Flying for Fun 2003/04

April 2003 67
D.B. Mathews
F l y i n g f o r F u n
909 N. Maize Rd., Townhouse 734, Wichita KS 67212
INSPIRED, CHALLENGED, and
Chagrined: Competitions may be like wars in
that they stimulate technical advancements.
The 1948 Nationals certainly motivated me to
make some huge advances in what I wanted
from Control Line (CL) models.
After hours of studying ads for the new
concept, light structure, large area, moderate
power, and designs becoming available in kit
form, I selected the Madman, Sr. by
Ad for the four kits of Burbank Manufacturing, published in the September 1948 Model
Airplane News, contains “Johnsonbilt” but does not mention the designers.
This 1952 MAN ad features the Kenhi kit line (less Free Flight Badger). See Joe
Wagner’s comments in text. The Buzzer’d construction was exceedingly complex.
Yates/Burbank Manufacturing instead of the
Go-Devil by Palmer/Burbank or the Super
Zilch by Saftig/Berkeley. J.C. Yates’
exhibition with the Stearman had more than a
little to do with my decision, but no less
significant was the Madman design’s beauty.
Ultimately I built several of those other
designs and many dozens of others, and I just
had more fun than normal people when doing
it all.
I ordered a Madman, Sr. from Crescent
Model Shopping Los Angeles for the princely
sum of $10 plus $1 shipping and handling. In
1948 dollars that was an expensive kit, but it
turned out to be worth every extra penny.
This was quality from the word go—beautiful
wood and die-cutting, excellent hardware and
accessories, and what sticks in my memory
even today were the formed leather fillets for
the wing/fuselage joint!
These fillets were strips of what must have
been shoe leather, with rough surfaces on two
sides to be glued to the joint and a smooth,
concave surface for the outside. In that day
and age, the best fillets we could come up
with were multiple layers of nitrocellulose
cement (Ambroid, etc.). There were no
epoxies, microballoons, or much in the way
of fillers of any kind except plastic wood,
which shrunk at least 50% with all sorts of
cracks in it when it set.
I have never seen anything that worked so
well before or since, and I have always
wondered what exactly that material had been
adapted from and why it wasn’t available as
an accessory item.
Even in the hands of a 16-year-old, the
Madman turned out to be rather attractive and
was certainly in marked contrast to the “brick
on lines” type of models I’d been flying.
There is no beating the sense of
accomplishment one gets from creating a
model airplane from a box of pieces; that was
true then, and it’s true now.
The Madman flew far better than I was
capable of flying it. I think I crashed it on the
third or fourth flight. Somehow that part of
the memory seems to be gone. I wonder why.
In the following years I built and flew
such diverse designs as a bunch of Super
Duper Zilches from the Berkeley kits, then I
cut the parts using the kit parts for outlines.
There was also a Stunt Wagon by deBolt, an
Over EZ by Casburn, Custom Cruisers by
Sullentrop, and the Veco Indian series of CL
models: the Brave, Warrior, Chief, Papoose,
and Squaw.
Some of those designs were pure fun and
others were major disappointments, but all
brought many delightful and fulfilling hours
of building and flying. How fortunate all of us
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68 MODEL AVIATION
who were caught up in the modeling craze of the 1940s and 1950s
were to have something to pour our energies into—particularly
considering the directions those energies could have led us.
For fun I’ve selected some magazine ads for kits of the period I’ve
been writing about. This led me to ask Joe Wagner—who was in the
middle of most of the Southern California modeling activity in the
time period—for an explanation of who Burbank Models was and why
it seemed so short-lived. Following is Joe’s explanation.
“Some time in 1947, several members of the Lockheed Model
Airplane Club decided to start up a model kit manufacturing
enterprise. The main participants were Howard ‘Hi’ Johnson, J.C.
Yates, Bob Palmer, Joe Wagner, and Cedric Galloway. Other
contributors were Henry Orwick and Bob Enright (who provided some
of the start up capital).
“The company was named Burbank simply because that’s where
they were. They produced four kits: the Madman, Jr. and Sr. and the
Go-Devil, Jr. and Sr. The Johnsonbilt
appellation that appears in the ads was Hi’s
way of attaining ‘equal billing’ with the
designers’ names on the kit labels, because Hi
had done practically all the kit engineering
and tooling.
“In 1948 Bob Palmer lost all the fingers of
his right hand in a die cutting accident. That
put an end to Burbank Manufacturing’s
operations. Later Hi and Bob were enticed by
Gilbert Henry to add their assets and talents
(plus some cash money) to the then new
Henry Engineering Company—first called
Heco then after another, earlier Heco outfit
complained, changed to Veco. (That allowed
the use of the company’s oval logo to still be
used with only minor changes to the art
work.)
“Gil Henry treated his employees [poorly],
and so we left. First Bob (back to Lockheed’s
model shop), then me (to Lockheed
engineering) and then Hi.
“After Hi left, Gil came across the street
(Veco was then operating in part of
Lockheed’s huge old WW II cafeteria
building) to hire me back. I accepted and that
is why my name is on the Veco kits.
“Hi felt especially wronged by the
shabby treatment he suffered from Gil Henry.
In 1952 he talked Ken Adams (formerly Bill
This Veco advertisement for its full line, all designs by Joe
Wagner, was published in the 1951 Air Trails Annual.
This 1952 Kenhi Buzzer’d RC model was recently re-created by
Arthur Orloff (Jupiter FL). It has a high parts count.
This flip-flop rotating handle was made by Elmic in England, but there was also a United
States-made unit. This ad was in the Engine Collectors Journal.
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Atwood’s partner in making the Champion line
of .60 sized engines) into backing him in a new
model kit company: Kenhi products.
“Kenhi began in direct competition with
Veco’s line of Control Line kits almost item by
item—but provided more complete kits
including bellcrank, hinges, and leadouts which
were not included in Veco kits, and sold them at
a lower wholesale price.
“The idea was to drive Veco out of business,
but the scheme failed. Kenhi’s first line of
Control Line kits didn’t perform nearly as well
as their Veco counterparts. For one thing they
were significantly heavier and they cost more to
manufacture than their wholesale selling price.
“Therefore Ken Adams instructed Hi to
redesign the whole Kenhi product line.
Unfortunately, the revised Kenhi line sold even
more poorly than the first. The Panther kits sold
poorly, mostly because the low aspect ratio
wing put the flaps way aft of the model’s CG
[center of gravity) so that in flight they
competed with the elevators for longitudinal
effect. Some guys glued the flaps solid to the
wing and flew with elevators only. They told me
it helped a lot.
“Hi’s Badger Free Flight and Buzzer’d RC
[Radio Control] aroused no enthusiasm
whatsoever and when I closed down Kenhi in
the fall of 1955, almost all the Badger and
Buzzer’d kits were still in inventory. Most were
burned.”
Legend has it that the Go-Devil was the first
kitted design with flaps. Hopefully Joe’s letter
will clarify the strange mixture of personalities
involved in these kit manufacturers—something
that has confused me for a half century.
If you have an interest in CL models of the
early era, you would do well to subscribe to
Stunt News, which is the 100-plus-page
newsletter (magazine, really) of the Precision
Aerobatics Model Pilots Association, or
PAMPA. Contact PAMPA secretary Shareen
Fancher at 158 Flying Cloud Isle, Foster City
CA 94404.
In going through these half-century-old
magazines to find this month’s material, I’m
struck by a rather odd phenomena; as 55 years
have gone flying by, my hair has turned white
and my magazines have turned yellow. I have
no idea what that signifies. MA