stunthanger.com
Announcements => In Memory of our friends => Topic started by: Bob Hunt on July 05, 2021, 08:17:53 AM
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It saddens me deeply to have to report the passing of Vic Macaluso. Vic died suddenly on Friday morning of an apparent heart attack while at the breakfast table. I just got off the phone with his son, Victor, and we shared a lot of great stories about his dad.
Vic came onto the East Coast stunt scene around late 1967 and made a meteoric rise to the very top of the event in our area by 1970. His ability to conceive of new types of model configurations and then his amazing build and finish speed allowed him to produce a string of iconic CL Stunt models in the early 1970 time frame. Among his masterpieces were his extremely scale-like Crusader (complete with anhedral wing and drop tanks), and his F-14 Tomcat. Both of those models were published; the Crusader in American Aircraft Modeler and the Tomcat in Flying Models. Many years later Vic reprised those two designs with updated aerodynamics and power plants and they were once again published.
Vic made a brief return to competitive stunt flying in the early 1990s, but his heart was really into radio control scale building and flying. He produced dozens of museum-class models, and he won many Best of Show awards at the WRAM Show in Westchester, New York, as well as many other awards at the various Giant Scale fly-ins and competitions.
In an entirely different field, Vic was also a master model boat builder, and again many of his boats won in WRAM static competitions. In fact, Vic wrote dozens of articles and columns for Flying Models magazine in the years in which I was the editor of that rag. We called him the "King of the Adjective." There was never a more personable, enthusiastic, funny, helpful, competitive, and friendly person than Vic, and I will always cherish the memories of the times we flew together and traveled together to contests.
I'm attaching a photo of Vic, my son, Robby, and me at the 1993 FAI Team Trials in Mount Comfort, Indiana.
Rest now in God's Good Peace my old and dear friend - Bob Hunt
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So sad to lose a friend so suddenly. May he rest in peace.
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Vic was a great guy, and always willing to help.....
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I got to know Vic back in my NJ days. He was a really great guy and a awesome modeler never afraid to go his own way on designs. God speed Vic.
DennisT
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Don't think I every met him, but the design he published were very creative and looked beautifully done. Much better than my hap hazard experiments!
Phil C
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Vic did an outstanding job at one of the Garden State Circle Burner's Stunt clinics viz. ink pens and ink lining on planes. I attended and still remember his council on these topics. So sorry to learn of his passing.
Phil Spillman
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'sorry to say that I never met him, but I have enjoyed many of his excellent and informative articles of truly captivating models. His were often highlights of their issues. What a wonderful modeler he was. Good thoughts toward his family and many friends for their loss.
SK
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Sorry to hear about Vic Macaluso. I remember talking to him at a meet somewhere in lower Pennsylvania about his beautiful Crusader. The anhedral wing was made from a foam chipmunk plane. It was a beautiful plane an eye-catcher flying inverted.
Rest in God's Good Peace. †
Roger