Here is a real blast from the past

[RC Storick]

[Tony Drago]

That was cool. Thanks for posting.

[Ken Culbertson]

Wonder how many of those kids were flying fighters and bombers a few years later and how many of them survived the war.
Can you imagine a contest today with that many fliers!

Thanks for the post - Ken

[Ruslan Kurenkov]

I enjoyed watching the video
Thanks fore the post

[Scott Richlen]

Too bad that major corporations don't support model airplane building and flying for its obvious benefits to young people.  From the introduction to the film, it was obvious that at least someone at Plymouth Corp understood the connection between youth education and hobby and good corporate citizenship.

[Tom Vieira]

great post!

man, I kind of want to make my girlfriend watch it, some of the "old fashioned comments" about the sexes would drive her up the wall.  it'd be a blast to watch!   

[Brett Buck]

snip link to Plymouth Internats movie

  It's a good find, thanks for posting it. I can't quite tell if that is the one with Aldrich (who was young enough to enter it) winning.

    Brett

[Brett Buck]

Too bad that major corporations don't support model airplane building and flying for its obvious benefits to young people.  From the introduction to the film, it was obvious that at least someone at Plymouth Corp understood the connection between youth education and hobby and good corporate citizenship.

  What they wanted was a their own version of the Soapbox Derby that was getting publicity for Chevrolet at the time. That's how this was sold to Plymouth. It didn't work, because they restricted the entries to under 21, which eliminated most of the potential competitors. Then, as now, model airplanes, particularly model airplane competition, was largely an adult activity. Then, as now, a bunch of adults flying model airplane has no promotional value.

 Aldrich won the Plymouth Internats at least once, then aged out, and it never really took off like the soap box derby, so no promotional advantage to Plymouth. Lots of these big heavily commercial contests apparently went for a few years and then died as it became obvious that the reality did not match the promoter's vision. The only group that hung in there for an extended period was the Navy, but operating on inertia and slowly changing is a hallmark of most government activities and the Navy in particular - note Kelly Johnson's unspoken 15th rule.

    The AMA and even its predecessors have been misrepresenting model aviation as a youth development activity since the 30's. It has never really been that, and in particular, competition has not been a youth activity, essentially ever. It is about and for adults. Unfortunately, the reality makes a terrible promotional tool. This is why the AMA has consistently misrepresented it - and based on the "simulator trailer" scam from the other thread - still does. There's no other reason to be so desperate to phony up the junior membership in such a way, but it's hardly a new phenomenon. It's exactly what you would expect from a collection of "big fish in a little pond" small-town businessmen.

   As always, when these items come up, I recommend finding and reading a copy of "Do You Speak Model Airplane" by the late Dave Thornburg. It's about the most complete history of the early AMA and model airplane history up to the 70s and maybe the only one that is primarily concerned with honesty and reasonably legitimate scholarship. It's hard to find and typically expensive, but it bears *directly* on a lot of the current issues and explains things like the rapid demise of the Plymouth Internats and other similar efforts.

       Brett

[Trostle]

  It's a good find, thanks for posting it. I can't quite tell if that is the one with Aldrich (who was young enough to enter it) winning.

    Brett

Air Trails, December 1951, published the winners from the 5th Plymouth International Model Airplane Contest.  The Plymouth contests had different age brackets than what the AMA used and I do not know what the age categories were.  For stunt:

Freshman:  1st - D.W. Alford, 2nd - Fred W. Sage, 3rd - Robert Leyner
Junior:  1st Gary L. DeVore, 2nd - Loyd W. Curtis, 3rd - Gerard Anderer
Senior:  1st - George M. Aldrich, 2nd - Don G. Joslin, 3rd - Harold Price

From Air Trails, December 1952, the 6th Plymouth meet, Stunt:

Freshman:  1st - Fred W. Sage, 2nd - Dennis W. Alford, 3rd - Chris A Hanson
Junior:  1st - Lloyd W. Curtis, 2nd - Bill Rood & C. Hill Hutchins, 3rd - Arthur P. Pawloski
Senior:  1st - James G Ebejer, 2nd - Donald E. Ferguson, 3rd - Gerald F. Wagner

In the 51 issue, there is a picture of a very young George Aldrich receiving his 1st place trophy.  I saw that trophy in George's house in 1965.

Keith

[FLOYD CARTER]

I looked closely at the engines used in the 1948 Plymouth.  Remember that the glo plug was a brand new idea in '48.  But the conversion from spark ignition to glo ignition was almost immediate.  Many contestants at the '48 meet were using the "new-fangled" glo plug.  (I also noted people doing a lot of prolonged "Flipping" trying to start their engines.)

[Dave Moritz]

Great post! I couldn't help but notice that all the company execs and sponsor dudes didn't used their given name, only their first two initials. Hmm..., I wonder who else does that here?! My dad used the same practice until it kind of went out of style by 1970 or so.

At any rate, thanks again!

D.L. Moritz

[phil c]

How the heck did you find that, Bob?  Really neat.  The little guy with the blue/green plane looked pretty sad when he crashed.  I like the Bi-Slob hovering and the speed of the planes doing loops and stunts.


ps to RC S-  this was the 1948 Plymouth NATs.  I'll bet a lot of dads, and moms were in the war though.

[Skip Chernoff]

Sparky thanks for sharing the film. As a native Philadelphian and life long resident it was good to see footage of Philly from the Ben Franklin Parkway and images of folks flying in "the Belmont Plateau" over in Fairmount Park. Kinda makes me sad that Philly at one time was a hotbed of model airplane activity. Manufacturing of kits,supplies,engines were here.There were clubs in every neighborhood and hobby shops to support them. I'm proud that our club the Philly Fliers still carries the torch. When I watched all of the activity and the people milling around it reminded me of the old Johnsville NAS meets where all model airplane categories were flown in one place on one day. I miss those days........Cheers,PhillySkip

[john e. holliday]

I watched the video again as I had seen it before.  Even then I wondered how many of the people were still flying when I finally learned about model planes.  I know my brothers had ignition engines and my brother Bob had the GHQ that every one wondered how he got it to run.  He was only a teenager then.  I still have his O&R .60 side port in my stash minus the ignition system.  It has a casting hole just below the intake port.  He said no problem.  He put he thumb over the hole and started it in the basement of the first house Mother and I lived in when we first moved back to KCK.  Needless to say we shut it down after about 60 seconds of engine run.  Wonder who the young lady was that received her trophy and if she was the same one flying a CL plane in the video.  Thanks for the video.   

[Chancey Chorney]

Very neat. Thanks for sharing the video.

[Chuck_Smith]

Thanks.

Funny, the older I get, the more I realize how cool Free flight is.

You know what they say: You build it, you trim it, you set the timer to three seconds. In four seconds you'll know if you're a free-flighter or not.

Chuck

[wwwarbird]

 Very cool stuff! Hard to imagine a C/L contest where actual grandstands were needed for spectators, large ones especially, and they were full!

[Rick Bollinger]

Very cool video. I enjoyed it thanks Sparky.

[Ken Culbertson]

Thanks.

Funny, the older I get, the more I realize how cool Free flight is.

You know what they say: You build it, you trim it, you set the timer to three seconds. In four seconds you'll know if you're a free-flighter or not.

Chuck

Oops, you forgot the DT.  Now you are going to learn if you are a cross country runner or not!

Ken

[john e. holliday]

As I seen one year at a RC glider fun fly.  One of our guys launched his new tow line glider for a test flight.  It was a 25 foot launch line.  He released it and said at 2 minutes it should activate the dethermalizer.   At 2 minutes it did activate as we watched the glider swoop up.  Then it leveled off and caught a boomer of a thermal.   He chased it as far as he had a road to drive on when it went out of site in a cloud.   Tes he had his AMA number and thee ID card on it.  To this day it has not been seen again.  Some time ask Dave Trible abut his tow line glider that was lost in a snow storm during a hand launch glider meet.  Nature has a way of doing things.

[Ken Culbertson]

At 2 minutes it did activate as we watched the glider swoop up.  Then it leveled off and caught a boomer of a thermal.   He chased it as far as he had a road to drive on when it went out of site in a cloud.

When I was flying A-2 in Texas we had a rule - If you can see stuff up there and it is not a bird, a plane or superman then don't launch!

Ken

[RC Storick]

Here is a older silent movie 1939

[Dan McEntee]

  I LOVE this stuff! These guys REALLY wanted to fly that day, judging from the length of the lines for processing, and then seeing how the flags were standing STRAIGHT OUT!!! This one even included rubber speed! I'm off to the club meeting and will check it out again tonight.
   Type at you later,
  Dan McEntee

[Ruslan Kurenkov]

Reviewed today with friends again this is a wonderful video. Everyone loved it. I liked more my friends who are engaged in time-free timed models and high-speed cord models of aircraft. I also noticed that a lot of time on the video is devoted to timer models (now it's F1C) and rubber models (now F1B). I really liked the moment when they showed indoor competitions on indoor models (now it's F1D). After watching the video, I very much remembered my childhood, when I was from the 1st to the 4th grade of the school, I studied from 6 years to 10 years in the aircraft model section and also started from room models and then competed on rubber models exactly video. I was very pleased to observe especially the performances of young men in this championship. Speed ​​models flew clockwise, then counterclockwise. There was an interesting launch of a pulsating jet engine and the flight of a speed model on it. The biggest thing that struck me was the gigantic scale of the competition and the very beautiful awarding of the winners. Cups that were awarded to athletes were simply works of art.
Thanks again to Robert for the explosive video.

[FLOYD CARTER]

Is there proof that this was 1939?  I identified a few PLAYBOY free flight and a Megow RANGER.  I don't think these were available in 1939.

Notice all the parked cars.  Almost all were dark blue or grey.  Maybe they didn't paint cars bright colors until post WWII.

Notice that the whole field of people stopped to watch the R/C plane.  R/C was brand new, and the radio equipment was complex, home-brewed with vacuum tubes,  and usually didn't work reliably.