Pictures they didn't want you to see!! - This page contains some great pictures but may take a little time to load. Please stick with it, it is worth it!

Some of our 'senior' members in their younger days

COME ON - YOU ALL HAVE THEM !! Pictures of long forgotten planes held by hansome young folks in the days before silencers and VAT. Pictures of people who flew no matter what the weather ( but it was better in those days! ) and did not find it a major problem finding their way to the flying site. Drag out the photo album and send them to us - we need pictures of folks wandering around high on dope (the real stuff !) trying to bite it off their fingers before your hand shrunk, pictures of people trying to start a huge diesel with their unprotected fingers and pictures of that £100 radio in 1970 when you could buy a house for 10p.



I'll start the ball rolling with 2 pictures from my younger days. The black and White photo is of yours truly whilst in the 5th form at school. The plane is a Frog Attacker control line stunter with an OS 35 stunt engine. It went very well on 50' lines until one day a line broke.... The colour photo is a few years later whilst at college. The Fokker was built from a self done plan so it would fit the back of a Zodiac car I had at the time. Power was from a UEDA 10cc glow motor - anyone remember them ?? Rather interestingly I converted it to a control line model when I started working in a London school. It was finally given away some years later. The hair was grown specially to detect wind direction! Guy Glover




The next brave member to get out the scrap book is John Warder. The first picture is from the days before colour was invented, June 1958 to be exact! It is of the Solent Heights Combat Team prior to a competition at Godalming on 15/06/58. John is on the right. The second picture is of John on new years day 1973 with a DB Barnstormer. John had invested in a colour camera and a Digimax 5 radio at a cost of £118.00 in 1971.



Johns next pictures are of him with his first low wing plane with ailerons - A Lowboy with OS40 - Taken at Sandown Airport in 1975 and from July of 1976, A CAP DHC Beaver with 72" span, OS power and trendy hat!.



The last picture shows John in Nov. 1980 with a Brian Peckham designed Chiperoo with Futaba 27mhz radio and OS 40 FSR power.





Paul Newell has kindly consented to the following early photos being published. We can now release him and send him back to Ginny in time for Christmas. The first photo is Paul’s first radio controlled glider, about 1957. Rudder only control and home made radio with a valve receiver. Paul is second from left. Second photo is a Free flight power duration model, about 1961. Cox 15 engine.



Left photo is an A2 free flight duration glider, about 1962. One of a series which included the Nationals winner in 1964. Right photo is Pauls own design ‘Moonprobe’ small sized full house aerobatic model. If his memory serves him correctly, engine was Super Tigre 19. Plan published in Radio Modeller in 1968. Note the Tx; Pauls first home made proportional outfit.



The last picture from Paul shows his own design ‘Pasadena Too’. Merco 35 engine. Plan featured in May 1970 Radio Modeller. No it is not Ginny and Paul says he does not know who the young lady is! (mmmm..) This was one of the photos taken by the late Dave Hughes for the magazine front cover.





The next photos are a great set from Dickie Emmerson. Sadly Dickie was taken from us all in 2008 but we are sure he would still want to share these amazing pictures. He says...

Hi there, thought these photos might be of interest. The 1st is of a Wigdor Wasp "Petrol Job" built from plans in The Aeromodeller I think, and a Gladiator built from a Sweeton kit 1938/9. The 2nd is a home designed Wakefield rubber duration model 1939/40, which incidentally was responsible for getting the local Home Guard out when someone reported German gliders landing on the golf course (our flying site at Hastings) !!! The 3rd and 4th are of a home designed diesel pylon model powered by a 0.8cc Micron 1947. The 5th and 6th are of a rather crude autogiro built at great expense by the Experimental & Electronics labs of Westlands About 1973 to see if a simple device like this could be used as a Spy in the sky. It proved to be very unstable and spent most of the time rolling on to its side and cartwheeling along the ground on its bladetips. It became famously known as "The Roadrunner" because of this!!! Note the Flightlink transmitter in my hand We modded it later to have twin rotors on the ends of a small wing and it actually flew quite well. The engine was a rather frightening Rossi 60. If you've stuck with me so far, the 7th & 8th photo is of a slightly more sophisticated and even more expensive helicopter used originally in the developement of the Westland rigid rotor system and then later to evaluate autostabilising of models by a method Maynard Hill had tried in the USA using radioactive sensors--note the warning signs! The 9th photo is of a Foxmoth I built in about 1933 from a rather clever cardboard kit. It was never intended to be a flying model but of course I had to try with the inevitable result.The 10th&11th are of my Peter Russel STOL at Sandown boating lake early 1980s. Finally, if this lot hasn't crashed your computer, the last one was taken at this year's airshow of my DB Models electric Tiger Moth courtesy of Axi brushless. Dickie.
























Before the War I was so intrigued by these adverts for the Imp model engine that I managed to scrounge the cash off my parents to buy one. It was essentially a compressed air motor, but instead of compressed air it was supplied with a brass tank divided in two, one half containing dry ice mixed with carbide, the other water. When you wanted to fly you pulled a plunger that let the water into the other half and actified the contents into producing gas at high pressure and great smell!! The V4 was very crude but remarkably light, unlike the generating container which weighed a ton and which I quickly realised, even with my limited knowlege at the time, would never become airborne. So I made a compressed air tank out of 3thou copper foil wound on the outside with cheese cutting wire, the tube ends being half a small ballcock each. To cut a long story short I built a 6ft span tissue covered model around this tubular fuselage, pumped it up with a car tyre pump to a terrifying 100psi turned on the tap and launched the monstrosity. It actually flew for about 50 yards at head height before running out of puff. I only ever flew it the once, the sight of the copper foil tank bulging between the turns of wire frightened me too much !! I wondered if you or anyone else had ever come across these power units. Sadly I've no photos of this wierd model. Dickie