Hendon: For the serious aviation buff and/or Scale modeler, a visit to Hendon just outside London to see these rare machines is a pilgrimage well worth taking.
IT'S A TOSS-UP which is more packed with history: the displays in the Royal Air Force Museum at Hendon, or Hendon itself. Like so many places in England, the area is imbued with tales and legends of the early Celts and their Anglo-Saxon successors reaching back to what seems like the beginning of time. To a visitor from a relatively young country like the U.S.A., Hendon feels ancient indeed. One doesn't go back very far, of course, to trace the "beginning of time" for British aviation. In 1908 an American pilot named Samuel Cody made the first recognized flight on English soil, in a craft given the serviceable, if unglamorous, name of "British Army Aeroplane #1."
Bjorn Karlstrom
IF YOU'VE been a regular reader of American aviation magazines during the past three decades, the legend "Scale drawings by Bjorn Karlstrom" is a familiar one. From the hundreds of such publications in which Karlstrom's drawings have appeared over the last 35 years, the distinctive style of this Swedish artist is recognizable on sight. Yet who among us would know Bjorn Karlstrom if he walked through the door? Bill Winter, the venerable former editor of Model Aviation who was probably the first American editor to use Karlstrom's work back around 1950, has never set eyes on him or even spoken with him on the phone.
Fairey Swordfish
OF THE HUNDREDS of fascinating airplanes that are drooled over by Scale modelers, many can be found at private airports.
Custom Unlimited Racers
SITTING ALONE in the clear early morning light on the ramp at the 1986 Reno National Air Races, it looked like the latest in the growing, magnificent collection of modified P-51 Mustangs. Alone, it looked normal enough: Sleek, clean, its bubble canopy replaced by a tiny curve of blown Plexiglas faired neatly into the leading edge of its vertical fin. Like its predecessors the Stiletto, Strega, and Dago Red, it represented Unlimited Class pylon racing design carried to an extreme. Yet there was something different about this one. Next to any of the other Mustangs, it seemed smaller and slimmer. Clipping wings and tails are common enough in 1980's racing, but here was a brand-new expression of that idea. This racer resembled a P-51 without ever actually having been one.
Coupe Deutsch
WHAT A GREAT IDEA! An "aerial Grand Prix Race" to rival the excitement of the slam-bang road races in which Alfa Romeos and Bugattis and Mercedes Benz were thrilling Europe in the mid-Thirties. It was called the Coupe Deutsch (pronounced Coop Doych, or Derch) and it was to produce a series of racing planes every bit as technically advanced as those cars-and equally glamorous and memorable. Some of the aircraft it spawned became prototypes of beauties capturing FAI records today; but, unfortunately, after a meteoric period of glory the Coupe Deutsch race itself was to be eclipsed by World War II-and has never been revived since.
