Early modeling magazines are always a source of interest to Old-Timer (OT) modelers. Most of us like to peruse them, but few care to store them. A few get resold, but many are being given away or going out in the trash every day. At a recent contest banquet, Steve Remington passed out some old magazine issues as door prizes for each attendee.
By old, I mean quite old: some dating back to the 1930s. We’re now reading, reminiscing, and swapping with each other like kids with comic books. The first magazine I subscribed to was Air Trails, so I was interested in revisiting those. Let’s review a little history of our hobby by sampling a couple of Air Trails issues published 10 years apart.
The March 1937 issue was an 81/2 x 111/2-inch format of 98 pages. The magazine was in its infancy with color covers, but all else was black and white. Illustrations were divided between small photos and pen-and-ink renditions by artists and draftsmen. Coverage was primarily general aviation, with no model coverage until page 41.
There was little advertising. General aviation ads were mostly for air training schools and colleges and correspondence courses. The few model ads were mostly 1/3 pages featuring Rubber Scale models, or in some cases, just balsa and other accessories with no kits at all. I was surprised to not find a single engine ad.
Full-scale as well as model gliders and rocketry was covered. Much print was devoted to fictional air adventure stories, such as the Bill Barnes series. Several small full-size model plans were included. There was an Air Adventurers Club newsletter. Ten cents brought you a membership certificate and an identification badge.
Moving ahead to 1947, World War II was over, and many small machine shops no longer had government contracts. With model building in full swing, dozens of these shops began producing model engines.
The endless variety of engine designs gave us hundreds of interesting mechanical choices—many excellent, some absolute junk. But the hobby couldn’t support the numbers and variety of engines being produced, so the market quickly reduced the manufacturers to a more sustainable number. This left us a legacy of hundreds of interesting collectibles.
The January 1947 issue of Air Trails was produced in an oversize 101/2 x 13-inch format of 126 pages, at a cover price of 25¢. Some color print appeared inside, but only in a few of the full-page ads. Advertising had increased, including numerous full-page ads devoted to the superiority of individual engines.
Of particular interest was the report on the 1946 New York Daily Mirror Flying Fair. It was a model contest with some full-scale aviation entertainment thrown in. The Grumman Aircraft Corporation was host at its Long Island airfield. There were 1,454 registered contestants and an estimated 150,000 spectators. Many nice merchandise prizes were offered, up to and including a full-scale Ercoupe aircraft.
The Ercoupe was won by CL Speed flier Earnest Babcock Jr. It was the second of two such aircraft won by either Earnest Jr. or Sr. within a three-week span. The CL C Speed record stood at 112.5 mph at that time. As mentioned earlier, model building was obviously flourishing.
Many event winners became well known not only as top competitors, but as designers and manufacturers within the modeling community. Frank Ehling won A FF with a 14-plus-minute flight. Hal deBolt won CL Scale Stunt. Art Hasselback won Jet Speed, and Joe Raspante won RC.
Preserving written material is an art not known or practiced by many, so those old magazines are beginning to come apart with age. Fortunately modern technology is now being used to scan and preserve them electronically. Previous Model Aviation issues can be found on the AMA website in the MA Digital Library.
Unlike antique kits or engines, you can buy entire magazine collections on a CD at their original cost or less. Roland Friestad has scanned and digitized past issues of Model Airplane News, Model Builder, Flying Models, and more recently, Air Trails. Individual pages can be printed.
Works in progress include RC Modeler and Aeromodeller. Future projects include Flying Aces, Model Craftsman, Model Aircraft, and Popular Aviation. Roland also offers the more modern RC Micro Flight and RC Micro World, which he currently edits and publishes. Sample pricing for CDs or USB drives is the complete run of 295 issues of Model Builder for $75 postpaid worldwide.
Conquering Electric Torque
Electric motors can start suddenly at full torque. And since OT models have light wing loadings, some fliers have been experiencing aborted takeoffs at motor start.
One obvious solution is to use a speed control and throttle up slowly. But for simple on-off systems, the problem can be overcome by just having someone secure the model during motor start, then releasing it after the initial burst of torque.
Attitudes
Let’s face it, electric power is here to stay. Some still feel that electric has no place in OT flying, but you can find a few small ads in the early magazines showing electric model motors available even in the 1930s.
Today’s batteries would have made e-power more prevalent then, but today’s electric power has the one big advantage of allowing us to fly noiselessly in places where many modelers wouldn’t have a place to fly at all.
Flying Sites Lost
The previous paragraph reminds me of flying sites no longer in existence. On the West Coast, the famous Rosecrans and Western site in the Los Angeles area was paved over years ago. More recently, the active Mile Square site near Los Angeles was lost to progress as a golf course moved in to produce more revenue.
This year, the well-known flying site at Taft, California, was closed to organized competition. I often imagine a future in which some of us might claim that we’d once flown contests in the parking lot of the Taft Mall, but that may not be the case. The area is potentially an ecological preserve.
2013 SAM Champs
The 2013 Society of Antique Modelers (SAM) Champs event and the deadline for this column meshed in such a way that this is the earliest that I could report on it. I went to fly and enjoy, take a few photos, and leave the main reporting to others.
The weather was mostly cooperative. Attendance was lighter than previous years, and all went smoothly. I attribute the lighter attendance to a combination of the economy, gas prices, and a few of us “aging out” each year.
The Model Engine Collector’s Association has been scheduling an alternative meet for Eastern OT fliers at approximately the same time, which reduces attendance by a few of the Midwestern and Eastern fliers whenever the event is held in the West.
Mystery Modeler Identified
The lead photo from the October 2013 column has been tentatively identified by Dave Lewis, who thinks it’s Bill Alberta from Montana.
