No way I can compete with Bob but Ty's post prompted me to share a few of my childhood memories. The first picture was taken the day of my first contest in 1959. I think I was 12. I have no clue how I did. My steel trap memory rusted shut years ago. The next ones are of my Sandpiper design of which I have built 5. The best story is #1. I designed it in 1963 as a high school drafting class project. My meager allowance and some grass cutting jobs had kept me flying but nothing spectacular. With the 1964 Nats being a home town event the next year our local hobby shop owner offered to let me use his back room to build. I was thrilled and started immediately. He sold me a Fox 35 at cost, I think it was $2.50 and he gave me enough wood, Ambroid and AeroGLoss to finish it. I think the total cost added up to $14. Even though I had a driver's license, I had no car, so all of my flying had to be walking distance from our house or I had to carry the plane on my bicycle. I learned how to hold it by the nose just right so that it would "fly" as I rode. There was a grade school two blocks from our house that had a baseball diamond and basket ball court. If I laid it out just perfectly, I could take off from the side of the basketball court and land on the baseball diamond and that is how the plane got it's unlikely name. Had nothing to do with the bird. The baseball diamond was very sandy, and I had my wheels very close to the CG and the plane only weighed 34oz so every time I landed too fast it would nose over and fill up my pipe shaped nose scoop with sand. Pipesander just didn't have much of a ring to it.
I flew it in the 1963 Southwestern's and I think I won Senior but that is part of the rust. (I need some of Bob's brain lube) and a couple of other "locals" in the Dallas area before the 1964 Nats. This is where Ty's post comes in. The picture with the young lady watching me put on a fresh coat of wax prior to appearance judging is my Grandmother. Immediately after my Grandfather took the picture she slipped and put her hand through my outboard wing. I had a problem. Fortunately George Aldrich, the ED excused me from appearance judging so that I could go home and fix it. They would judge it in the morning. This was before the days of CA and replacing two ribs and recovering with enough dope takes time but I got it done and made it back the next morining. They judged it and gave me somewhere around 28 points. After what I thought were two pretty good flights I was off to fly my FF events and had to wait till that was done to find out I had placed 6th (out of 20+) with a 300 (a good score from Navy judges). When I got my score sheets I had a big fat -0- for appearance. Not even the minimum. The Tabulator had forgotten to put it on my score sheet and nobody noticed. That was the last contest for the original Sandpiper. It didn't survive the motor quitting in a RWO and broke the nose and tail off. That was the birth of II which was a profile with the same wing and tail. III was the first plane I built after returning to Stunt in 2017. It had different tips and an OS46LA replacing the Fox 35. Great flyer but not Classic Legal. I have this thing about designing and flying my own planes. It is a character defect. That led to a complete rebuild of the original 1963 plane to be my classic ship - Sandpiper IV. Only significant change was to make it electric. Even used the 1963 rib templates I had preserved the sheet metal stacking ends to make the ribs. Placed in a few local contests with it, then disaster struck. A defective oil filled heater exploded in our attached aviary and our house *and my shop* burned to the ground. My entire fleet, all 5 of them were vaporized, literally. Fortunately, Insurance covered about half of what they were worth and Sandpiper V, duplicating II which was a profile, was born. Named it Trifecta since it can be flown in profile, classic and PA.
I am really enjoying this thread. Hope others have stories to tell.
Ken
Topic: Just got a new toy! Here's something historic... (Read 28322 times)