District I Report
States
- Connecticut
- Maine
- Massachusetts
- New Hampshire
- Rhode Island
- Vermont
Vice President
Don Krafft Vice President PO Box 1828 Duxbury, MA 02331-1828 (781) 934-6248
Associate Vice Presidents
- James Gilliatt, 533 Lexington Road, Concord, MA 01742-3714, [email protected]
- M.C. McGuffin, 116 Hillview Avenue, Houlton, ME 04730-2312
- Harry S. Newman, 36 Sherwood Drive, Hooksett, NH 03106-1077
- Richard Sherman, 30 High Street, Plymouth, NH 03264-1223
- Andrew Argenio, 3 Sheila Ave., Smithfield, RI 02917
- Bob Wallace, 91 Sylvan Street, Avon, CT 06001-2230
Frequency Coordinator
Joel Chappell 21 Billings Street Milford, NH 03055-3906 Tel.: (603) 673-6240
Mohawk Airlines — Gaslight Service
In my column last month I showed two pictures of Paul Johnson's DC-3 and promised to provide more information about the aircraft.
This is a DC-3 by Paul Johnson and should be at the Maine contest I mentioned in my last column.
Mohawk operated 10 DC-3s from approximately 1950 until the summer of 1962. During this time Convair 240s, 440s, and Martin 404s were also utilized.
The Gaslight service was inaugurated in September of 1960. The service ran both ways between Buffalo and Boston, landing at nearly every airport en route.
There were two aircraft with the fancy paint job and the 1890s interior. The operation was such a success that a third airplane was added with the interior but not the Gaslight paint scheme.
The service provided free Utica Club beer, cheese, and cigars, served by flight attendants in gay-nineties attire. Initially it was for men only, but it soon became a family service as many people thought of it as a tourist attraction and booked flights just for the ride. There was a special section provided so women and children were not in the section of the cabin where beer was served.
The DC-3s were phased out by 1962. I have no idea what happened to them, but I have heard that some went to the Southwest where they were used for smoke jumpers.
I was hired by Mohawk during February 1957 and flew the DC-3 aircraft until they were phased out.
Dave Slagel
In a previous column I ran an article about Dave Slagle's placement in the Precision Aerobatics Model Pilots Association (PAMPA) Hall of Fame. The following is from the PAMPA publication, Stunt News:
"The plain and simple facts are that the 13-year-old Davey Slagle wowed everybody at the first Control Line Nationals in 1946 as he not only flew two airplanes at once, but he was the only person to fly inverted in the Stunt event. He had the highest score of all three divisions (102 to 56 in Open and 53.5 in Senior) and was awarded the new Jim Walker Cup. He repeated these wins in 1947 and 1948 to win the Cup three years in a row.
"Bob Palmer started Davey out in Burbank, California in 1944 with a Sky Baby. It was and is a well-known fact that Davey's parents were quite instrumental in helping him with his airplanes, but it was Davey who held the handle and he was an extremely talented flier.
"Bob Palmer says that Davey came up with the idea of a symmetrical airfoil for his Checkala Roma series of airplanes himself. Mackey in his 'Pioneers of Control Line Flying' also states that, 'It appears that Davey was the first in Southern California and maybe anywhere to use the symmetrical airfoil.'
"After the 1948 Nationals Davey stopped flying Control Line and took up gliders, radio control, automobiles, working for an engineering firm, and later farming."
The following is also from Stunt News, written by Dave Cook:
"I had a very interesting call from Dave Slagle up in Camden, Maine, a while ago discussing some points of U-Control Stunt design. Dave is a PAMPA Hall of Fame member and won the Walker Cup three years in a row in the 1940s and has been flying radio control.
"Through the mail came pictures of Dave's new creations. A little background: back in the 1940s one of the events was the Novelty Event in which the contestant was encouraged to do creative things. One of the things done was to fly two at once in formation stunt.
"If you look closely at Dave's airplanes you will see one marked with a big letter 'R' and the other with a big letter 'L.' Guess what—these ships are set up with throttle control and will be flown in formation stunt.
"This I gotta see. I watched Lou Andrews do this back in the 1940s and my understanding is that Dave did it also in the 1940s."
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
