Argosy I
STANDING ON THE RAMP at Chicago's O'Hare Airport, deafened by the roar of the big jets, it's not so easy to picture how it must have been. Turning the calendars back 50 years takes a real effort of imagination. But suddenly, complete with sensory details, the scene springs to mind: the cracks in the paving, the smell of the oil, the abundance of noise and blasts of wind. The steel fences blur into grassy fields, and mountains of parked cars become the nearby hills covered with spring wheat. Though the image wavers before my eyes and threatens to fade, I manage to hold onto it. Wherever there are wings, engines, and dreams, the ghosts of yesterday's wings can't be far away.
Antoinette
OF ALL THE AIRCRAFT designs from the pioneering days of aviation, the Antoinette is among the most graceful. Her creator, Leon Levavasseur, obviously put his training as an artist into the design. The long, slender fuselage and gently curving tail assembly somehow blend beautifully with the double-tapered wings. The design was very clean and simple for those days, when her competition often looked like overgrown kites with strange appendages. Pioneer designs don't often transition well into the Control Line field, being hindered by a lot of drag, thin wing sections, and very fragile airframe structures. They are elegant in the air, though, and building the Antoinette has long tempted me.
Bristol Boxkite
For the dawn-of-aviation enthusiast, this CL duplicate of Henry Farman's pioneering Boxkite should get the nostalgia juices running. The model has a 42½-in, wingspan and is set up for .25 power. THE PROBLEM with indulging oneself, they tell you, is that you can never get enough. Once you start, it's difficult to stop. That certainly held true with my Control Line model of Levavasseur's Antoinette, a design from the pioneering days of aviation ("CL Antoinette," July 1989 Model Aviation). After building and gaining experience flying this historic airplane, I felt the need for something more. The sight of the sun shining through the clear doped covering on those late after noon flying sessions is hard to forget. It takes you back to a time when aviation was simply the miracle of flight itself. In that earlier era, flying wasn't about speed and stunts. From start to finish, a flight was an achievement, a moment of accomplishment. I'm afraid the Antoinette has opened a vein of nostalgia, a thirst that must be quenched often. I found myself having to fly the model all the time. After a while, even that wasn't enough.
Staggerwing Beech
STAGGERWING! The very name brings most antique aviation buffs to their feet. Certainly one of the most recognizable and beautiful of the civilian designs of the Golden Age, the Staggerwings took to the air with grace and power and a certain mystique. The curves, angles and unusual negative rake to the biplane wings make for a distinctive aircraft. But the Staggerwing didn't just look good, it flew even better! Even today you can see many of these icons of the Golden Age gracing the popular full-scale fly-ins around the country. Modelers have always been fascinated by the big Beech. Once you've built one you can really marvel at its design. Piece by piece it looks awkward and impossible, but when you put it all together you have the elixir of flight. One sip and you're hopelessly hooked.
Eastbourne Monoplane
SCALE modelers always have a squadron of elusive "ideal subjects" that haunt them in their daydreams as well as their sleep. This time it was that "ideal vintage craft," and it kept me up many a night ravaging through my files. After a week of sleepless nights a friend drops by with an interesting three-view he's come across. Tearing it from his hands, ranting and raving, I descended into the depths of the model shop. The EAC was the result. Designed and built in England in 1912, the Eastbourne Monoplane was the first flying machine built by the Eastbourne Aviation Company. Clean and strong, it was ahead of its time. All efforts were turned to make it as strong an aircraft as possible. Independent pylon structures above and below the fuselage supported the landing and flying wires, thus landing gear damage would leave the airframe intact.
