Cover Art

[Former Member]

[This posting has been removed]

[Ben Mullins]

who ha eric! I got into model flying cos i like planes, my dad has nothing to do with it, its more like me dragging him down the field! Im the only junior member in my club, but mind my club only has about 40 members. I got my first plane on my 12th birthday (im now 14 coming on 15), and it only flew for 2 seconds before it broke. So I attempted finding a club. There are many clubs in south Hampshire, none of which (or so it seemed) wanted anything to do with the 'younger generation'. I phoned and email almost every clun within reasable distance and got no reply! No reply what so ever. Apart from lovely Ken Webster at PADMAC that is, He saw the light in me! It took Ken the best part of 5 months to get all the paper work out the way so I could fly. Hallelujah i cried! I became a member at last, but even then no one wanted to teach me! So once again 'lovely Ken' stepped up to the plate. Im still learning, and thanks to Ken getting good. Im the end I guess what Im saying is there may be people that want to fly model planes, but Its just to hard for them to get into it! So in a roundabout way im also saying we need to make it easier for people like me to get into Model Flying.

Rant over

Ben!

[Ben Mullins]

And another thing just to round it off! I Find modelling is becoming rather expensive. When the majority of you older modelers started things were cheap(ish!) You had your KK and Veron model, a small cox engine or something at the front and you let it go. Now theres all this other stuff you need to just start off! And if you want to progress further into the hobby the stuff just gets even more expensive!

Grrrr. LOL, i can tell what im gunna turn out like!

[Alan B]

Oi ! young Victor Meldew

I wouldn't agree with you there young man!  Flying model aircraft I would say has got cheaper.  New technology  cheap electronic components etc . All in ready to fly models with radio at cheap prices.

When I was your age  -RC was very exspensive and my first 4 channel 27mhz Mcgregor Radio cost me a months wages. You can get the same basic set up now for about £20.

I do agree with you as a 15 yr old ( ish) it is still exspensive. When you do not have an adult income

"Turn out Like".  All I can say is you have value of money and what things cost, not like many of todays youth who have no comprehension of money at all. 

Good on yer lad!

[Peter Miller]

Two points.

Now I can't check back because all my magazines are sent to the USA in exchange for American mags but it seems to me that most of the covers feature ARTFs, normally those that are being reviewed in the magazine. I wonder why?

Second point to Ben.

Back in the days you talk about we didn't fly radio. Only bloated plutocrats could afford that. We flew control line and free flight. Control line is cheap, it is fun. You don't need much space and because the models fly close to the ground, the noise footrpint is smaller. I still enjoy flying control line. Of course you do need far better coordination and reflexes than you do with radio control.

I can tell you that lots of older modellers are going back to flying C/L these days.

A cheap .25 and some wood and you can have a good model.

Oh, and one other advantage. You never have to walk more than 60 feet to the wreckage

[Ben Mullins]

OK, i take both your points.

That is just the way that I have seen things in the last 9 months.

It makes me wonder, will any of this be around when i've done my 40 years of hard work. Will I be one of the few?!

Ben

[Erfolg]

Pete

My memories are similar to yours, perhaps a little rose tinted though.

Radio control was for the wealthy, I never saw any when i started. The control box sat on the ground apparently. I also flew Frog (whitch rubber), kk (conquest a glider) Veron (Seamew rubber and a Deacon). These all flew plus a myriad that did not KK scale two jetex Starfighter, a Fairy FD2.

I was not a member of a club, nor were any of my acquaintances, I think most 11 year olds were like that. We flew on waste land and Parks. Access to parks was becoming  more difficult as local people and authorities, started with burocracy, even with rubber.

With regard to covers, they did range quite considerably. Sometimes a water colour painting, sometimes a static studio model, often a person with with model (the person was often a young woman, really old in my young eyes, the wife or even a competior). The person would be fully clothed. The tiles which I bought and still have some (very sad realy) were Aeromodeller and Model Aircraft.

By the 70s, which was my first return, the covers had become by present day standards, extremely varied, but mainly photographic images. The audience was i guess definetly adult male, I still ahve a few from this era. Models were now almost all RC, free flight was a a small niche amongst aeromodellers, these guys are probably more numerous today than any time since the late 50s.

The content in all eras was probably broader, typically having

• Model reviews
• A own design plan review
• Gadget review
• Engine in depth review
• book review, generally aircraft
• A profile of a aircraft with drawing
• how to do it
• readers letters
• Comp results, particularly Aeromodeller.
• Slope/ glider and power sections

It is the covers though which are not as varied though, I guess it is about cost , as I suspect that there are not as many covers sold these days.

Erfolg

[Peter Miller]

I remember that the covers were B&W except at Christmas. Model Aircraft never did colour covers. They often showed people with competition models on the field.

 Quite often you got two plan features in a magazine. Also "How to do it" articles.

When one was lucky one might find an American magazine which was amazing. They were irritating though. Read half a page "Continued on page" and there you got a 1/4 of one column before "Cont'd... and another little bit of the article. Sometimes four of five times.

The only way I ever got the KK flying scale series to fly was round the pole. I was left some money and bought an ECC Telecomander radio. £10 if I recall in 54. Hours spent tuning, then set the sensitivity, then start the engine and the relay went mad. I sold it again.

The first successful radio I ever had was RCS Guidance System in 63. That worked OK. Next radio I got was in the mid 70s when proportional came in.

But as I always say. Nostalgia is the philosopher's stone of reality.

(For the less erudite, the Philosopher's stone turned base metal into gold.)

[Erfolg]

Hi Peter

The mention of B&W MA, set me thinking, as I did not remember MA being particularly lacking in colour.

So I had a very quick look at some part of my reference mags, Hmmmmmm, well the ones i kept.

Jan 58, B&W mosquito (photograph), yet June 58 is a green background with B&W Boeing Kadett( I think).

To be honest I cannot, explain or describe tha quality of the covers of Aeromodeller. A beautiful water colour of a HP Hannibal landing at Croydon, Dec 1955. In !9966 May a brilliant photograph of a DH Rapide. By this time studies had become my prime hobby, to supplement studying for exams, then I suddenly got hay fever, and would not go outside in summer. Funnily once having completed studying at about 22, the hay fever mitigated itself. By the time I was 30 I started thinking of modelling. 

Erfolg

[Former Member]

[This posting has been removed]

[Erfolg]

I had thought it might be stress related. Exams were always in June.

Yet work always had a fair amount of stress, the difference was that it was chronic, rather than acute and not so much appeared to be riding on a few days.

Any way i am much happier now, worrying about Cover Art is preferable to being overspent, behind programme, and the boss reckoning it is your fault. It could not possibly be him, although told that you could not deliver a different specification project for the same money and time.

Ahh back to worrying about covers. Bliss. mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, that is life.

Erfolg

[John Bunting]

The old Aeromodeller covers, up to sometime in the fifties I think, were water-colour paintings by Rupert Moore. I have a few bound volumes, the earliest going back to December 1941, but sadly they don't include the covers. Anyone else here old enough to remember the McGillicuddy stories, and the Freddie cartoons?

[Former Member]

[This posting has been removed]

[Peter Miller]

I started modelling in 52 but abroard. I came back to UK in late 53. I do remember McGillicuddy and Freddie because I got a load of the old issues. Also the Ruperrt C Moore covers.

Do you rmember pylonious in MA? And the best cartoonist of all, Roland?

Aeromodeller always had a colour cover at Christmas, normally a painting.

Then there was a KK Handbook, about three pages of accesories like bellcranks etc. Look at any current catalogue, aren't we spoiled for choice?