This is very interesting and the first I have heard about Walt's burial plans!! If you had ever met Walt, I'm sure you would have hit it off right away. Les. I think Walt would be pleased to know that all of the models shown in the photo still exist, and most are flown pretty regularly. The Typhoon was just such a hand full and was so large that it was donated to a local museum before anything bad happened to it. I don't think Walt had even really figured out the 4 stroke thing, so it was put aside and had very little time on it. It had a OS .70 four stroke in it that weighed 20 or 22 ounces!! The model itself was less that 60 I think, and it showed Walt's engineering prowess in that when fully assembled it did not require any balance weight anywhere!! Flying it was an experience. It weight over 80 ounces ready to fly, and using what I had learned about running Saito ,56 engines I managed to get a decent enough run on the biggest tank that would fit (4,5 ounces) and still get a pattern in. I managed to get several patterns on the plane once I determined the best prop, but it had to be flying at an exact lap time to be comfortable. Mark Hughes flew several flights also, but declined any more after that !! Once we achieved that much, I decided to donate it to a local museum with a youth program so others could at least see it. Not many models of Hawker Typhoons out there, and while some think it was a copy of Windy's model, it was completely different as far as I could see. Walt was one of the very earliest to embrace the electric power plants and all of those experiments and models were still there. Was was able to explain some stuff to us as we went through things, but his memory had really faded by then. but he had a great humor about that!!. I worked at a local hobby shop during the day while I was working night shift at my regular job and would see Walt often when he came it to get supplies. I think his crowning achievement there was his twin Gemini model. It was a semi scale twin of some obscure French bomber with smooth, curvy lines. It was his second version, and he felt it was till a bit heavy. It was about the size of a Chipmunk and as he was working his way through trimming ( Walt had his own circle in his back yard) we talked about props a lot and which way to counter rotate them. He really went through the prop inventory at Mark twain Hobby and a lot of those were still in his basement!! I think he settled on some APC 9-6s cut down a bit and props turning top out from the fuselage. The first I saw him fly it was at Allen Brickhaus' contest in Paducah, KY. It took a single battery. and he only had two or three with him, so no practice. He put in some great flights that day and took home first in Expert if I remember correctly and was surprised. but the rest of us were not from what we had seen. That model was resurrected and flown by Mark Hughes for a while and he got it some what sorted but not completely. It was then handed off to I think Mike Schmidt from Chicago. There was a Scarinzi Blue Angel and one other electric model that ended up with Steve Smith who has been flying them regularly. The other two stunt models, The Outlaw and La Femme Nakita reside with john Garrett.
The other models are in the possession of other club members. They were pretty dusty, dirty and in need of some maintenance but have all been resurrected. I also have one of Walt's profile scale models, a replica of one of Patty Wagstaff's airshow Extra aerobatic airplanes. It's a little on the heavy side, and flies with a 3 line control system and OS .52 but does fly very well and gets an airing out at least once a year. Fred Cronenwett is the caretaker of Walt's larger Extra, a B-26 Fire Bomber scale model, and a DC-3 that needs finishing.
While cleaning out Walt's basement, we came across a relic of his past and that was a trophy from the Plymouth Internats for B team Race, and an accompanying Beauty Award. I checked the dates out on those and found his name in the results pages of that years Air Trails yearbook. It's really a thing of beauty and was huge and very ornate and was trimmed in gold or gold leaf, and it was not tarnished, discolored or corroded in any way. It cleaned up quite nicely and it was donated to the AMA museum. The rest of his basement was full of all kinds of other free flight models, experiments and typical modelers stuff. Walt was a friend of John Gard, who was a noted free flight competitor in the 50's and 60s, through his work at McDonnell/Douglas so that explained the free flights models and I got to talk with him about that. He pretty much loved anything that flew.
Walt was just such a simple, quiet. knowledgeable man and even better human being. and I was very glad to have know him and learned much from him. If you are a regular viewer of any of the Windy tapes, there is a site that holds probably the biggest collection of Windy tapes that is available and is called the Walt Brownell Channel on YouTube. One of the things we found in Walt's basement was over 600 Windy tapes!! All only seemed to be vied once and NONE were rewound!! Myself and Kevin King undertook the task of digitizing that entire collection and along with what others that Kevin had collected I think there are over 1000 on the channel. It's just another little bit of Walt's legacy that he left us. You can see Windy mention him from time to time and show photos that Walt would send him of his latest project and in some of Windy's NATS and Brodak coverages, he always spent some time visiting with Walt, his wife Burt , and their feisty little dog that didn't like anybody other that Walt and his wife!! It's nice to view these now and then and remember this nice, quiet and gentle man.
Type at you later,
Dan McEntee
Topic: It Is A Small World! (Read 665 times)
