A few years back, say 2010, I built (assembled) four of them as club trainers.. 2 are still around.. I replaced the motor mounts with some made for me by Ronnie Thompson, of harder wood. They are pretty much for level flight, but I did loop two of them successfully.. Just to see if they could. 

In our new group, we are starting out with C/L planes. But in previous groups, we also expanded to Estes rockets, water rockets, AMA rubber powered balsa planes, Blurzz rocket cars, pine cars, a giant water balloon slingshot, giant bubbles, and other things of interest to the kids. One objective is to help the kids learn to use their hands, use tools, and understand how to figure out and build things.

    I applaud your efforts and enthusiasm. I'm kind of surprised at the response that you get compared to what I've experienced.  I volunteered with the KidVenture venue at Oshkosh for 17 years all together, and must have has 3 or 4 thousand kids and adults on the handle. We even had some kids that came back year after year because the enjoyed it so much, but when asked if they were doing anything on their own, the answer was usually "no."  We would send out the plans for the TuffBaby by email fort free to anyone that would sign up for it and there were usually several hundred each year that got emailed out, but I think we got feedback from people only a few times that indicated that any got built. Oshkosh would seem to be the perfect venue and location to drum up interest because it is all aviation oriented and their Kidventure venue was originated to help drive interest in the younger generations. . It's the most popular attraction at AirVenture each year, voted that by those in attendance. But on the full scale level and on the model airplane level, I wonder how successful the efforts are> I was at Buder Park flying by myself a few Sundays ago to get a few flights before the pesky wind came up, and did some other stuff like make up lines and such after it started blowing. Soon a bunch of cars pulled up. A guy came over and asked if I was still flying or packing to leave. He was with a Boy Scout troop that was have a water rocket launch and wanted to use the square pad. I gave them the OK and there must have been 30 to  4 0 kids and their parents. The pad was fully lined with people and they launched from the center. I took it as an opportunity to ask some questions and offer up the club's services for anything that might be model related, and left my stuff out on display in case anyone might be interested and have any questions. i got a few looks by some parents, but not much. Some of the kids looked genuinely interested and a few asked some very good questions, but their parents wouldn't give it all a second look. I even asked the troop leaders if they thought of doing s similar project using our trainers or they could build their own, and was politely told  thanks but no thanks!!  They really didn't get to see one fly and that may have helped, but I was pretty disappointed in the complete lack of interest from a crowd of almost 100 people all together. After they handed out the "awards" "printed certificates that were given to almost every kid from what I saw, (so they were the proverbial "participation trophy") they all jumped in their cars and and disappeared so fast it made my head spin ! It just made me wonder what it takes to trigger the spark of interest in people these days, no matter what age. And why it can be seen so differently from region to region??
    Type at you later,
  Dan McEntee

Thanks for the info ..... don't waist any time for me, I also saved some somewhere

Actually I was wanting the site location to pass on to a friend, Adriano Zamolyi, who is now in Houston for a couple of years.  He flys with us regularly now in Houston, great guy. (Brazil, Australia)  Great running Stalkers.

Thanks for your help ..... hope they get recovered

I have one now I picked up on eBay as a kit a few years ago.   It is still a pretty good trainer.   The problem I have with it is the motor mount block is way too soft.  You can almost pull blind nuts all the way through the wood before ever feeling the engine is very tight.  In it's last ground encounter the engine pulled right out of the mounts.  At some point I'll cut away a hunk of mount block and imbed some hard wood to screw the engine to.  The airplane will mostly take off, fly and land itself if you tied it to a post.  Very easy for a beginner to handle.  I've wanted to have the bigger one but never found a kit.   

Dave

How many remember the Guillows Basic Trainer II? This was my first model build, I painted it using Testors with one of dad's old trim brushes. I still have the Fox 15. An older guy let me use his U-Reely at the Flying Aires CL flying field in East Greenbush, New York. I have since traveled back to that field which was alongside a grass airstrip airport. Nothing left there now of my flying days, except a school and a housing development. I still can vividly remember that summer evening in 1957 making the first flight...memories. 

Steve