Flying for Fun
D.B. Mathews
909 N. Maize Rd., Townhouse 734, Wichita KS 67212
THE ANSWER:
For several months I've batted around varied opinions concerning whether building and flying model airplanes is a sport or hobby. Bill Hannan's book Model Builders & Their Models provides delightful insight into the puzzle.
"Question: is modeling a Hobby, Sport, Science, or Art?" "Yes!"
Perhaps many of us are guilty of pigeonholing Hannan's Runway's various offerings as all small, rubber-powered Scale and Peanut designs, but they are not. Bill's catalog lists many documentation drawings, a wealth of books containing three-views, Paul Matt drawings, Windsock Datafiles, etc. There is a great deal of highly valuable material for models in any scale (many of them novel and out of the rut), not to mention great reads. Contact Hannan's Runway at Box 210, Magalia CA 95954.
Beyond Description:
I've been sitting here trying to describe the phenomenon of Jim Walker in a single tag line, with no luck. He was such an extraordinary inventor, promoter, showman, and businessman that no simple summary can begin to describe him. Through the years I've collected a file full of material about American Junior (AJ) aircraft and Jim Walker, but I have held off doing much with it since I feel incapable of capturing the greatness of this man in a few words.
Fortunately Frank Macy of Portland, Oregon, has been able to assemble much of the archival material from the AJ plant and from Jim Walker's survivors, and he is working on a definitive biography of the man many of us consider the greatest promoter our sport has ever seen.
Frank was on the cover of the October 2002 Model Aviation holding a Fireball on floats. He has successfully revived the AJ Hornet and Interceptor products and has made them available to those of us who recall these models with fondness and those who have been hearing the legends for 50 years.
I previously mentioned the folding-wing Interceptor glider, even to the point of prematurely announcing its availability, but it is in production now. The molded folding mechanism Frank has developed is superior in smoothness and durability to the original stamped, lightweight metal folding mechanism that Jim Walker patented.
The quality of the wood and its fabrication are splendid, and the printed colors are much sharper than I recall. I learned from Frank that this is because the new product is silk-screened, as opposed to using the printed inks of the original.
Even during the worst of the balsa shortage of the war years, the Interceptors were available. This might have some connection to the thousands of them produced for the military to be used as gunnery trainers. The kids of my generation spent innumerable fun-filled hours launching these models with the rubber band on a stick.
For many of us, the Interceptors were the first models that flew well enough for us to learn about adjusting and trimming Free Flight models, which are skills that have been mostly ignored among the Almost Ready-to-Fly generation. If the Interceptor had a problem, it was the tendency to fly too well and get lost in thermals or land high up in trees. Oh, unappreciated youth.
Frank is also producing the Hornet: a classic rubber-powered ROG (rise-off-ground) reproduction that in its day was probably the best of those all-balsa simple fliers. Unlike the numerous ripoffs on the market at that time, the Hornet featured an undercambered airfoil sheet wing produced by steaming the blank and clamping it in a form. Frank also has the Hornet available, but the propeller is molded plastic — not the original.
Consider the hours of enjoyment you could help a youngster (of any age) find if you stuck one of either model in his or her Christmas stocking. It would expand the thought process farther than the average video game.
Contact Frank Macy at 1501 S.W. Baker St. #53, McMinnville OR 97128; Tel.: (503) 435-1916, for current prices and ordering details.
Memories:
If you were around in the 1950s, you might recall Jim Walker’s various Control Line (CL) demonstration flights. Most famous might have been his ability to fly three CL models at one time using a modified football helmet to which a handle was attached. This was originally done with Fireballs and later with 1/2A Firebabys.
Sort of forgotten are Jim’s Saber Dance demonstrations using Ohlsson & Rice (O&R) engines equipped with two-speed spark-ignition systems. With them he could hover a Fireball and fly it up and down vertically by switching back and forth from high to low speed with a special handle. I guess Jim was flying 3-D before anyone had even heard of it.
Another pleasant memory was the crowd of kids that followed Jim around as he demonstrated Interceptors, Hornets, and Ceiling Walkers. Perhaps this was because he gave thousands of them away to the youngsters. At an old Navy Nationals, the standard joke was that Jim Walker could be found by looking for a huge batch of kids having a great time.
He was a pioneer in remotely controlled flight; notice I didn’t limit that to radio control. I distinctly recall a newsreel at a movie showing Jim controlling a glider acoustically. He’d shout the correct command through a megaphone, then the model would turn accordingly. I’m not making this up!
A classic newsreel shows Jim demonstrating a radio-controlled lawn mower at an indoor flying event. For some reason the system malfunctioned, and the mower “ate” his neatly parked models on the edge of the circle. That’s sort of impressive.
Jim was one of those hearty souls who showed up at those post-war Nationals to attempt to fly Radio Control. He could always be located by looking for his De Soto six-door Saratoga sedan with a set of speakers on the top. The De Soto had one of those special bodies that bands, etc., often favored. Jim used the speakers to keep up running banter/sales pitches while he was demonstrating outdoors.
Jim's inventiveness extended to an O&R .60 set up with contrarotating propellers to theoretically cancel out the effect of torque. That same model had a mechanism that reversed the wing dihedral when the model was inverted, but I can't document that with photos or a magazine search—perhaps since I can't recall a year for this wild idea.
Until this moment I'd never thought of it, but Jim was a Pied Piper for kids and adults. He was able to attract a crowd, keep its interest, and even sell it something, similar to P.T. Barnum except that Jim was impeccably honest. He ran a flying circus at which he was the ringmaster. What fun it was!
Jim was an inventive genius who held all sorts of patents for an eclectic mix of concepts. Some of his inventions were used in his products, some were used to produce them, and others were unrelated to model airplanes.
Not only did Jim patent and collect royalties for many years on the control system that used two lines, a bellcrank, and an elevator horn, but he even held the copyright to the term "U-control."
When I first started writing columns, Bill Winter quickly called to my attention that I was using the copyrighted term U-control when I should have been using "Control Line," which also covers the various alternate systems developed as sub-systems.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, many kits and published designs left out any detail of a control system to avoid the $1 per kit royalty; they would read "Use your favorite control system" or such. Other manufacturers provided screwball alternate control systems that did not work. We routinely substituted a Veco control horn (manufactured under license) and would not have it any other way.
The patent Jim Walker was most proud of—and had spent the most time and energy demonstrating until it caught on like wildfire—was eventually taken from him by the courts. I resist the urge to comment on the patent trial, the reasons behind its being filed, and the court's decision.
Whether Jim invented U-control or not is not nearly as important as the effect he had by demonstrating it around the world. Had he not done so, CL flying would have remained an oddity because the person the court named as the original inventor did nothing to promote CL.
There were those in that 1950s era who felt that Jim should not have collected $1 per kit royalty, but should have donated the patent license free. The $1 per kit bought way more than that in promotional value.
Modeling activities have never seen anything to match Jim Walker's incredible zeal and salesmanship, and likely never will. Here's a salute to a persistent Frank Macy for preserving the Jim Walker legacy and even making some of the products available to a new generation of fliers.
Postscript:
When you are looking at the photos this month, keep in mind that when these Jim Walker models were new, a kid could pay for a movie ticket and a bag of popcorn for 25¢.
Now add in the contemporary costs of liability insurance, Occupational Safety and Health Administration and Environmental Protection Agency compliance, workmen's compensation, unemployment insurance, social security, legal fees, etc. that did not exist in 1940, and you can probably understand the inflation.
MA
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
