Flying models for 40 years, huh. I got my first gas powered model at 12 years of age........DANG! That was 50 years ago. It was a Ringmaster Jr. with a McCoy 29 engine. It was way overpowered and to nose heavy to do much more than get me interested in faster planes. Started flying in contest at 14, rat race and combat(controlline of course). Did that for a few years and had an attic full of trophies until "X" threw'em out.
The Ringmaster was a pretty good looking plane. I've located a set of reproduction plans and will probably build one during this winter building season. When I was 14 or 15 I had a Flight Streak with a "Two Bolt" Fox 35 in it. That was the first engine I learned to start by myself and fly inverted. No electric starters back then, we had to hand prop em' remember?
Here's my first plane, a Magician. The date on the pic says February 69 but I built it in the summer of 68 and soloed it a little later that year. I have an 8mm film of me flying it but I haven't converted it to something I can play on my computer. 40 years later i'm working on another Magician, now kitted by Brodak Models, but I'm thinking of putting a 4-stroke or an electric motor in it this time.
My dad and I flew a control line speed Formula 40 racer with a rear exhaust K&B 40 for a while but never in competition. You had to get it in a "grove" before one lap around because the elevators would lock from the speed! We hand timed it at a best of 145 mph. I can remember it like it was yesterday. Those were good times!
Seems the jets have come a long way from the old Dyna-jets of my time.....LOL It's all come a long way from my time. I got a few old racing engines around here somewhere and 3 or 4 brand new Super Tigre and Fox combat engines still in the box.
We flew a Dyna-Jet once. Used a bicycle pump to start it! Those jets made a lot of noise and attracted a lot of attention but were fairly easy to fly and were a bit slower than their propped bretheren.
Since you're still flying, maybe you can tell me how many of these manufactures are now defunk.
Engines-Fox, K&B, McCoy, Hi Johnson, VECO, Super Tigre, Cox, Hornet, Dyna-jet.
Kits-Sterling, VECO, Goldberg, Midwest, Dumus, ...uh,...uh ....just can't remember to many of the kit manufactures but there were a slew of them 50 years ago.
LOL ....and I was getting unwillingly high off of glue and 'dope' long before I knew it was supposed to be fun.
All of those engine manufacturers are now out of business except for Super Tigre, which is Taiwanese. Depending on what you have and it's condition, they could be worth a small fortune.
Some of those kit manufacturers are still in business, Goldberg and Dumas though they are more R/C centric nowadays. If you still have some of the old kits with all the parts, they could be worth a lot more than you originally paid for them. Hang on to em'! Remember the old "Die Cutting" method used in cutting out the parts for the kits? After a while the dies became dull and sometimes you got a kit that had parts that were more "Die Crunched" than Die Cut! Laser cutting has since solved that problem
Remember when Testors, in response to complaints about glue smelling so bad, put out a "Lemon Scented" glue for the plastic models? I wonder how many addicts got their start from that? I hated it because it made my models smell like lemons, not cool and very un-military!