Jim Martin: The Man Who Electrified RC - 2012/02

84 Model Aviation March 2012 www.ModelAviation.com
born to fly
Red Scholefield
electrics [email protected]
Greg Gimlick
[email protected]
Jim Martin: The Man Who Electrified RC
Jim T. Graham
[email protected]
JM: I flew tanker airplanes in the Air
Force as a pilot. I was a good pilot. I
got the top aerobatic pilot award in
primary training and the top instrument
pilot award in basic—B-25s if you can
imagine. Then [I flew] tankers in SAC
and National Guard. When I got out I
had a job open with DuPont in Niagara
Falls [New York], where I had worked
before I went into the Air Force.
There was a recession, and suddenly I
was out of work and living with the inlaws.
This was not good. My father-in-law
had a chain of five-and-dime stores. I got
a loan and opened my own dime store in
Nashville, Tennessee, on Franklin Road. It
supported us, but it was awfully boring.
So across the street I opened an RC
store called Hobby Lobby. It was strictly
intended to be an over-the-counter
hobby store. The whole store was 600
square feet—the size of a living room. I
did that in 1964.
We did $22,000 the first year and
actually made a $15 profit! It didn’t
support us and I didn’t take any money
out of it for five years. Then a Kmart
opened up down the street, and I
closed the dime store and focused on
the RC store.
JG: What kind of things did you sell
back then?
If you have been in this hobby
for the past eight years or so, you
will have noticed that there are
a number of airplanes powered by
electric motors. When I started flying,
this wasn’t the case. You may have seen
some homemade foamie airplanes at
the field, but you never saw an electricpowered
.40-size model.
I was lucky enough to get into the
hobby at a magical time. A man named
Jim Martin pulled me aside at our field
one day to have a talk. Jim is the founder
of a company named Hobby Lobby
International, Inc. He invited me to join
him in his quest to bring electric flight to
the RC masses.
From where I stand, I could say that
Jim Martin changed the face of RC.
He nurtured electric flight in the US
and ultimately made power systems
and airplanes that would change our
perception of electric flight. Jim is
78 now and I thought it would be
interesting to find out how our hobby
was “electrified.”
JG: Has flight always interested you?
JM: Oh God, yes. My first waking
thought after I was born was, “I gotta
fly!” I’ve always been intrigued by flight.
Any kind of flight—birds, airplanes,
anything. As a kid during WW II, I built
all the kit airplanes of the time. The Ott-
O-Former planes, the Strombecker solid
wood identification airplanes. I actually
did jump off our barn roof with a pair of
wings made of corn stalks. They folded,
but it wasn’t a big deal because I jumped
into a hay stack.
The strange thing is that I prefer flying
RC model airplanes to flying the fullscale
ones. In a full-scale airplane you
have to mess with constant training,
reading, work, knowledge of charts,
maps, NOTAMs, and most of the flying
is about as interesting as bus driving.
You don’t get to do the fun stuff,
which is contact flight doing Cuban 8s
and Split Ss while you’re listening to
Strauss waltzes. And even in these fun
aerobatics, the airplane never moves—
only the earth moves around you. With
a model airplane you get to watch
the airplane move. With park
flyers and slow flyers you get to
watch close-up.
JG: How did you go from being an
RC pilot to owning an RC store?
Each year, Jim would have a staff photo made for the catalog and website.
These were heady times and we had fun.
Hans Graupner and Jim Martin in the Graupner warehouse
in the mid-1970s.86 Model Aviation March 2012 www.ModelAviation.com
born to fly
what you want it to do until it simply
can’t handle the current. There’s no limit.
JG: So you moved Hobby Lobby to
Brentwood, Tennessee, just after 1970.
What was going on then?
JM: I bought a cheap lot in what was
farmland. The first warehouse was about
4,000 square feet. We probably had 12
employees. It was then that I started
importing products from Europe.
JG: Were there other major companies
selling electrics at that time?
JM: There really wasn’t anyone selling
electrics then. It was almost the early
’80s before you really saw them. There
was nothing that really worked at
that time. Electric power in Europe
advanced, and I was shocked when the
Graupner team wanted me to get them
accommodations to come over here in
’87 for the F3E (Electric) contest in East
St. Louis, Illinois.
For the first time, I saw what these
F3E airplanes could do, and that’s when
the switch really turned on in my head.
I saw the future right then. I knew
that I had to get on it, because nothing
had come close to this. There was no
engine—glow, jet, anything—you could
JM: Bob Boucher was the electric king.
Bob went to Yale [for] engineering and
so did I. He invented electric flight.
At the time, I wasn’t that interested in
seeing electric motors on standard glowengine
airplanes. The battery life was
way too short, and it didn’t interest me.
Then I saw some electric sailplanes
and this really turned me on. These F3E
planes had unbelievable performance.
But Graupner also had these inexpensive
little motors and they would market
them as “Speed this” and “Speed that,”
and they performed just beautifully.
I had studied some electrical
engineering in college, and I knew a little
bit about it, and the interesting thing I
found was that an internal combustion
engine has an absolute limit, beyond
which it simply cannot put out any more
power. But an electric motor doesn’t.
In the future, people are going to start
buying electric cars, not because they
conserve fuel, but because they are going
to be able to feel the fastest acceleration
they have ever felt in their life. That’s
what electrics are all about.
I used to joke and say that I could
slightly move a 747 with a Speed 600.
The electric motor will put out anything.
It doesn’t give a damn. It’ll simply do
JM: I was interested in radio control
airplanes, so that is what I sold. But I
thought I had to have something to
keep the doors open so I started selling
slot cars. I made a big slot car table.
Kids would come in and wreck their
cars, and I could sell them new ones. I
carried Midwest, Sig, and other planes.
I was a big fan of the Tri Squire.
JG: When did the electric products start
showing up in your store?
JM: It was a progression. In 1967, I went
to Corsica to cover an RC event for RC
Modeler Magazine where I got to know
Phil Kraft. I got to see the European
stuff, and they had beautiful equipment!
I met a lot of European suppliers,
including one fellow named Alexander
Engel, who became one of my best
friends. His main competition was
Graupner, but Alex was a good enough
friend that he took me to visit them.
He slept in the car while I managed
to get the US distribution rights for
Graupner. That is the point that electric
became part of Hobby Lobby. That was
around 1969.
JG: How much electric RC activity was
there in the US at that time?
Left: Jim Martin poses with a model of a KC-97, the airplane he flew in the Air Force. He is also
doing the 1,000-mile stare in honor of Jim T. Graham.
Above: You may know this pretty lady from the Senior Telemaster box art. The model (Jim’s
wife), was standing next to me and I exclaimed, “You’re her!” JoAnne got a kick out of that.put on these airplanes that would come
close to this electric performance.
At the time, outrunners had not been
developed, gearboxes were being used,
and the only batteries were Ni-Cds.
Here were these 10-pound airplanes
going straight up and in 5 seconds
they were out of sight and gone. It was
unbelievable. From that point on, I
thought electric was it. The potential of
it was wide open. That’s all I thought
about from that point on.
JG: Was it then that you decided to put
your money on electric?
JM: To stay in business you have to go
with what sells, but from that point on,
I started pushing it. We were going to
have to develop slowly. I kind of eased
my way into it with whatever worked. It
was an evolutionary process, really.
JG: Were you on your own with this idea
about electrics? Or did you have help? Was
LA Johnson your senior tech at this time?
JM: I wish I had known LA Johnson
years before. I didn’t get the benefit of
his knowledge until the mid ’90s. There
is a guy on Long Island named Carl
Schwab, and he is a great engineer and a
friend, and he would straighten me out
about electric motors and propellers and
he’s also an active RCer.
JG: When did the next big jump in electric
happen?
JM: The next big thing was the
discovery of the balsa slow flyer,
sometime in the early ’90s. I have to
give the credit to Norbert Gruentjens
in Germany, who was the helicopter
champ of Europe. He flew every kind
of RC and was and is a brilliant man
and businessman.
At one of the Nuremberg Toy Show
fairs, I walked by Norbert’s booth
and I saw this balsa-wood slow flyer,
and it hit me: this is the beginning of88 Model Aviation March 2012 www.ModelAviation.com
my business. When I saw this thing I
realized, here is something absolutely
anybody can fly.
I wouldn’t go see him until the very
last day, because I knew that if I went
then, the first day, I wouldn’t do anything
else for the rest of the show. That was the
beginning of slow flyers and park flyers
and all that. It sold very well.
JG: That was a huge part of your catalog
after that.
JM: Everybody could fly them, and you
could fly them anywhere, you could fix
them … it was just incredible. That got
the US into electric-powered models.
JG: What was the next phase?
JM: People started thinking electric.
These planes would stay up a good 10
minutes, and people were beginning to
take electric seriously. In the mid-’90s,
I walked by Aeronaut’s booth at the
German Toy Fair, and I saw a young man
with some very odd motors. The inside
of the motor was fixed to the floor and
the outside turned. They told me that
these things were called “outrunners”
and that they were going to be the next
big thing, but I thought that they were
too expensive.
Then I found the AXI outrunners in
2001. The company was Model Motors
and the designer paid attention to what
he was doing. He just simply never let
go. Everyone else would try something
and jump out. Not him. He kept going
and he never got out. The outrunner
changed everything.
JG: Tell me about how the Jeti Speed
controllers hit the scene?
JM: Mr. Jelen, of Jeti, approached me
to buy his controllers. He had on a
worn, ill-fitting suit. His briefcase was
made out of cardboard with a simulated
leather print. He and his partner, Mr.
Tinka, had been fighter pilots in the
Czech Air Force and they were looking
for a new career after the Soviet Union
collapsed. He showed me his speed
controllers and we started there.
Five years later, I saw him and he
picked me up in his Mercedes and he was
wearing Italian suits! It was phenomenal
to see these guys doing so well.
JG: With the outrunners and the LiPos,
everyone began cutting out their own
airplanes. 3-D was being picked up by the
public. You were not a fan of 3-D, were you?
JM: I’m Joe Average flier. Pilots like
Jason Cole, who worked for us, can fly
anything. So can you, but I can’t!
JG: This is when I stepped into the
company as the PR marketing person. I
have a story that I tell. I always say that
when I was really trying to get Hobby
Lobby to pick up 3-D, Jim Martin would
say, “That’s not flying, that’s a travesty!”
JM: Ha ha ha! That’s right. If I couldn’t
do it then I wasn’t a big fan of it. I was
fine with it as long as other pilots out
there wanted to do it.
JG: We worked with Mike Glass, and he
designed the first preprinted foam airplane.
It was a 3-D plane called the Mini Gee
Bee and you backed me on that airplane.
That became our first 3-D number-one
seller in a long string of 3-D airplanes that
all sold in the top 10.
JM: I guess I get to make some
mistakes, right?
JG: From where I was standing back
then, we created the 3-D foamie craze. We
pushed the whole electric scene in the RC
world. Hobby Lobby was the company
that pushed electric-powered airplanes to
where they are today.
born to fly
Jim Martin had the faith and
belief in electric flight. His
40-year quest is a big reason
why electric RC is what it as
it is today.
“When I saw this thing
I realized, here is
something absolutely
anybody can fly.”JM: We were so good at what we did
because we were doing what we loved.
We sold things that we loved to fly. I
look at companies that are much larger,
like Tower Hobbies and Horizon. They
are brilliant at what they do, but I
don’t know if they had as much fun as
I had at the time. I picked up products
that I liked. I figured if I liked it, then
everybody would like it too.
JG: How did the Internet change things
for Hobby Lobby?
JM: We started with catalogs and that
became an art form. You have to look at
the catalog the way the customer would.
They want to see what the parts are.
They want a closer look. You have to tell
them what they are looking at. Then we
had the Internet. We could show more
photos and we could show videos. The
pilots don’t want to hear music; they
want to hear the plane. They want to see
how it looks when it lands.
JG: At this time, Hobby Lobby was the first
to have a video for each airplane. Hobby
Lobby also invented the “Here’s What You
Need” list of parts. This helped pilots figure
out how to pick the right motor and speed
control. It made going electric easy.
JM: My wife, JoAnne, is responsible for
a lot of the good things that happened
for me businesswise. I would write the
ads and JoAnne would do the graphics.
One day I really wanted to show what
the plane needed. JoAnne yanked the
ad out of my hand and an hour later she
handed me back an ad. She invented
“Here’s Everything You Need.” It helps
pilots buy not only the plane, but
everything that it needed. It worked
really well. With the Internet all of that
was just a click away.
JG: You also pioneered online advertising
when no one else was doing it.
JM: I received a lot of advice that the
Internet was not worth our time. I
thought that the Internet would be huge
and we better get into it and make our
mistakes while no one would notice, and
we did. It grew like crazy and we were
there with the right stuff. I could notunderstand why my competitors weren’t
all over RCGroups buying ads.
JG: I want to tell you, Jim, that I feel
privileged to have been brought into the
industry at that time by you. It was a
magical time in RC, and I was proud to
be doing all of the marketing for Hobby
Lobby. I couldn’t quit my job fast enough
to get over to your company.
JM: When I ran into you at the flying
field, my only thought was to get Jim
Graham working for my company.
Whatever it would take. It was one of the
greatest matchups I have ever had in my
life. I had to have you working at Hobby
Lobby. To this day, I wish I was still there
working and you were still there doing
the things you do best. You were the
man! You had a hell of a lot to do with
that success and it was the second-best
marriage I have had in my life.
JG: So your company was at its peak,
running on all eight cylinders, or maybe
all eight volts. You were leading the
industry in the electric side of RC. You
were dominating online advertising. When
did you decide to step off?
JM: My son David had been in the
company a number of years. He left
and now he runs Sig. So the idea of
making it a continuing family business
wasn’t going to happen. I was making
money and having fun; why sell such a
thing? But, at some point I had to sell
it, as much as it would hurt. I sold it to
a Nashville investment firm. I was 72 at
the time. I gave them a price and they
paid exactly that.JG: What do you do with your time now?
JM: I’m still excited by Sailplanes,
but I don’t fly as much. I paint a
lot and sell my paintings now. They
do well. This Saturday night I will
be downtown in Nashville with my
paintings in the Art Crawl.
JG: This year, I walked up to the field we
flew at together and I noticed the sign had
changed. It said, “Electric only. No glowor
gas-powered planes allowed.” Did you
ever think there would come a day when
electric airplanes would dominate the
hobby, and are you happy the way things
have turned out?
JM: Yes, I knew they would. For 40
years I owned and ran a business that
dealt in stuff that I love, with people
that I love. I’m a very lucky guy.

84 Model Aviation March 2012 www.ModelAviation.com
born to fly
Red Scholefield
electrics [email protected]
Greg Gimlick
[email protected]
Jim Martin: The Man Who Electrified RC
Jim T. Graham
[email protected]
JM: I flew tanker airplanes in the Air
Force as a pilot. I was a good pilot. I
got the top aerobatic pilot award in
primary training and the top instrument
pilot award in basic—B-25s if you can
imagine. Then [I flew] tankers in SAC
and National Guard. When I got out I
had a job open with DuPont in Niagara
Falls [New York], where I had worked
before I went into the Air Force.
There was a recession, and suddenly I
was out of work and living with the inlaws.
This was not good. My father-in-law
had a chain of five-and-dime stores. I got
a loan and opened my own dime store in
Nashville, Tennessee, on Franklin Road. It
supported us, but it was awfully boring.
So across the street I opened an RC
store called Hobby Lobby. It was strictly
intended to be an over-the-counter
hobby store. The whole store was 600
square feet—the size of a living room. I
did that in 1964.
We did $22,000 the first year and
actually made a $15 profit! It didn’t
support us and I didn’t take any money
out of it for five years. Then a Kmart
opened up down the street, and I
closed the dime store and focused on
the RC store.
JG: What kind of things did you sell
back then?
If you have been in this hobby
for the past eight years or so, you
will have noticed that there are
a number of airplanes powered by
electric motors. When I started flying,
this wasn’t the case. You may have seen
some homemade foamie airplanes at
the field, but you never saw an electricpowered
.40-size model.
I was lucky enough to get into the
hobby at a magical time. A man named
Jim Martin pulled me aside at our field
one day to have a talk. Jim is the founder
of a company named Hobby Lobby
International, Inc. He invited me to join
him in his quest to bring electric flight to
the RC masses.
From where I stand, I could say that
Jim Martin changed the face of RC.
He nurtured electric flight in the US
and ultimately made power systems
and airplanes that would change our
perception of electric flight. Jim is
78 now and I thought it would be
interesting to find out how our hobby
was “electrified.”
JG: Has flight always interested you?
JM: Oh God, yes. My first waking
thought after I was born was, “I gotta
fly!” I’ve always been intrigued by flight.
Any kind of flight—birds, airplanes,
anything. As a kid during WW II, I built
all the kit airplanes of the time. The Ott-
O-Former planes, the Strombecker solid
wood identification airplanes. I actually
did jump off our barn roof with a pair of
wings made of corn stalks. They folded,
but it wasn’t a big deal because I jumped
into a hay stack.
The strange thing is that I prefer flying
RC model airplanes to flying the fullscale
ones. In a full-scale airplane you
have to mess with constant training,
reading, work, knowledge of charts,
maps, NOTAMs, and most of the flying
is about as interesting as bus driving.
You don’t get to do the fun stuff,
which is contact flight doing Cuban 8s
and Split Ss while you’re listening to
Strauss waltzes. And even in these fun
aerobatics, the airplane never moves—
only the earth moves around you. With
a model airplane you get to watch
the airplane move. With park
flyers and slow flyers you get to
watch close-up.
JG: How did you go from being an
RC pilot to owning an RC store?
Each year, Jim would have a staff photo made for the catalog and website.
These were heady times and we had fun.
Hans Graupner and Jim Martin in the Graupner warehouse
in the mid-1970s.86 Model Aviation March 2012 www.ModelAviation.com
born to fly
what you want it to do until it simply
can’t handle the current. There’s no limit.
JG: So you moved Hobby Lobby to
Brentwood, Tennessee, just after 1970.
What was going on then?
JM: I bought a cheap lot in what was
farmland. The first warehouse was about
4,000 square feet. We probably had 12
employees. It was then that I started
importing products from Europe.
JG: Were there other major companies
selling electrics at that time?
JM: There really wasn’t anyone selling
electrics then. It was almost the early
’80s before you really saw them. There
was nothing that really worked at
that time. Electric power in Europe
advanced, and I was shocked when the
Graupner team wanted me to get them
accommodations to come over here in
’87 for the F3E (Electric) contest in East
St. Louis, Illinois.
For the first time, I saw what these
F3E airplanes could do, and that’s when
the switch really turned on in my head.
I saw the future right then. I knew
that I had to get on it, because nothing
had come close to this. There was no
engine—glow, jet, anything—you could
JM: Bob Boucher was the electric king.
Bob went to Yale [for] engineering and
so did I. He invented electric flight.
At the time, I wasn’t that interested in
seeing electric motors on standard glowengine
airplanes. The battery life was
way too short, and it didn’t interest me.
Then I saw some electric sailplanes
and this really turned me on. These F3E
planes had unbelievable performance.
But Graupner also had these inexpensive
little motors and they would market
them as “Speed this” and “Speed that,”
and they performed just beautifully.
I had studied some electrical
engineering in college, and I knew a little
bit about it, and the interesting thing I
found was that an internal combustion
engine has an absolute limit, beyond
which it simply cannot put out any more
power. But an electric motor doesn’t.
In the future, people are going to start
buying electric cars, not because they
conserve fuel, but because they are going
to be able to feel the fastest acceleration
they have ever felt in their life. That’s
what electrics are all about.
I used to joke and say that I could
slightly move a 747 with a Speed 600.
The electric motor will put out anything.
It doesn’t give a damn. It’ll simply do
JM: I was interested in radio control
airplanes, so that is what I sold. But I
thought I had to have something to
keep the doors open so I started selling
slot cars. I made a big slot car table.
Kids would come in and wreck their
cars, and I could sell them new ones. I
carried Midwest, Sig, and other planes.
I was a big fan of the Tri Squire.
JG: When did the electric products start
showing up in your store?
JM: It was a progression. In 1967, I went
to Corsica to cover an RC event for RC
Modeler Magazine where I got to know
Phil Kraft. I got to see the European
stuff, and they had beautiful equipment!
I met a lot of European suppliers,
including one fellow named Alexander
Engel, who became one of my best
friends. His main competition was
Graupner, but Alex was a good enough
friend that he took me to visit them.
He slept in the car while I managed
to get the US distribution rights for
Graupner. That is the point that electric
became part of Hobby Lobby. That was
around 1969.
JG: How much electric RC activity was
there in the US at that time?
Left: Jim Martin poses with a model of a KC-97, the airplane he flew in the Air Force. He is also
doing the 1,000-mile stare in honor of Jim T. Graham.
Above: You may know this pretty lady from the Senior Telemaster box art. The model (Jim’s
wife), was standing next to me and I exclaimed, “You’re her!” JoAnne got a kick out of that.put on these airplanes that would come
close to this electric performance.
At the time, outrunners had not been
developed, gearboxes were being used,
and the only batteries were Ni-Cds.
Here were these 10-pound airplanes
going straight up and in 5 seconds
they were out of sight and gone. It was
unbelievable. From that point on, I
thought electric was it. The potential of
it was wide open. That’s all I thought
about from that point on.
JG: Was it then that you decided to put
your money on electric?
JM: To stay in business you have to go
with what sells, but from that point on,
I started pushing it. We were going to
have to develop slowly. I kind of eased
my way into it with whatever worked. It
was an evolutionary process, really.
JG: Were you on your own with this idea
about electrics? Or did you have help? Was
LA Johnson your senior tech at this time?
JM: I wish I had known LA Johnson
years before. I didn’t get the benefit of
his knowledge until the mid ’90s. There
is a guy on Long Island named Carl
Schwab, and he is a great engineer and a
friend, and he would straighten me out
about electric motors and propellers and
he’s also an active RCer.
JG: When did the next big jump in electric
happen?
JM: The next big thing was the
discovery of the balsa slow flyer,
sometime in the early ’90s. I have to
give the credit to Norbert Gruentjens
in Germany, who was the helicopter
champ of Europe. He flew every kind
of RC and was and is a brilliant man
and businessman.
At one of the Nuremberg Toy Show
fairs, I walked by Norbert’s booth
and I saw this balsa-wood slow flyer,
and it hit me: this is the beginning of88 Model Aviation March 2012 www.ModelAviation.com
my business. When I saw this thing I
realized, here is something absolutely
anybody can fly.
I wouldn’t go see him until the very
last day, because I knew that if I went
then, the first day, I wouldn’t do anything
else for the rest of the show. That was the
beginning of slow flyers and park flyers
and all that. It sold very well.
JG: That was a huge part of your catalog
after that.
JM: Everybody could fly them, and you
could fly them anywhere, you could fix
them … it was just incredible. That got
the US into electric-powered models.
JG: What was the next phase?
JM: People started thinking electric.
These planes would stay up a good 10
minutes, and people were beginning to
take electric seriously. In the mid-’90s,
I walked by Aeronaut’s booth at the
German Toy Fair, and I saw a young man
with some very odd motors. The inside
of the motor was fixed to the floor and
the outside turned. They told me that
these things were called “outrunners”
and that they were going to be the next
big thing, but I thought that they were
too expensive.
Then I found the AXI outrunners in
2001. The company was Model Motors
and the designer paid attention to what
he was doing. He just simply never let
go. Everyone else would try something
and jump out. Not him. He kept going
and he never got out. The outrunner
changed everything.
JG: Tell me about how the Jeti Speed
controllers hit the scene?
JM: Mr. Jelen, of Jeti, approached me
to buy his controllers. He had on a
worn, ill-fitting suit. His briefcase was
made out of cardboard with a simulated
leather print. He and his partner, Mr.
Tinka, had been fighter pilots in the
Czech Air Force and they were looking
for a new career after the Soviet Union
collapsed. He showed me his speed
controllers and we started there.
Five years later, I saw him and he
picked me up in his Mercedes and he was
wearing Italian suits! It was phenomenal
to see these guys doing so well.
JG: With the outrunners and the LiPos,
everyone began cutting out their own
airplanes. 3-D was being picked up by the
public. You were not a fan of 3-D, were you?
JM: I’m Joe Average flier. Pilots like
Jason Cole, who worked for us, can fly
anything. So can you, but I can’t!
JG: This is when I stepped into the
company as the PR marketing person. I
have a story that I tell. I always say that
when I was really trying to get Hobby
Lobby to pick up 3-D, Jim Martin would
say, “That’s not flying, that’s a travesty!”
JM: Ha ha ha! That’s right. If I couldn’t
do it then I wasn’t a big fan of it. I was
fine with it as long as other pilots out
there wanted to do it.
JG: We worked with Mike Glass, and he
designed the first preprinted foam airplane.
It was a 3-D plane called the Mini Gee
Bee and you backed me on that airplane.
That became our first 3-D number-one
seller in a long string of 3-D airplanes that
all sold in the top 10.
JM: I guess I get to make some
mistakes, right?
JG: From where I was standing back
then, we created the 3-D foamie craze. We
pushed the whole electric scene in the RC
world. Hobby Lobby was the company
that pushed electric-powered airplanes to
where they are today.
born to fly
Jim Martin had the faith and
belief in electric flight. His
40-year quest is a big reason
why electric RC is what it as
it is today.
“When I saw this thing
I realized, here is
something absolutely
anybody can fly.”JM: We were so good at what we did
because we were doing what we loved.
We sold things that we loved to fly. I
look at companies that are much larger,
like Tower Hobbies and Horizon. They
are brilliant at what they do, but I
don’t know if they had as much fun as
I had at the time. I picked up products
that I liked. I figured if I liked it, then
everybody would like it too.
JG: How did the Internet change things
for Hobby Lobby?
JM: We started with catalogs and that
became an art form. You have to look at
the catalog the way the customer would.
They want to see what the parts are.
They want a closer look. You have to tell
them what they are looking at. Then we
had the Internet. We could show more
photos and we could show videos. The
pilots don’t want to hear music; they
want to hear the plane. They want to see
how it looks when it lands.
JG: At this time, Hobby Lobby was the first
to have a video for each airplane. Hobby
Lobby also invented the “Here’s What You
Need” list of parts. This helped pilots figure
out how to pick the right motor and speed
control. It made going electric easy.
JM: My wife, JoAnne, is responsible for
a lot of the good things that happened
for me businesswise. I would write the
ads and JoAnne would do the graphics.
One day I really wanted to show what
the plane needed. JoAnne yanked the
ad out of my hand and an hour later she
handed me back an ad. She invented
“Here’s Everything You Need.” It helps
pilots buy not only the plane, but
everything that it needed. It worked
really well. With the Internet all of that
was just a click away.
JG: You also pioneered online advertising
when no one else was doing it.
JM: I received a lot of advice that the
Internet was not worth our time. I
thought that the Internet would be huge
and we better get into it and make our
mistakes while no one would notice, and
we did. It grew like crazy and we were
there with the right stuff. I could notunderstand why my competitors weren’t
all over RCGroups buying ads.
JG: I want to tell you, Jim, that I feel
privileged to have been brought into the
industry at that time by you. It was a
magical time in RC, and I was proud to
be doing all of the marketing for Hobby
Lobby. I couldn’t quit my job fast enough
to get over to your company.
JM: When I ran into you at the flying
field, my only thought was to get Jim
Graham working for my company.
Whatever it would take. It was one of the
greatest matchups I have ever had in my
life. I had to have you working at Hobby
Lobby. To this day, I wish I was still there
working and you were still there doing
the things you do best. You were the
man! You had a hell of a lot to do with
that success and it was the second-best
marriage I have had in my life.
JG: So your company was at its peak,
running on all eight cylinders, or maybe
all eight volts. You were leading the
industry in the electric side of RC. You
were dominating online advertising. When
did you decide to step off?
JM: My son David had been in the
company a number of years. He left
and now he runs Sig. So the idea of
making it a continuing family business
wasn’t going to happen. I was making
money and having fun; why sell such a
thing? But, at some point I had to sell
it, as much as it would hurt. I sold it to
a Nashville investment firm. I was 72 at
the time. I gave them a price and they
paid exactly that.JG: What do you do with your time now?
JM: I’m still excited by Sailplanes,
but I don’t fly as much. I paint a
lot and sell my paintings now. They
do well. This Saturday night I will
be downtown in Nashville with my
paintings in the Art Crawl.
JG: This year, I walked up to the field we
flew at together and I noticed the sign had
changed. It said, “Electric only. No glowor
gas-powered planes allowed.” Did you
ever think there would come a day when
electric airplanes would dominate the
hobby, and are you happy the way things
have turned out?
JM: Yes, I knew they would. For 40
years I owned and ran a business that
dealt in stuff that I love, with people
that I love. I’m a very lucky guy.