Hard to Imagine Today

[Mike Griffin]

Here's an eye opener (Model Airplane News 1951), in 1951 at a contest in Long Island NY, there were 158 entries in Navy carrier, 230 entries in Stunt, 236 entries in just 1/2A speed, 270 in A Speed, 291 in B speed, 175 in C speed, 216 in D speed and check this out, 101 entries in Jet Speed.  Here is the real kicker; it was annual one day contest. Hard to imagine today.

I saw this posted on another site and thought I would share here.  Kind of amazes me to think about that many entries.

Mike

[Dan McEntee]

  Probably the Mirror Meet, or one of the other big northeast contests. The Mirror Meet was sponsored by The New York Daily Mirror Newspaper and it would attract thousands of spectators. Some were held on the parking lot of the original Madison Square Garden. I doubt it was aone day contest, you would never get it all in!! Even in summer with Daylight Savings time!!
  Type at you later,
   Dan McEntee

[john e. holliday]

No DST back then and there were large prizes being given.  Also this is the period of a lot of CL people.  It was also before my time of CL planes.  1951 I was only 10 years old and did not know about model gas powered planes myself.  My half brothers ahd tried some with the old ignition stuff and my brither Bob raced the tether cars in KCMo.

[Mike Griffin]

  Probably the Mirror Meet, or one of the other big northeast contests. The Mirror Meet was sponsored by The New York Daily Mirror Newspaper and it would attract thousands of spectators. Some were held on the parking lot of the original Madison Square Garden. I doubt it was aone day contest, you would never get it all in!! Even in summer with Daylight Savings time!!
  Type at you later,
   Dan McEntee

I went back and read the post and it appeared to be the Mirror meet.  I wondered the same thing about getting all that in in one day.  That would be a task.
Mike

[Mike Hazel]

Probably a lot of circles with events going simultaneously . 

[Dick Byron]

In my home town we had the Yankee Championships. South Weymouth nas. 800 total contestants.

[Robert Zambelli]

I have fond memories from the early 50s also.
I can't remember the exact year but definitely early 50s.
My Dad took me to the nationals which were held at the Willow Grove NAS (an hour and a half from our home town).
The guest flyer was Jim Walker, flying THREE spark ignition Fireballs at once.
He also did an indoor demonstration of some of his hand-launch gliders.
The man was amazing.
The event was so big that the Navy set up bleachers for the spectators and they were full.
The Blue Angels even did a performance, flying F9F Cougars.
The most exciting demo was not model aviation but a B-25 Mitchell doing a JATO assisted takeoff.
Were any of you there?

Bob Z.

[Ty Marcucci]

(No DST back then)

Actually DST came about during WW2, thanks to FDR.

[Dan McEntee]

I went back and read the post and it appeared to be the Mirror meet.  I wondered the same thing about getting all that in in one day.  That would be a task.
Mike

    At the Mirror Meet, they didn't fly the regular AMA pattern in stunt. They had their own pattern that was something like 24 or 28 maneuvers long! Dee Hill and the Tulsa group put on a couple of tribute Mirror Meet contests several years ago, and my Sean Sean was able to attend and fly in one of them. Dee may remember the name of the guy from our club that placed in the original meet and he attended at least one. He told me that he thought the secret to placing was having a model that could fly fast and do the whole pattern in one tank, so that is what he designed for it. A very high percentage of the entrants had to pit for fuel to finish, which was allowed. Dee sent me an information packet on it at the time and I'll have to find that for more details on it.  There are news reel videos of it on YouTube. Notice how people are dressed, and the almost complete lack of fat people!! Yes it was a different time!!
  Type at you later,
   Dan McEntee

[jfv]

I flew at the 1959 Mirror Meet in PAA Load Jet free flight and won the Junior division.  Mt prize, a RCA transistor radio (quite expensive at the time) is on display in the AMA Museum.  It still works.  As I recall they used to limit the number of contestants to 1000!

[Steve Dwyer]

I grew up only a short drive north from this event in Albany but in 1951 I was still a bit too young to recall much about it. Only a few years later it seemed every kid in the neighborhood was building something from a Sterling kit box while Duke Fox and Testors' where busy making 35s.  It was about this time I recall watching on the 8"x 8" B&W TV screen some people flying control line model planes. I'll bet it was filmed at one of these nearby LI meets.
How the enthusiasm for airplanes at that time was so unbridled, I'm thankful I lived during this wonderful era.

Steve