Larry Scarinzi has paraded around Tuscon at VSC wearing his pith helmet from the Plymouth Internats. I would love to find one of those in a Goodwill store or something! A friend of my older brother flew tow line glider and a rubber event one year. He was my brother's boss at a local Goodyear retread plant, and when he found out I flew models he hired me to work part time while I was in high school doing odd jobs like painting and such. Later on, when I had started to collect model magazines, he asked if I could find a copy of the Air Trails that had his name in it in their coverage as he had won or placed in tow line. I soon fixed him up with a pristine copy of that magazine and I'll never forget the look on his face when I gave it too him! He's still around and still builds and flies small R/C. Lots of interesting stories out there about the goings on in the hotel where they put everyone up! The hotel management didn't understand that models needed to be built and repaired, engines needed to be test run, and microfilm needed to be processed in the bath tubs! Not like the Navy Nats where they had the luxury of using the hangers on base.
Several years ago, I was talking with a guy while I was working at the hobby shop one day, and was talking about how popular it was in the 50's, and the size of the major contests like the Plymouth meet and the Mirror Meet. A tall skinny guy came walking around the corner with his eyes bugging out and said, "I didn't think there was anyone alive that knew anything about control line models much less the Mirror Meet!" ( For the uninitiated, the Mirror Meet was a HUGE control line contest that was sponsored by the New York Daily Mirror news paper, and held on the parking lot of the original Madison Square Garden. There are aerial photos in the old mags of the site with I forget how many circles on the paved lot with crowds estimated to be in the tens of thousands!) The gentleman introduced himself, and I think his name was John. He joined our club and was active for a while, and he even attended one of the Tulsa Gluedobber's Mirror Meet events. The unusual thing about the Mirror Meet was that they had their own pattern, that was way longer than what we're used to, like 25 or 30 maneuvers. If you fly OTS at all, you know how hard it is to get a whole OTS pattern in on a tank of fuel! imagine almost doubling that! Most fliers had to land and refuel. John was a pretty smart guy, and he figured if he could build a model with a large enough tank to do the pattern in one flight, that may help his score, and he was correct. He told me it was his own design, and he had to really lean it out and fly fast to get it all on, but he think that helped him also. If I'm remembering correctly, he placed second in 1953, and that was against 40 to 50 contestants or more. Can you imagine something like either one of these being held now??
I'll bet there are youtube videos of old newsreels for both events.
Type at you later,
Dan McEntee
Topic: The Good Old Days!!!!! (Read 2079 times)