Radio Control Scale Aerobatics John Glezellis [[email protected]]
An interview with Hobbico's Don Anderson
IN THE PAST we looked at the 2007 Basic International Miniature Aerobatic Club (IMAC) sequence. I described each maneuver and its placement within the aerobatic box, and I wrote briefly about Aresti.
This month I will take a short break from Scale Aerobatics because I would like to share a recent interview I conducted with Mr. Don Anderson. I have had the pleasure of knowing Mr. Anderson for the past few years, and he is someone we can learn from in both a business and family-oriented sense. Throughout this interview you will see how Don’s interest in aviation developed and how he turned that passion into a career.
JG: What sparked your interest in aviation, and in particular radio-control airplanes?
DA: I grew up on a farm in east-central Illinois and was the third of four children, all spaced four years apart. Dad was a bank loan officer by day and a cattle and grain farmer by night. I was his helping hand between the time I was about 9 and when I started high school.
When growing up, my hobbies included building the occasional plastic model plus some hunting and fishing on the farm. Mom had a big garden and did lots of canning, sewing, and craft projects. She was a 4-H leader and thus I was in 4-H!
In the summers, when not helping with the garden and cattle chores, I mowed the yard, drove a tractor, built fences to keep the cattle in, cut weeds out of soybean fields, and, in general, worked. Once in the seventh and eighth grades, I got to play one sport at a time including softball (during the spring and summer) and basketball (fall and winter).
My model building progressed up to the point where I started to build a Guillow’s World War II fighter while I was in high school. However, my dad had a heart attack the summer before I started high school. As a result, we sold the farm and moved to town on a small lake. I got the Guillow’s model framework together, but the project stalled once I found that it was difficult to apply the covering. The only balsa airplanes that I ever owned that flew were rubber-powered gliders.
During my sophomore year in college, I lived in a dorm across the hall from a guy who introduced himself as someone needing help with a computer science class. We studied some together and soon became good friends. I had bought some cheap golf clubs and began playing some during high school and he played as well, so we played golf quite a bit.
Over the next summer I got married and he began building model airplanes. When he returned that fall he brought me a copy of Model Airplane News and told me he thought we should try flying RC airplanes, which resulted in our going to a hobby shop and getting one RC system and two engines and airplane kits. Our first flights got me hooked on the hobby!
It turns out that the guy I started flying with in 1968 was Bruce Holecek, who later founded Tower Hobbies. He initially bought products for himself and me at a distributor in Chicago, and then sold excess parts to our local RC club members. He began the mail-order company the year that I graduated from college, 1971.
Once I was able to fly on my own, I wanted to learn aerobatics. Even though I had never once dreamed of flying a full-scale airplane, I was intrigued by floatplanes that I saw in outdoor magazines as well as aerobatic barnstormers who put on air shows each summer. I wanted to learn to fly just like they did!
JG: What other hobby interests have you pursued and/or are you currently pursuing?
DA: I have always loved to play golf, fish, and hunt. I think I have gone to either Minnesota or Canada fishing nearly every year since 1973. I may have missed one year along the way, but there were others that I have gone multiple times.
I’ve fished locally some, but mostly on a small lake that I now live on. I’ve also hunted regularly since I was young, initially hunting quail and pheasants over a bird dog, but more recently hunting deer with both a compound bow and a shotgun. I’ve hunted moose in Canada four different times.
Since being in the hobby business, it seems I pursue these other hobbies mostly while on vacation! Golf has definitely taken a backseat to other interests in recent years; however, I still enjoy playing whenever I get a chance.
My fishing hobby also turned into a business in the late 1980s when I decided to make fishing bobbers as a second balsa-wood product line. I set up Thill Fishing Tackle, a company that was sold to Lindy-Little Joe in 1992. I became part owner of Lindy a couple years later and have since enjoyed multiple fishing trips with numerous outstanding fishermen.
JG: What are your primary interests in RC modeling (e.g., Scale aircraft, aerobatic models, etc.)?
DA: I initially liked Pattern (RC Aerobatics) flying and racing back in the early and mid-1970s. I also got into Giant Scale in the late 1970s. I’ve always liked aerobatic models and still enjoy flying them today, but doing them as a business has made my hobby interest give way to my “business interest.”
JG: Have you designed many models yourself? If so, what models were they, when were they brought to market, etc.?
DA: The first designs that I did mostly on my own were back in 1978 and 1979. Both were done initially as airplanes for me to fly, but with hopes that Bud Nosen might make them into kits. The first was the Nosen Big Stik, which he did kit and sell.
I later completed a 102-inch Phil Kraft Super Fli, which never did go into production. However, I did fly it for several years.
In 1981 I bought Bridi Hobby Enterprises and began manufacturing airplanes on my own. I was involved to a large degree in many of the early Great Planes Model Manufacturing designs; however, my role has become more and more managerial as time has gone by. Today at Hobbico we have an Engineering/R&D Department that designs, tests, and creates the products that we sell.
JG: What was your previous work experience before working at Hobbico?
DA: I worked my way through high school as a draftsman, working summers and a few evenings after school at a local manufacturing company. I did engineering drawings of truck beds one summer, then inked drawings of highways and road construction for the State Highway Department another summer. One summer I was a survey assistant and helped to survey Interstate 70 through a forest about 75 miles south of Champaign, Illinois.
After I graduated from college in 1971 I went to work at Pontiac Motor Division of GM for two years. I spent the first year testing bumpers on cars. My second year I supervised a dynamometer lab where we tested engines for durability. I was then put in charge of areas such as emission tests, and that was what I was doing when I decided to return to Champaign in 1973 and try setting up a model distributing company to supply hobby shops.
I founded Great Planes Model Distributors Company in May of 1973 and operated it until I sold it to the owner of Hobbico in 1984. At that point I retained ownership of Great Planes.
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
