Doug has been in the loft again, and has dug out something truly ancient!

Here's the story as he tells it:

During the 1956 MAAA Nationals held in Taralgon Victoria, I was at the Free Flight field when one of the Hearn Brothers from Melbourne launched his model and the de-thermaliser didn't work.  

(The de-thermaliser was a piece of wool like impregnated cord that was lit with a match and burned for about 5 minutes before it burnt through a piece of cotton holding down the tailplane (that is if the DT didn't blow out). A rubber band then pulled the tailplane up to approx 45deg, stalling the aircraft which then came down gently (usually). Some avant garde modellers used a clock-like timer instead.)

Anyway, I said I would go fetch the model, so I set off on a cross country run of about 2 miles (3.5kms), found the model in paddock of long grass and returned it to the Hearns.

The Hearns had a model shop in Melbourne and were one of the first kit manufacturers in Australia. They were very thankful for my effort and said to drop into their shop for a gift.

Well as Dad was driving us I had to convince him to go home via Melbourne rather than back through Orbost and the Bonang H'way, all dirt and twisty as hell.

So off to Melbourne and to the Hearn's shop. What a cave of modellers bits! If you bought an engine they would take it out of the box, into the test bench, on with a prop and fuel and start it right in the shop so you knew it was OK and you knew how to start and tune, many were diesels in those days.

They offered me a kit and I chose the pictured aircraft, The Australian Stunter, a control liner, 53in wingspan and powered by a Frog 500, all 5cc of raw power (very powerful for those days).

So, after a month or so of construction, covered with tissue paper tightened by water spray & nitrocellulous dope, and hand painted, we had our test flight early in 1957.  It has been recovered once since, again with tissue, and as you can see it is ready for another covering.

This is not an RC aircraft but we do have a few control line flyers in our ranks as we often see at the christmas party.

 Pic 1 - Straight out of the loft, lots of accumulated dirt

and Pic 2 - cleaned up an me trying to hide some of the holes:

Here are some ideas and suggestions, from David Menzies, for the glider fun fly event planned for 28th November. You can send an email message to David by clicking this link This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it  . The idea of this event is to attract entries from beyond the traditional glider ranks, so please let David have your views, and also let him have an indication of whether you are keen to participate. We need the numbers to make it work! 

 click [read more] on the right