My flying buddy Mark Hughes generously picked up my copy at the NATS and delivered it to me. I have been pretty busy and haven't devoted too much time to Volume #1, but have gotten about 2/3 through it. I don't want to just scan through things, I want to spend the time and attention it deserves. The book has been well worth the wait. I have always liked reading Wynn's columns in Model Aviation so I kind of knew what was coming. The book is first rate from beginning to end. The printing is excellent, as good as anything else I saw in my 20 years working in that business. The pages are printed on what looks like cover stock for today's magazines that are still published!! The hardcovers are great, and photo reproduction is very good. That was one aspect I was wondering about in the coverage of the early years. Amateur photography being what it was back then left a lot to be desired but so far everything has looked great. The books are HEAVY and LARGE and that can make reading kind of tricky, but I'll manage!
One thing that came to mind is that my involvement in the event came at a pretty good time. In going through it so far, I see names and faces of people I know and have been lucky to have met. I got to live and see a lot of this history being made, and and know people that were involved with what I missed! It makes it kind of special and personal to me. One of the names I saw a lot in the early years was Fran McElwee. I had seen the name before in reading the old magazines, and if you notice his name is similar to mine. Chris McMillin talked me into going to one of the early VSC contests and helped me arrange transportation for me and my airplane. I chose a model out of Flying Models called "Ruby" by Arthur Alfiari because of it's compact size and it would fit into a box that was 1/2" under the over size luggage spec for TWA. This was where I got to meet a lot of the guys that you will see in the books. One of then was Ron Prentice, from England, who wrote for Aeromodeller magazine and whose name I was familiar with also. I talked with Mr. Prentice several times and he took some photos of "Ruby." Several months later my copy of Aeromodeller came in the mail and I noticed it had coverage of VSC listed on the cover. I flipped inside to the article and it was well covered, and even had a picture of "Ruby" in it. It had orange wings with white trim and lettering, spelling out the details of the model and my name and home town. Mr. Prentice pointed all that out in the caption, but credited the model to Fran McElwee! Well, at least my name was legible on the wing!!
I have lots of great memories of my time in this event and I think many more will get triggered before I make it through both volumes!! If you are on the fence on whether tp purchase a set or not, I would not hesitate if I were you. With all that it took to assemble and produce this fine work, I seriously doubt that there will be any more printed. Wynn put in tons of blood , sweat and tears on this I'm sure, but even putting something like this back on press for a reprint and getting it bound to this quality would be a huge undertaking.
Type at you later,
Dan McEntee
Topic: Wynn Paul (Read 3343 times)