"This is a complex model and for a kid to build it seems a shade strange."
Dan,
Don't under estimate what we did in our early years. I learned to fly in grade school on a friend's beat up airplane. I then had a Ringmaster. I had one more kit plane, an All American, and built from plans and mostly my own designs from about age 12 or 13. To this day, they were the last kits that I built. BTW my first AMA licence was as a Junior, in 1957, I have all my licenses from then until today in baseball card sheet protectors.
Ed Elasick. Bill Suarez, Andy Lee, Moses Quintana, Bill Simon, Bob Hunt, and on & on all did our own building and designing from those early days. We were highly interested and motivated, loved airplanes, and also benefited from the much demonized BOM. Believe me, while we from the Northeast, similar stories were happening thoughout the country.
Our futures were all molded by these experiences.
There is absolutely no doubt in my mind, that Jim Ivey built the original Hi Johnson Stuka. I saw him fly it at the '61 Willow Grove Nats.