Lockheed Little Dipper lovers are in luck
D.B. Mathews | [email protected]
For those who do not have access to the Internet, my mailing address is 909 N. Maize Rd., Wichita, KS 67212.
Do you remember the Lockheed Little Dipper I featured in the June column? I mentioned a short kit with cowl, canopy, etc., by P&W Models.
Frank Healey, at 189 Columbus Dr., Archbald, PA 18403, read the piece, which sent him on a search. He finally found his old kit, complete with construction drawings, among the Christmas decorations. He is willing to sell it if you're interested. His e-mail address is [email protected].
The telephone number I gave you in that column for the Radio Control Modeler plans service went out of service shortly after I wrote about it. The web site—www.rcmmagazine.com—is still functional at this time.
Old Friends and Good Memories
I recently visited with Dale Kirn at the one-day "Just Plane Fun" exhibit at the Smoky Hill Museum in Salina, Kansas. This marvelous and well-done display centered around Dale, a local boy, and his lifetime activities and achievements with model aviation.
I enjoyed a wonderful visit with Dale. We reminisced about our modeling adventures in the long ago. He and I are contemporaries, and our paths crossed many times in the late 1940s at local contests.
I've always secretly envied Dale for managing to carve out a career in modeling, which many of us longtime modelers dreamed of doing in our youth. When he finished his tour with the Air Force (and he was on several Air Force national modeling teams), he went to work for Victor Stanzel demonstrating Mono-Line (single-line) flying across the country.
Dale would show up in cities and towns in a Chevy Bel Air station wagon. It had a large Stanzel sign on the roof, with all sorts of Stanzel and Mono-Line graphics on it. Dale would then fly at the local control-line circles.
Most memorable was his flying a .35-size model on a 120-foot line. No joke! I distinctly remember the lines actually dragging the ground. This was astonishing to us since slack lines were the nemesis of the two-line-system flier.
Later, after earning a degree from Kansas State, Dale went to work for Leroy Cox as an industrial engineer. Most of the Cox line of engines and ready-to-fly control-line models have his touch on them.
Dale and a gang of young boys would show up at important contests, particularly the Nats, to run a "fly-a-model" circle for the kids in attendance. They enclosed a circle with snow fence and would put any kid on the lines for a free introductory flight. The line often had 50 or more youngsters in it, waiting their turn.
Also included in this column:
- Cox history with Dale Kirn
- 1946–1953 Plymouth Internats
- The 47-year-old youth problem
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
