I do believe there are differences in what Bob flew as his first "Gieseke's Nobler, and what Top Flite kitted. A story that George Aldrich told me himself at an early VSC, was that Bob called him a month or so before the NATS that year (not sure what year exactly) with the news that he had crashed his NATS airplane and needed to quickly build another, and did George have a green box kit he could buy from him. George said no, he only had one that he wanted to keep, but Bob could borrow it for patterns to scratch build a model. In doing that, Bob traced the ribs with a ball point pen, and cut the ribs out to the outside of that line, making the airfoil thicker, which is something Bob had been wanting to try. When assembling the fuselage, Bob called him again and asked for ideas on the landing gear, stating that the stock Nobler could be difficult to land sometimes. Georges answer was to make the tail wheel taller and make the fuselage level. That would help negate the tendency for the airplane to bounce on landings. George also told him that while he was at it, "chop the top of the rudder off square and that will help it present squares a little better." And that is an almost word for word explanation of how the Gieseke Nobler came to be. I believe this was several years before the 1969 cut off date for Classic models. I think Bob built a few different versions with some other changes before Top Flite put out their kit, which for all I know may just be a green box kit with the cosmetic changes. I have never had the chance to compare the kit parts. I have also wanted to ask Mr. Gieseke himself about the story in person but have never had the opportunity. I'm sure the Moon brothers may know the complete story also, and maybe they'll see this thread and check in.
Type at you later,
Dan McEntee
Topic: Gieseke Nobler built from a Top Flite Kit (Read 5245 times)
