Old-Timers

Edition: Model Aviation - 2025/02
Page Numbers: 50, 51, 52

Bob Galler standing behind a large red model airplane at a SAM 26 contest.

OLD-TIMERS

A LOSS FOR SAM

By Bob Angel | samrcflier@verizon.net

THE SOCIETY OF ANTIQUE MODELERS (SAM) in the US suffered a significant loss in August of last year when our president, Bob Galler, passed away unexpectedly from a heart attack. This occurred less than two months after he’d returned from a visit to his ancestral homeland of Hungary, where the inaugural SAM RC International Championship was being held. While there, he was treated as an honored guest and participated in the flying events.

SAM has four regional vice presidents, with no prescribed order of succession to the presidency, but our bylaws allow board members to fill vacancies between elections. Dave Warner was selected as the new president to keep things rolling and to avoid the creation of yet another vacancy among the serving vice presidents.

Dave is an excellent choice for the job because he’s an active flier and competitor, as is his son, Mike, and as was his father, Von. He’ll have the time and ability to devote himself to the job because he’s recently retired from working as a civilian flight test engineer at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Dave has already “hit the ground running,” as the saying goes.

20th SAM RC Euro Champs

The 20th European SAM RC Championship (Euro Champs) will be hosted by Italian SAM Chapter 62 on June 22-27, 2025. Planning is well underway. European rules vary a little from US rules, but 2.4 GHz RC equipment will be permitted.

The Europeans always put on a great event, with each country competing to match or exceed that of the previous year. Watch for more detailed announcements to come on the SAM website, listed in “Sources.”

SAM Website

The SAM website has news and information about events that have occurred in the last few years, as posted by our current webmaster, Lubo Hrncar, from his location in Europe. You can also scroll down to the bottom and click on “SAM—old WEB site,” where you can roam around and find lots more great how-to information and history that has been collected over time regarding our Old-Timer (OT) activities.

SAM Speaks is SAM’s official quarterly house organ, but only SAM members can download current or previous copies from the website. However, anyone can download the current Official Rule Book Constitution and Bylaws (2020), and there are hundreds of collected, old SAM chapter newsletters available to all in that old website section.

RC SAM at the Schmidt Ranch

The Schmidt Ranch, located in Central California not far from Sacramento, has long been a popular venue for SAM RC events. Last year’s RC portion of the SAM Champs was held there for the first time, while the Free Flight (FF) events were held at nearby Waegell Field. It’s possible to camp on-site without ever leaving the ranch because three meals a day are served during contests.

Genial hostess Miriam Schmidt, with help from her offspring, serves as sort of a den mother to all, becomes a first aid medic at times, and performs other duties as needs arise. The nearby SAM Champs FF competition continued to have thin attendance this year, so they shared the ranch facilities for a few activities, including the closing banquet.

Jack Albrecht

Jack Albrecht (1926-2024) was an extremely active AMA competitor and leader. In his later years, he gravitated to SAM competition, which is where I first met him. I thought I knew him pretty well, but I recently read his relatively short autobiography in the AMA Model Aviation Hall of Fame (HOF) listings and found that there was lots more to his story than I realized during our many, but usually brief, meetings.

Jack was an intelligent gentleman with an easy-going personality. He worked well with people and had many friends, especially in the modeling community. Here’s some of Jack’s story, much of which was extracted from his HOF entry. I found that we shared lots of common exploits along the way but had somehow never gotten around to discussing it.

Jack became interested in models at about age 9. He bought his first engine, a Bunch Mighty Midget, as a kit from the model section that existed in many department stores at the time. With time and effort, he finally got it assembled and running. It was during the Great Depression, so it was sometime later that he was able to save enough from his magazine route to buy a FF model kit. This makes me think that, like myself, Jack might have first been attracted to those noisy, little engines more than the models themselves.

Jack joined the new Control Line (CL) craze, but being too young to drive, he had an older mentor, Ted Kroll, who’d drive him to a flying field that once existed in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.

Here’s Jack’s interesting, little side note, which I’ve never heard before: “Ted actually predated the late, great Jim Walker in the development of the control line concept.” More about this can be read in his AMA History Project autobiography, listed in “Sources.”

SAM President Dave Warner returns across the Schmidt Ranch field carrying a model aircraft. — Looking upwind at the Schmidt Ranch field, with Highway 5 in the background, this photo also happens to capture SAM President Dave Warner returning from a soft grass landing. Photo by John Eaton.

OLD-TIMERS

Dave Warner and Melanie holding trophies at a model aviation field — SAM presents its new president, Dave Warner, with his crew chief/wife, Melanie. It was obviously a great day when he won three out of five of the perpetual trophies that were awarded at the annual John Pond Commemorative event.

Jack’s writeup also said that Ted built some engines, including one at a .78 cu. in. size to fly a FF Comet Clipper design as a CL model. Jack didn’t say, but it sounds as though Ted didn’t produce engines for sale, although, if any are still around, they’d be interesting collector rarities today.

Another piece of information that was news to me (or I’d forgotten) was that, during World War II, “... no Free Flight activity was permitted, especially on the West Coast where we expected an imminent invasion by the Japanese.” The exact reason for this ban wasn’t explained, but it was probably to prevent possible misidentification, creating either a scramble of interceptor fighter airplanes or antiaircraft fire on an “unidentified” model aircraft.

I recall a probably true story that one night in the Los Angeles area, radar-precipitated antiaircraft fire was to be unleashed on a flock of geese flying with no onboard lights visible. Since what goes up must come down, such shelling itself can be hazardous, especially in highly populated areas.

CL History

The basic history of CL is familiar to most older modelers who have read or heard the story about Oba St. Claire predating Jim Walker in the invention of CL flying, although Jim predated Oba with the patent process. I’d never heard of Ted being a third party in CL development. Actually, there were probably even more early modelers who experimented with CL since “goats” became a popular nickname for FF models that were being flown in smaller areas on a single tether line that exited a wingtip.