Modeling Spoken Here - 2003/12

I DON’T CLEARLY remember attending
my first national model airplane competition,
or Nats. Hey, it was 1953 and I was only 5
years old! My father and my older brother
attended the entire week, and my mother took
me there to watch the last day of competition
and the fabulous weekend air show which
featured the Blue Angels.
This was one of the fabled “Navy Nats.”
The venue was Willow Grove, Pennsylvania.
In those days the Nats moved around the
country, returning to a given region once
every four years. Generally the sequence was
Willow Grove Naval Air Station (NAS) in the
east, to the Midwest at Olathe NAS in Kansas
or Glenview NAS in Illinois, out west to Los
Alamitos NAS, then south to Texas and the
Dallas NAS.
In those days the Navy sponsored the Nats
but AMA administered it. The Navy provided
lots of manpower, a venue that would allow
all of the events to run concurrently (except
for the Free Flight Indoor events, which were
usually contested in a nearby blimp hangar),
and even modest base lodging and meal
services for those who were on a tight budget.
The Navy also made available a hangar
that was filled with workbenches so that
modelers could work on and have a place to
store their models for the week.
I was fortunate enough to have attended
the Willow Grove Nats (the closest one to our
home) five times—in 1953, 1957, 1961, 1965,
and 1969. It is difficult to express in words the
feeling of one of the old Navy Nats. Let’s just
say it was a magical experience for modelers
young or old.
The original idea, as I understand it, was
for the Navy to influence aeronautical-minded
young men and women to join its ranks. The
Nats was a great recruitment tool—or so it
seemed for a while. Apparently a cost-cutting
congress began looking long and hard at such
programs and expenditures in the early 1970s,
and, tragically, one result was the loss of the
Navy Nats.
From that point, AMA tried hard to
continue the practice of moving the Nats
around the country. The venues were
sometimes good and sometimes not so good,
and the cost factor without Navy sponsorship
made things increasingly difficult. During
those years, each of the Nats held was run at a
loss up to $80,000.
When we acquired the land in Muncie and
built our International Aeromodeling Center,
it seemed natural to bring the Nats to our
home. There are many advantages to this and
certainly a few disadvantages.
Now we do not have to rely on finding a
suitable venue that is also available when we
need it. We do not have to ship or transport
the myriad items needed to properly run the
Nats. We can maintain a site that is
specifically designed for our purposes and
continue to expand it as requirements of
events and modeling disciplines change.
We can plan for the future, secure in the
knowledge that we will always have a place
to compete and sport-fly. And, this is very
important, now we are not losing money. We
either break even or make a modest surplus
on the Nats.
The downside is that everyone has to
travel to Muncie instead of waiting for the
Nats to go to his or her area every few years.
That seems like a pretty good trade-off to me.
The other disadvantage is that we cannot host
all of the events in a period of one week, as
the Navy Nats venues allowed.
Times change, and we would be naive to
think that the old Nats format could go on
forever unchanged.
So here we are. The Nats is alive and
healthy, and it is serving as a showcase for
modeling technology and competition
progress, and it is a glowing showpiece for
AMA. It has survived change and grown to
become one of the main and most revered
cornerstones of our organization.
For many, competition is the reason they
fly model airplanes. My very good friend Bill
Werwage once commented to me about
flying in competition, “It’s the only time I
breathe.” I’m not quite there, but I’m close
enough to understand what he meant.
Enjoy our annual Nats issue. Through the
various event reports I’m sure you will find
that this was an unusual Nats, with weather
extremes that pushed everyone to the limit.
Record Breaker: Some people seem to have
been born to accomplish certain things in life.
Maynard Hill seems to have been born to
establish model-airplane records. And now he
has set a new standard that will be hard to
top—even for him.
As AMA President Dave Brown reported
Bob Hunt Aeromodeling Editor
... it was a magical
experience for modelers
young or old.
Modeling Spoken Here
Continued on page 168
December 2003 7
in his column last month, Maynard has
achieved the feat of flying a model
airplane nonstop across the Atlantic
Ocean. We held Dave’s deadline for that
column to the last moment before the
November issue went to press to allow
for the first model-press coverage of this
event.
Dave was most honored that Maynard
asked him to be on hand in Ireland to
land the TAM (Trans Atlantic Model).
This is a significant and historic
achievement for Maynard and for the art
and sport of modeling. It has received
extremely favorable press in the “real
world.”
In his column last month, Dave
promised that a feature article about the
flight would be forthcoming. I’m pleased
to report that Maynard has agreed to
author this piece for Model Aviation. We
should get some interesting inside
information and a perspective of the
amount of effort that is required to
achieve such a goal.
It’s important to note here that the
record that was attempted falls under the
auspices of the Fédération Aéronautique
Internationale (FAI), and Maynard’s
model qualifies under the FAI rules as a
model airplane. The article is scheduled
to be in our hands for the February issue.
It will be worth the wait, I’m sure!
The Model Aviation staff extends our
most heartfelt congratulations to
Maynard and his dedicated and capable
team on their success.
As always, I can be reached via mail at
Box 68, Stockertown PA 18083. You
can call me at (610) 614-1747, and if Email’s
your thing, send them to
[email protected]. MA
Continued from page 7