An Aviator’s Legacy is Saved

Recently I was asked when I was going to start working on real airplanes again.  

Like many people of my generation, my first involvement with airplanes was at an early age with models. I recall gluing together pieces of cardboard into the shape of an airplane, flying lightweight rubber-band powered airplanes and I think my first plastic model was a Piper Tri Pacer.  Eventually, I talked my father (or maybe Santa Claus) into a control line Piper Super Cub powered by a Cox .049 engine. After several engine runs, clearing a runway on the gravel driveway and practicing my hand movements for the elevator control, I was ready to fly the little red plastic airplane. Anyone who has flown models understands they do not necessarily last long, especially with an exited young boy at the end of string-controls. Each landing was really a crash and eventually one was hard enough to end the flying that day. I did repair it well enough to get it back in the air again and that little .049 engine went on to power a couple other models. Model airplanes have remained a part of my life. I can probably count 50 from where I sit.

This spring, I was contacted by an acquaintance whose elderly father had died or flown west over winter. He knew I had an interest in model airplanes and invited me to the old farm to look at what was left of his dad’s collection. His father, who I had met once in passing, had been a pilot, ultralight aircraft builder and a life-long builder and flyer of model airplanes. In one corner of a rundown hangar was a large pile of model airplane parts and pieces. Early radio control and control-line units, crashed, broken, unfinished, missing parts, all covered in dirt and dust in various stages of disrepair. I was in heaven and immediately smiled thinking how cool those old balsa wood models would look restored hanging from my ceiling or on display on my shelves. The next day, my son and I returned, and one truck load went to his house and one to mine. Yes, most were big.

So far, four have been cleaned, repaired or restored hanging from my ceilings and a few sets of wings displayed on the shop wall. Like the wing sets, two of the unfinished models I left uncovered to admire the beautiful wood construction. The rest (and there are a lot more) will have to wait as I really do have some big airplane projects to attend to.   

Acquiring these models was not only for my hobby and enjoyment. I saved them from certain destruction and loss. Just by chance I had been chosen to be the keeper of one old aviator’s legacy.

I’ve asked readers before to introduce a youngster to aviation. Well, introduce them to model airplanes, too. You will also have fun! Oh yeah, and in my book, models are real…just smaller than the ones a person can fly in.

Keep ‘em flying safely, Ron