The Nobler as presented in the original Model Airplane News plan, had some changes that I don't think George authorized, as they were not drawn up and inked by him. I can't remember the details, but the M.A.N. version doesn't have as much asymmetry as his original design, which as was pointed out, is kitted by Brodak with George's blessing. After publishing in M.A.N., the design was kitted by Top Flite as the beloved "57 Nobler that we all know. It was massaged even further by the kit designers at Top Flite to fit in a standard box. That was a pretty common practice at that time on several well known designs. When Top Flite was purchased by Great Planes in I forget what year, all the rights to previous produced kits were released when Great Planes destroyed all the tooling and such for the kits, as all they wanted was the name and the Monokote brand. That reverted the rights to all of the Aldrich designs back to George, who in turn made the deal with Brodak. Before that, the versions of the Flite Streak that Brodak put out were called Lightning Streak to avoid conflict with Top Flite Models. There was even at least one version of the Nobler before the '52 version that was published by M.A.N. I have a copy of those plans by Jan Rummery, and I believe Jim Kraft has built one of those. And of course, no Nobler thread can be complete without mention of the Gieseke Nobler ( forgot how to spell Gieseke) which was kitted by Top Flite after 1970, with some minor modifications made by Bob G. when scratch building a new airplane in a panic before th '68 or '69 NATS. That's pretty much everything I can remember about the Nobler history without spending the night researching in my basement!
Type at you later,
Dan McEntee
Topic: Need of Aldrich '52 Nobler article (Read 1923 times)
