CLARK SALISBURY
Musician and Model Aircraft Designer
By Jay Smith | jays@modelaircraft.org
JAY SMITH: How did you become involved with model aviation?
CLARK SALISBURY: When my oldest son was 5, I gave him a Radio Shack RC Jeep for Christmas. I feel guilty now, but at the time, I thought it was okay to play with that Jeep every day when I returned home from work.
By the end of the winter, I was comfortable controlling that Jeep throughout the interior of our house, under chairs and the piano, and it didn’t matter if it was coming at me or going away. I got good enough at it that I visited his kindergarten class for show-and-tell.
In the spring, I thought controlling an airplane from a radio must also be a lot of fun. The first airplane that I built was the Ace Mk. II, which was a glider powered by a .049 Cox engine. From there it was a Goldberg Eagle and a Goldberg Chipmunk.
JS: How has model aviation impacted your life and/or career?
CS: As an engineer at the Logan Machine Company (LMC), I designed snowcats, and had a great time doing that. In those days (the early 1980s), computer-aided drafting had not yet been invented, and I was comfortable doing the drawings for my snowcat designs on a drafting board.
LMC eventually went bankrupt and I had to find another job. I became a full-time photographer, having already built a photo studio on the back of my house, and in the late 1990s, that was also a great job.
I also built a couple of duplex apartments, but I couldn’t get over my desire to design vehicles that moved. In 1995, I designed my first RC airplane that used the same wing as the Goldberg Eagle. The SkyCam was a pusher design that carried a 35mm film camera. It was an easy-to-fly design, and I sold plans and a VHS tape with two hours of instruction on how to build it.
After that, when I designed an aircraft, I would write a construction article, and then sell the article and drawings to various magazines, including Model Airplane News, Model Aviation, and Flying Models. I also designed four boats and sold those to magazines.
JS: What disciplines of modeling do you currently participate in?
CS: I fly mostly three-channel airplanes, and I like to be able to take off from grass. I also visit the local reservoir and run my boats. You will find me at the drawing board in the winter.
JS: What other hobbies do you have?
CS: Other hobbies that I have include skiing (only easy hills!), motorcycling, and music. Music has become my main job lately; I teach piano lessons to 21 kids from ages 7 to 17. I have also composed my own music and have recorded everything that I have composed so far on a CD.
In June 2022, my son and I visited Europe, and I flew my drone around 22 subjects, mostly castles. I used a Mavic Pro 2 drone for the amazing video it shoots.
JS: Who or what has influenced you the most?
CS: The person who influenced me the most in model aviation was Carl Goldberg. When you bought one of his kits, they always included a full-scale drawing, and looking at those drawings inspired me to do my own designs and draw them up in much the same style.
JS: What advice would you give someone looking to design his or her own aircraft?
CS: I would advise anyone looking to design their own airplanes to use a wing that is already proven and study the book Model Aircraft Aerodynamics by Martin Simon.
