Classic Air Models Company of Fruitland Park Florida?

[BillP]

Anyone have history on Classic Air Models Company of Fruitland Park Florida? I just received a kit by them but have never heard of this company. They don't come up on searches so I suppose they are long out of business. Just curious.

Merry Christmas
Bill P.

[Tony Drago]

 The were 2 company's around 70's to maybe early 80's. That hand cut kits. The one you have, Classic Air Models and one other. I believe the owner's name was Bill LaRue or he owned the other company i seem to recall was Hobby Enterprise's.
 Hope this helps.

[De Hill]

Classic Air models had a spotty record. The models were hand cut; some were good, some were bad.
For a while America's Hobby Center was selling them.

[Bill Adair]

CLC was another.

I have their Veco Tom Tom kit, but wasn't happy with their fuselage cutting! Fuselage wood grain, and coloring didn't match at all, and halves were badly matched in size. Everything else looked fine.

Bill

[Dwayne]

This company sounds so familiar to me, did they make a Demon combat?

[BillP]

I thought the kit mfg might be lurking here and have some history to share. I've lived about 75 miles from Fruitland Park since the late 1950s and never heard of them. Seems I would have but not so. I just bought their T Bird I kit and at first glance parts are cut smooth and wood is above average. It came with the VECO isometric plans so I will have to compare with full scale BUSCO T Bird plans to see how accurate they really are.   

I'm currently building another mfgs kit purchased over 25 yrs ago and basically having to replace most of the parts. Wood quality not so bad but bulkheads, fuse sides, ribs, doublers and notches aren't true and nothing lines up...almost every shaped part was flawed. Time will tell if I got lucky with the Classic Models kit.

[Scott Richlen]

I have a few of these (including a Juno) and the hand cutting looks suspect, but the wood is fabulous!  Like any kit I build I'll be modifying it anyway so mediocre hand-cutting doesn't bother me too much.

One thing to consider is to cut a new root rib and then move each rib down (out?) one position, thus giving you enough meat to re-cut.  Same with bulkheads.

[ericrule]

Back in the early 1990's before RSM started cutting kits I purchased a number of kits from this company. As has been mentioned earlier in this post the quality of these kits varied from great to questionable. In a very short time I came to refer to these quality control issues as "beer cuts" and as they continued decided to stop purchasing kits from them.

If you got a good kit be happy about it. If not then be prepared to replace many of the hand cut parts.