near the proper trim and it seemed the Interceptors almost always were, they would glide a long ways compared to the Dime Glider.
Due to the simple fact that the wing loading was considerably less on the Interceptor than it was on the Dime Glider. This due to the larger flying surfaces on the Interceptor and not a whole lot more weight.
All of which spelled the recipe for disaster or some exciting and beautiful to watch flying.

Even the large expanse of the school yard wasn’t enough for this long ranging bird. The best thing to do when we got one of these, was to ride a ways out of town and into the farm lands to the east and fly it there. It was a thing of beauty to watch.
The launch, as mentioned, a straight up rocket shot. Once at apogee, with the plane virtually motionless, the wings would gracefully unfold, rotate into flying position and the airplane would roll into a glide. A glide that at times covered some amazing distances.
We were always glad we had our bikes to chase down an Interceptor as sometimes it could be quite a chase. To our minds and our eight year old legs, a motorcycle would have been a most fine answer to flying our airplanes. If we had one of those, we’d never lose an airplane again.

Of course the usual happened. Sometimes we got lazy or overconfident and passed on riding out of town just to fly the Interceptors Figuring we’d just fly them at the schoolyard and use a short vertical launch.

As usual, it didn’t take us long to roll into competition mode. With the short launch, we’d find that guys with Hornets and even the much loved Dime Gliders were outflying our expensive and sophisticated Interceptors.

The die was cast and it wasn’t long until we were making the launches higher and higher until the inevitable happened. Somebody, and sometimes it was yours truly, would make a full power launch that was destined to put the other would be schoolyard pilots in their place. Where their place was, I wasn’t sure, but first place is where I wanted to be.
Like you’d expect, the Interceptor, with a whole lot of altitude to trade for distance would escape the environs of the schoolyard and glide off into the surrounding neighborhood. Many times beyond the surrounding neighborhood. Way beyond the neighborhood.

We’d gone beyond learning about aerodynamics. Now we were learning about thermal’s, wind waves and the like.
More than a few guys watched their Interceptors join the hawks, climb out of sight and sail off to who knows where.
To a good home we always hoped.
Heck, if a guy found one of these usually like new airplanes, all he needed was a stick and a rubber band for launching and he was in business.

No one that I knew, and that includes me, ever had an Interceptor die of old age or succumb to the invariable crash damage that happened when one of our airplanes was strained through the schoolyard cyclone fence.
All of them that I ever saw come to an end, simply sailed off into the sunset.

Modern youth, at least those that will take the time to read this little story may wonder what it’s all about. Especially with their many faceted, multi-colored, excellent graphics electronic games.
We had games too.

Games in the form of balsa airplanes, a beautiful, sometimes multi-colored sky to fly them in and best of all no electronic gimcrackery.

Just the wind in your face, a small bit of sophisticated aerodynamic knowledge within our little minds and the whole world in our grasp.

Nothing quite like a lazy summer day, laying on the grass and watching your Dime Glider, Hornet or best of all the high performance Interceptor flying into the reaches of who knows?

The stratosphere at least.

Our opinions anyway.

And one I still hold......
-<>-


February 2002

 

Wow! Thanks for the retrospective; I hadn't thought about these things for years. I have to admit that I didn't even recognize the names of these things until I read your piece. Then, I remembered I had all of them! The only thing I can add is that a couple of buddies and I improved on the "Interceptor". We planted a 4X4 post in the ground, went to the Hobby Shop (are there still any of those around), and bought 30 feet of the rubber band material used to make the rubber band planes fly (it was available in bulk) and made about a 6 strand launching rig. The first time we tried it, we ruined our "Interceptor". The second time, we were more careful, and got a good launch off. As you say, we never found the plane again. Boy, it went off really good. Thanks for the remberances of 1950's Richfield, Minnesota.

 

Great read..........It brought me back to being a chump kid with the balsa wood planes and riding to the "city" to buy the fancy stuff and then I found "model rockets"........I am pretty sure that the stuff that I made on the kitchen stove as a kid to make planes/rockets go faster would be frowned upon today.......and lucky enough I never burned the house down.

Chris

 

couldn't resist...

 

Wow what a post. Are you sure that you didn't grow up in NW Austin?....seems like we were doing the same flying. Mine went on to gas powered free flight/u control/RC(when you had to make up your own "electronics" from a Heath kit).....then a bunch of years later to build a Spad IV that I could get in and fly. That progressed into a Stearman, that I am currently the "caretaker" of.....it all started with that Dime Glider!!!!
Thanks for the well written piece....brought back a bunch of memories...good ones!!!
Skot

 

I'm only 28 and I remember those. I could get them at the local five and dime near my grandparents house. I wonder if you can still get them.

 

Gee...
Balsa gliders and Heath kits.
Thanks for the memories, guys.

 

forget about the hobby shop...the coolest stuff came from the local drug store....was just telling my kid about getting some of the coolest stuff , especially model cars, from the corner drug store ....as well as my first cherry coke..

 

I remember those and for a while you could even get them in cereal boxes.

 

I got a few Interceptors when they began to make them again in the mid-1980s. That thing was sooo much fun!!!
I guess they are being made again...SOLD OUT though.
http://www.americanjuniorclassics.com/ajstore/Interceptor404.html

 

Yep. Over 40 yrs ago, I too played w/ those in Mazooma1's post. Thank's C9, it bring's back easier, simple time's.

 

The 70's, The Red Baron hobby shop in Camarillo, and the Delta Dart => aerobatic fun. After a 40-ft. or so loop, they'd easily end up on a neighbor's roof and if you used a rake to get it down it'd usually end up in the raingutter.

Thanks,
Kurt

 

Ya - thats it spend more time digg'n then flying

 

A little OT, but a GREAT SITE!!!

www.theplanpage.com

 

Used to take those dime gliders, tape two Black Cat firecrackers to either side of the fuselage, light 'em and toss it...blew its wings to smithereens...just like a real plane getting shot down...

R-

 

Man, I forgot about those.

I'm younger than C9 but the local hobby shop still had the balsa gliders (rubber and human powered) but they cost about $1.00 for the basic one and $5.00 for one with a rubber band motor.

The local drug store had styrofoam versions of the balsa glider with a little plastic propeller on the nose weight that spun. The cost $0.50 and wouldn't fly worth a damn. 2 hard nose-in landings and they broke.

Shawn

 

Being a young guy, well a kid to be frank at 20 years of age, I've never seen the balsa ones in person. Kind of a shame since those styrofoam ones sure don't fly too good. But I've gotten my hands on some other cool toys from the 50's and 60's through my parents and their parents. The mechanical stuff from back then was the greatest, great thing if you want to raise an aspirering hot rodder!

-Andy

 

Yup. I was crazy about planes living here in the Air Capital of the World (Wichita, KS).
Had the balsa stuff, the rubber band powered stuff, foam ones weren't invented yet.
Had rockets, line control planes - all of it.
And yes - eventually it would fly away, crash big time, or be destroyed purposely.
What great fun!!

 

Timeless, i could never get a "good one" when I was a kid.

 

Great post!!

From my experience, dime gliders led to me and my Dad building R/C gliders, then R/C planes, boats, cars and eventually led to me becoming a fabricator for defense department contractors building manned and unmanned aircraft. I can draw a direct correlation from dime gliders to a rewarding career. Thanks Dad and thanks Dime Gliders!

 

i remember those gliders, and im only 19...my brothers and i used to go to the local hobby store (closed down) all the time and check out if any "new" models came in...kids will always be kids...just can't get away with as much as years ago..

 

Wow, I spent my younger years in the late 70s and 80s. I cant remember what pushed me toward aircraft but , well something did. Paper darts, then more elaborate designs just managed to keep the interest until one birthday I got an Australian version of the dime glider.
WOW! A REAL airplane! I flew that sucker to death but then couldn't afford a new one. Along came grandpa to the rescue, the wings had 'clapped' on a particularly hard launch. In his hand was a raw length of balsa wood.
Whats that? Make my own??
It was all over from then on. Without knowing about the bought kits I was making my own interceptors, though a stick with wings wasn't enough for me. I was finding 3 views of aircraft and making flat 3d models of Sabers, P-40s, Spitfires etc. Each one getting more elaborate with complete surface detail drawn on in fine liner. Nose art on all of them!!
Then I wanted a P-38, wow that was a learning curve. It was the largest 'chuck' glider I ever built. a foot and a half long and 2 foot wide. All control surfaces were hinged with wire so I could trim it. Problem was my arm wasn't strong enough to throw it.
At this time I was mowing lawns for money so a trip to the hobby store fixed the launch. The thickest most serious rubber band motor I could buy in bulk and I was in business. A few test launches and that sucker was going 250-300 ft in the air.
Time for a full launch. Whamo did that thing climb! So high that we lost it from sight for a while. Someones keen eyes caught sight of it as it did three lazy circles of the field we were in, where it caught a thermal and sailed off to god knows where never to be seem again.
I was seriously bitten then. They kept getting more and more elaborate as I learned about aerodynamics. Swept wings, laminar flow and NSC wing structures all hand sanded into solid balsa.
Then I had an unexpected boost to my lawn mowing business, a lawn edger my father bought! I could charge more now, this put me into the big league of full structure tissue covered aircraft!
Paul K Guillow kits were my 'forte', though the first few were decidedly average. I spent many hours laboriously refining these kits to fly. Some were magnificent to fly others were dogs like my Spad, always rolled to port. I trimmed, re trimmed, carved an opposite rotating propeller but never fixed it.
The bigger the field the better, the high winged monoplanes were always the easiest for obvious reasons and I had some that would fly for 15 or more minutes. That was cool but I wanted speed. My future brother-in-law was my best mate at the time came up with some plans for a Macchi Castoldi MC-72 float plane, rubber band powered and with REAL working counter rotating propellers!!
It took a couple of months to build that from scratch, I was soooooooo careful with that build and in that time doubled my knowledge of construction by reading as much as I could. The practice glides for that were worrying, it had a way low aspect ratio and I was worried that it wouldn't work that well. The test were nerve racking short downward flights!
BUT then the half power trial shocked me and my mates. Fast? No this was lightning and flew straight and level for the full distance of the Aussy rules football oval! I HAD to go full power so we headed out to the fields. With shaking hands I gave it a full wind. By this time I had leaned that a better wind was to be had by oiling the rubber and having it very loose in the model. Someone would hold the model while I stretched the motor taught and wound it up until it pulled the prop section back onto the model.
I once again stood there with trembling hands prior to launch, and launch I did.
The MC-72 tore away from me like a rocket ship, slowly climbing for height of maybe 50-60 ft with a roaring from the contra rotating props. I swear that flew dead straight for 500 yards until the last seconds in the air where it stalled to port and spun into the tall wheat.
I never flew that again, I was king of the wooden models and didn't want to risk it!
At this time I was also interested in bigger and did some plans for a Seafury and a Lysander both with 1 meter wing spans. Though they looked good the design was a little light on both and they didn't fly too well. The Fury was destroyed in a bad launch and the Lysander became a wall hanging lest it joined the Fury in its own demise.
However the MC-72 had signified a change in my hobby, no longer did I want graceful flight, I wanted power. That Christmas all my pocket money and Christmas money was 'blown' (My fathers words) on a Cox .049 powered PT-19 U-control.
I have more hours on that thing than you average 747 instructor pilot has in a 747....................... well maybe not but me and my mate flew that thing every chance we had.
Of course being hard plastic all this air time, well hard landings took its toll. I had to make up new undercarriage, new elevators (The horizontal stab and elevators were one part. Until I decided to build an up sized 3D silhouette model for the motor. That model was my all time favorite aircraft a CAC Mk 12 Boomerang fighter. What a dog as a model! I had to enlarge the tail surfaces that much it looked comical!
(When scaling down to have effective control the flying surfaces need to be enlarged approx 30%)
These things got more and more elaborate (Seeing a pattern here?) and the motors got bigger and bigger. Always a WWII fighter with a heavy Australian slant on them.
This was fun but you always needed one other to launch the model, I didn't always have someone to help there. By now I was working 6 days a week part time after school and Saturdays at my fathers radiator shop. It was time to step up to play with the big boys.
I bought myself a second hand radio control Cessna 152 look alike, 40 size motor and more than I knew how to handle. I joined a club, I had to take my model apart and ride an hour and a half to get there but I learned to fly. It was soon learned that I had more experience building and I put a lot of time and effort into that so soon I was building models for other guys. The rich (To me) would pay a lot of money to have a model built well, or barter parts for the work. This lead me to detailing models and eventually to building large scale aircraft models for museums!!
As always I kept building better and better models for myself. I didn't use plans but preferred to take a real aircraft, scale it down and modify it to work in scale.
My final masterpiece was a 1/4 scale CAC-12 Boomerang........ again. This model was, to me magnificent. The level of detail I put into it was as good as any museum model. I had the confidence in my flying that I believed I probably wouldn't crash it.
It was passed by the club tech officer and test flown by the club test pilot, both were happy with it but once again the tail surface size made it a little tricky to fly. (I hadn't enlarged them quite as much as I should to keep the detail and look of the real aircraft)
My first flight was, well.... it just was. It was to be a couple of circuits like any new real aircraft would do. It got off the ground nicely and did the first circuit. I was on the down wind leg of the second when it happened. Servo lock.
I had no control over the model, it began a slow roll to starboard while loosing altitude. Full power with a model that size was fast, a converted chainsaw motor on nitro......
I did everything I could, even turned off the hand set and turned it back on. Flicked every switch, swore and began to cry (Well, no I didn't).
I thought it was over, I could feel the horror of the ensuring accident. The two seconds that had passed from the lock out to now was an hour long when, bang It finished the roll and I had control only meters from the ground.
I landed it as soon as I could, shut it off and have never flown another powered model since.
It now hangs from the roof of a hobby shop in Melbourne in all its detailed glory. I sold it to a friend and he was never game enough to fly it either!!
Being in the 80s at this time most of my school friends were too busy playing Frogger on hand held computer game consoles or on those new fangled computers. I finaly got a computer in about 1998!!
I wonder who enjoyed their childhood more and also wonder if this helped me more than a game did my mates?
C9, thanks for the trip into memory lane, I have a few plans and motors stored away, maybe its time to get them out and re-live those times again?

Cheers,
Doc.

 

The big red one in the middle and the little blue one just to the right of it! Bought MANY of those back when I was a kid. Used to collect pop bottles and cash them in at the market by my house. CarToons and airplans everytime went in there!!! Much simpler days back then...

 

balsa gliders and u-control......oh the memories. We still have dads old u-controls hanging on the garage wall. In 1989 or so dad got them back out with my lil bro and started flying u-control again and actually got a few neighbor hood kids involved.They flew across the street next to a cemetary in their empty side lot with permission from the grounds keeper and people driving by would stop onthe side of the road sometimes 4-6 cars all end to end to watch. Dad was really good and could do all the maneuvers that would make the kids ooohh and aaahhh.
FortSmith is the home for FOX motors also.

 

My little brother and I played with these, too. Even dabbled in model rockets.

 

I see I wasn't alone in my aerodynamic endeavors.

For me, a little something to do until I got old enough for cars.

With a semi-custom 50 Ford coupe down the street, a roadster going by almost every day on the main drag through town and dad's interest in cars along with his friends who built some interesting stuff I was hooked.


Far as the airplanes go, I think you can still find contest hand launch balsa wood models.
Amazing how well these things fly.

Went through a few Jet-X solid balsa models as well.
First 2 went off somewhere and the third one came back cuz I got smart enough to stamp my name and address on the wing.

Several months after losing it, a farmer showed up with the still in good shape plane and said he'd found it back in his orange orchard next canyon over from the launch site.

Built a few Guillows models, none of them flew as well as the Hornet.

Then a bunch of U-Control, always badly over horsepowered.
If the kit called for a 19, we used 35's and 40's.
Still have a pair of matching, never run McCoy Redhead 29's that were to go on a Twin Mustang.

Built a couple of R/C during the first winter we lived in Central California.
Too cold and foggy to do much else and we were in a rental looking for a house.

Last model plane I was going to get involved with was the F5, a potential Navy twin radial engine fighter from the WW2 era.
I bought plans for a 40" wingspan plane and had them blown up to a 60" wingspan.

Once the shop was up and running in the new house, that was it for model planes.

Kinda fun to spin the roadster out to the local flying field near the airport and see what they're building nowadays.
Something else they are, both in size and type.

Nuff for now, a little rewriting and out to the shop to finish the diff swap....

 

They're still available!!! I ordered a couple for my grandkids!
http://www.presentsforpilots.com/balsa-toy-gliders.html

 

Well, here's my dime glider story.

I was at my grandmother's house one evening when I was about 9 yrs old. There was a gathering of family members there that day and I had spent most of the day outside flying gliders with a cousin that was my age.

After dusk that evening, a street light came on in front of the house and we noticed some bats had started circling the street light. We viewed this as an opportunity for air to air combat and got the gliders out again to dogfight with the enemy bats.

A neighbor lady saw us out there throwing something and called the police, telling them that we were throwing rocks, trying to break out the street light.

The police fired in, and our Dad's happened to be inside involved in a game of penny ante poker. This was a time that ANY form of gambling was illegal in this part of the country. The scramble ensued inside to cover evidence, pennies flying everywhere, sure they were busted and wondering how they were tipped off.

As the explaining was going on outside, and Dad and uncles found that it was their delinquent kids that caused the ruckus, they turned on us like a pack of wolves in a good show of responsible parents scolding their rotten kids. "I don't care if it's balsa wood, NEVER throw ANYTHING around a street light!!, blah, blah blah.."

After things settled and the folks being relieved that their high stakes illegal gaming operation had dodged the bullet, we got another more calm sit down about doing anything that may even be mistaken as doing something bad......particularly when Dad is inside doing something illegal.

 

Wow is right. You sure got his rubberband wound up.

Great stories, Doc.

Thanks,
Kurt

 

The wood ones and the lil Styrofoam whooies they were neat ,,til the wing got bent,,lol

Was'nt there a wooden Red Baron one too ?