Holiday FF Scale news
by Dennis Norman
dennis@airacemodels.com
Last Christmas, Dave Franks’ wife, Audrey, gave him a copy of Samuel Hynes’ new book, The Unsubstantial Air: American Fliers in the First World War. Although it focuses on American pilots, the book inspired Dave to build a 22-inch wingspan Free Flight (FF) Scale model of an Albatros D.V flown by a 30-victory German ace pilot, Maj. Josef Mai. For details about this Albatros, Dave referred to the Osprey book Albatros Aces of World War I by Norman Franks (see “Sources”).
2015 FAC Non-Nats Highlights
Difficulties standing and walking caused me to miss this year’s Non-Nats, held in Geneseo, New York. Outgoing Flying Aces Club (FAC) News editor, Rich Weber, sent me the contest results.
Rich served as editor for five years and created the modern FAC News. He will be succeeded by Stew Myers, who revolutionized using computers to record FAC contests.
Rich also sent me a picture of Dave Franks with his Albatros, along with photos from Bob Clemens, Clive Gamble, and Matt Steffens.
Greg Thornton sent me several beautiful pictures reflecting the joy of this year’s flying. Mark Batterson didn’t take any pictures this year, but he helped others, including Dave Franks, enjoy the contest.
I was told that this year’s weather was challenging. It rained nearly all day on Thursday, July 16, but Friday was magnificent and gave the participants a long day of happy flying. Saturday had wind gusts that often caused flags to strain at their poles. I hope the weather will be better at the 2016 FAC Nats.
Some of the memories shared with me included a photo of George Bredehoft’s 54-inch wingspan Phantom Flash stick model chugging along.
Several Junior competitors distinguished themselves this year. Erika Escalante and Ben Dion flew well. Maria Kondrat won the B.L.U.R. Race with her P-51D Mustang. Oliver Sand wowed the crowd by winning
Dime Scale with his Gadfly.
Other event winners from the magnificent field of FAC greats are summarized in a table for your reference. Congratulations to Charlie Sauter and his P-51B Mustang for winning his first World War II Combat event.
Deals From Diels!
Because this column reaches you at the start of the holiday season, it is appropriate to discuss the latest vendor offerings. Although there are numerous FF
Vance Gilbert readies his twin, rubber-powered Nene Viking Giant Scale at this year’s FAC Non-Nats. The Nene Viking also won the 2014 FAC Giant Scale event.
Scale vendors, I thought you would appreciate hearing about Dave Diels and Diels Engineering, Inc. Dave is a professional engineer and the accuracy and clarity of his kits reflect it. He has been updating his line of 1/24-scale kits with laser-cut parts. His latest effort is a redesign of Kit No. 47, the Curtiss P-36A, which now has laser-cut parts, updating the kit number to 47-LC. Dave has introduced the Align-O-Tab construction to aid builders in assembly. His Curtiss SB2C-4 Helldiver (kit number 44-LC) features both laser-cut parts and the Align-O-Tab method. All kits ordered from Diels before December 31, 2015, will receive a 20% discount from list prices. More from Diels may be found in the online portion of this column.
Farewell to William Wylam
June 4, 2015, marked the passing of noted aviation artist and historian, William Wylam. Born in Chicago in 1915, William became interested in full-scale aircraft and model building by the time he was 10 years old. During the summers of 1933 and 1934, William was a volunteer assistant to the legendary Paul Garber of the Smithsonian. As a college student, William was also a part-time designer for Cleveland Model & Supply Company, Comet Models, and several other model kit manufacturers.
After college, William went on to a distinguished career as an engineer in the aviation industry and later for NASA, from which he retired in 1984 as senior electrical engineer in the space program. While at NASA, William received three prestigious NASA citations for his work. Some of his wartime aircraft drawings were criticized as inaccurate, but the “inaccuracies” were often intentional because of governmental security restrictions.
During his professional career, William published more than 1,500 airplane drawings, wrote 12 books about airplanes, and held more than 1,200 copyrights and 17 industrial patents. For more information about William, see the AMA History Program website and Gerry Yarrish’s detailed obituary from his Model Airplane News website blog dated June 16, 2015. A link is provided in the “Sources” listing.
SOURCES:
Flying Aces Club News
Rich Weber, editor
se5weber@cox.net
Albatros Aces of World War I
by Norman Franks
http://amzn.to/1NGuyAd
The Unsubstantial Air: American Fliers in the First World War by Samuel Hynes
Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2014
http://amzn.to/1JgN9cy
Diels Engineering, Inc.
dielseng@buckeye-express.com
www.dielsengineering.com
AMA History Project/William Wylam
www.modelaircraft.org/files/WylamWilliam.pdf
Model Airplane News
William Wylam’s obituary
http://bit.ly/1UaNhEO
National Free Flight Society (NFFS)
www.freeflight.org
