[NSRCA-discussion] Old Farts club

[Jon Lowe]

Well, thanks for the compliment.  I was born at a VERY young age in 
1950!  I must have built the Aristocrat when I was 16 or so.  I also 
built and flew a modified Taurus (whose WASN'T modified?!), a deBolt 
Jenny and Peashooter, a Kraft Flea Fli, and many other airplanes whose 
names I don't remember.  I even flew a little Formula 1 racing, back 
when it was still called Goodyear!  I was lucky enough to meet and 
know, thru my Dad, Norm Page, Hal deBolt, Ed and Louise Izzo, Jimmy 
Grier, Doc Edwards, Lou Penrod, Jack Port (Controlaire), John Maloney 
(World Engines), Jim Kirkland, Jim Whitley, Don(?) Coleman, Doc Brooke, 
Jersey Jim Martin, and many others whose names might come to me after I 
write this.   I can remember Frank Noll Jr. when he was a younger kid 
than I was, because I flew with his Dad!  Sadly, many of those people 
are no longer with us.  I remember Dave and Sally Brown and their two 
kids at contests.  Sally looked about 15, and she would get carded 
everytime we went someplace for dinner.  I wouldn't, and I was only 17 
or so!  Dave wore a hat at contests made out of Strohs beer cans, and 
the more beers he drank between rounds, the better he flew.  How times 
change!  I remember being at the Toledo show one year, and servo 
amplifiers with integrated circuits were the latest thing; I remember 
one of the women at dinner looking confused and asking if an integrated 
circuit meant it was black and white!

How about these company names: Space Control, Bonner, EK Logitrol, F&M, 
Orbit, Micro Avionics, Kraft, Citizenship, Proline, World Engines, Indy 
RC, MinX, Controlaire, Royal, Heathkit?  And who can forget the 
Digitrio homebuilt proportional system, and later the Digiquad? I built 
a Digiquad system and made my own transmitter raw PC board from 
scratch, laying out the lands and etching them, and then drilling the 
board for the components.  Because I didn't have a lot of money, I 
desoldered a lot of components from older systems and reused them in 
the Digiquad, and it worked the first time I turned it on!  But for 
some reason, I never flew it.  The first proportional system I owned 
was an F&M, that had crash damage, and used Bonner metal case servos.  
I rebuilt the servos using old Bonner Transmite parts my Dad had left 
over from the reed days.  The receiver was bigger than todays receivers 
and all of the servos lumped together!  It had two main circuit borads, 
and it was sent back to the factory so many times for upgrades to 
prevent glitching that it had 5 or 6 daughter boards grafted on it to 
make it work right.

BTW, there is an article in the back of the latest Model Airplane News 
on Clarence Lee, the engine guru.  He has a line in there about the old 
K&B Torpedo .45, something like "It was an engine that could break in 
and and be worn out on the same flight".  Absolutely true!  He went on 
to design the Lee, then Veco .45.  My Dad got one, and it was so tight 
(lapped engine), that after a couple of gallons of fuel went thru it, 
it still wasn't breaking in.  He mixed some jewelers rouge with oil, 
and fed it to the engine while it was running.  That finally broke it 
in, and it ran great after that.

I better stop now before I sound even older than I am!

Jon Lowe


-----Original Message-----
From: White, Chris <chris at ssd.fsi.com>
To: NSRCA Mailing List <nsrca-discussion at lists.nsrca.org>
Sent: Mon, 20 Aug 2007 8:47 am
Subject: Re: [NSRCA-discussion] Old Farts club




Jon confirmed and Yes, that’s what I was trying to remember…..thanks 
Ron, for clearing that up.  Bill Knost always made the claim in those 
days of contest flying he was building one airplane a week to keep up 
with the attrition rate.  He built a few Aristocats.  (Can’t believe I 
forgot the name must have been a Disney momentJ)  From the pic’s I’ve 
seen of Jon,  I didn’t think he would have been old enough to have 
flown class II….:)

Chris

 


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 From: nsrca-discussion-bounces at lists.nsrca.org 
[mailto:nsrca-discussion-bounces at lists.nsrca.org] On Behalf Of 
JonLowe at aol.com
Sent: Saturday, August 18, 2007 10:35 PM
To: nsrca-discussion at lists.nsrca.org
Subject: Re: [NSRCA-discussion] Old Farts club


 




In a message dated 8/18/2007 9:53:03 AM Central Daylight Time, 
vanputte at cox.net writes:




The Stormer and Flat Top Stormer were Doug Spreng designs.  The Bud 
Atkinson design I remember doing axial rolls in Class II was the 
Aristocat.





The Aristocrat was it!  Following advice of others, I elimimated one 
rib bay on each wing, and it flew even better.




 



Jon Lowe







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