I got to tour Charlie's shop when at the Paducah contest one year at the Saturday night bean feed and probably saw the original.. I think Charlie still had every model he ever built! A man after my own heart! A genuine gentleman of the South. I hope he's doing OK. I'll have to dig out the article and see if he tells how he ran across the design.
Type at you later,
Dan McEntee
Hi Dan,
This is what Charlie wrote in his AAM article. (My copy does not show the date of the magazine.)
"While going through the books in a library 400 miles from home, I hound the first bit of information which led to the design of this model. The book, "Airplanes of the World -- 1490-1962" by Doug Rolfe and, of all people, Bill Winter showed a small drawing of the plane, and gave the information that the MO-1, designed in 1921 as a shipboard observation plane, was the first all-metal plane designed and built in the United States. The word "shipboard" was all the incentive that I needed.
"During the summer of 1967 I corresponded with the Martin Marietta Corp. and got a photograph o the real plane and a good three-view drawing. Invaluable was the letter from Martin Marietta verifying the MO-1 as being carrier-based: "In response to your request for verification of the use of the early Martin-built MO-1, our records indicate that this plane was carrier-based along with bombing and torpedo squadrons of the U.S. Navy in 1924, but was classed as a light-weight scout monoplane."
Charlie went on to explain that Don Gerber got involved and actually developed plans and built one before Charlie did. Gerber went on to set records in Class I and Class II at the 1968 Olathe Nats with his design. So that date will start to zero in when the AAM article appeared, probably after late 1968 and sometime in the next year or so. I would like to find the date to update my file.
(The AMA plans service does not show the publication date for the magazine either.)
Keith