I just cannot let David Roland's name and picture show up on SH without adding my appreciation to this man.His Father, Bill, was finishing his Engineering degree at La Tech (1956?) and me and about a dozen other kids were six to eighth graders in a loosely knit flying club in Ruston. David was a week old when I met him. David was the club "Mascot", he went to all the contests. Bill's Dad always had back-yard barbecue for us at his Alexandria, La., home after contests. It's hard to explain how wonderful that was to us kids with little money, relatively speaking, during those great times.
I left for Japan for three years, (Air Force brat) kept flying models, and neither saw nor heard about Bill and David until we crossed paths again in Baton Rouge. After fifty years, it was quite a reunion. The Rolands were great ambassadors for control line flying, they were really a hot team in Combat, but David's white FW is just one example of his building skills and devotion to modeling.
They're gone now, not forgotten, the good news is there are a lot of families even today with the same devotion, they're easy to spot.
Apologies for going off topic, Joe. .....again,
dg