You Gotta Have: Clout!
I HAVE NEVER written a Letter to the Editor, and I can't recall the last letter to a columnist about his efforts. Like everyone, perhaps more so than most, I can sometimes get pretty riled over what I'm reading. Unlike some readers, though, I usually just grit my teeth, mutter a bit, turn to the ad with the pretty model, and pour another cup of coffee or have another glass of wine as I make an effort to think sweet thoughts. Maybe it was too late for coffee and too early for wine, but this time my fingers got twitchy-triggered by the rereading of Jim Waterman's column in the February 1987 RC Report regarding the focus of RC clubs. These spasms were not initiated by displeasure at what Jim had written; instead, it was because his words started my thinking processes.
Those Days of Wonder and Change
MAN'S FASCINATION with flight is age-old. Daedalus and his son Icarus were the first to try it, soaring through the heavens on wings of feathers and wax. But while that mythical pair built their wings themselves (we might call them the first homebuilders), they certainly couldn't be called modelers. One of the earliest self-taught aerodynamicists, and perhaps even the first designer of model airplanes, was Leonardo da Vinci.
Sal Taibi: A Living Legend
The kid with the mass of unruly black hair stared at the horse's left front foot with unblinking eyes. His gaze moved back to the black boot in the shiny stirrup, then up the blue uniform of New York's finest to the cold grey eyes under the black bill of the cap. The thin lips of the mounted police officer barely moved.
Leapin' Lena
It seems that every sport, hobby, or political movement has a period called The Golden Years. I believe it was Hal deBolt who gave this name to the nostalgic years we include in the era of RC model aircraft catalogued and perpetuated by the Vintage Radio Control Society. The aircraft presented in this article appeared in the 1950s and was guided by those early RC systems of questionable reliability that moved the control surfaces by rubber-powered escapements or energy-gulping actuators. (The latter electromechanical devices were to become a part of the "Galloping Ghost" control system.)
