Welcome to the second vintage group build of 2019.
The theme is Early Age Revisit.

For this build you'll be selecting and building one of the models you originally built as a youth or when you first started out. For those of you that got into aeromodeling more recently I'd suggest the option of selecting a model that was current when you were a young teen. Hopefully this at least takes the choice back to the 20th century and the glory days of balsa building.

The build officially starts on July 1 and will run to Dec 31.

Builders List with links to individual Build Threads-
Updated July3

1-DAD3353- SE5a, 16" Rubber FF, from Steve Webb kit. Finished
2-Andy Kunz- Bluebird Finished and Flown
3-tshin_ho- Keil Kraft Sportster Rubber Power FF from foam AND a foam double size for RC Finished
4- Brokenspar - double size Tomboy
5- Colonel Blink- Keilkraft Invader
6-mhodgson- Graupner Beginner
7-AlphaWhisky- Frog Raven- 2x size for RC Finished and Flown
8-HBZWEEF- Graupner Kadett - adapted for modern RC running rubber driven escapement. Finished and Flown
9-pulserudder- Ace LIttlest Stik
10-Heggen- Guillows Explorer From old original kit for RC Finished
11-JeffMac- Jetco Thermic 50 / 50rc Hybrid Finished and flown
12-Nickharp- KK Dolphin Finished
13-Brokenspar- Jetco ROG Finished and flown
14- k k iyer- Mercury Marvin CL conversion to EP & RC
15- Steve85- Scientific Big Otto - Control line as per original.
16- Sky Knight- Jr Falcon - 4 ch electric Finished and Flown
17- uram- PAPO-UL Wakefield for rubber free flight Finished and Flown
18- Gere Sport- Double size Tomboy - for RC
19- BMatthews - Taylor E2 Cub from own plans - For electric RC Finished
20- brokenspar - Top Flite Jigtime Piper - original size for rubber power Finished and flown

Once I get my Suzy Que done, must update that thread!, I would like to join in with this.

Gaupner kit called a Beginner. Design is at least as old as me, 1968, but I built one in 1980/81.

I`m planning to go with the Frog Raven. Am thinking twice fullsize - to 36" span - conventional balsa sticks construction and maybe 4 -function radio. Won`t start before the the specified kick-off date as I am still grappling with the R6-B for OH Cowra ....

Alan W

Mhodgson, I really like the "model airplane'ish" look of the Beginner. The full fuselage gives it a really sweet "toy airplane" sort of look that appeals to me. Makes me think that I need to build another RCM Tern by Chuck Anderson. It wasn't my FIRST model by any means. But it was certainly one that I built before I was out of my 'teens. I flew it with my old Controlaire Galloping Ghost set and a Rand LR3.

Alan, silly me just realized now that you're missing a "e" in AlphaWhisky. A spelling mistake that I gather you got stuck with having to live with?

Alan, silly me just realized now that you're missing a "e" in AlphaWhisky. A spelling mistake that I gather you got stuck with having to live with? [/QUOTE]

Yes, Bruce, you are technically correct. My Concise Oxford English Dictionary lists whisky (also Irish and U.S.) as a distilled spirit, and (2) whiskey - a code word representing the letter W, used in radio communication.

My user name derived from my P.P. days. Personally, I don`t mind a little of either .....

Alan W

I like to enter my Graupner Kadett
Design by: Karl-Heinz Denzin
Year 1954
Span 1170 mm

My first free flight sportster built in 1968 from a kit and equiped with a Webra 1.5 cc diesel.
Motor is still in my possesion and runs well but model is since long gone. I have good memories of great flights when a was 17 years old and going to fly with my late father.
Now I plan a rebuilt on original plans and fly it with one channel radio 2.4 ghz and rubber driven escapement for rudder.

Originally Posted by HBZWEEF

Now I plan a rebuilt on original plans.......

I like that touch! In a way it will make the new model so much more than a replica of the old - more a clone, maybe?

Just because I didn’t get around to building my SFV, 2019 firsthalf entry, doesn’t mean I won’t complete my 2019 second half entry.
Mercury Marvin.
There’s a thread already in this forum - just have to change it’s title...

Originally Posted by Colonel Blink

I like that touch! In a way it will make the new model so much more than a replica of the old - more a clone, maybe?

Did you keep plans of every model you've built in the early days of your modelling career? I,ve not so I found it remarkable that I discovered these plans in the back of my desk drawer.😋

My entry will be a Guillow's Explorer kit, plan copyright of 1958 , two years before I got into R/C. Back then, at age 14, the May 1960 Model Airplane News had a Guillow's ad for the Explorer for $14.95 . To buy it and everything that had to go with it was impossible, so dreaming about being able to have one had to do. Now, 59 years later, while checking out ebay, there was an Guillow's Explorer kit which I now could afford. It was a "Buy It Now" deal and I did not hesitate to buy. I have been looking for a time and reason to build and here it is!
A build thread will begin as soon as I get a couple of giant scale projects out of the way.

Originally Posted by HBZWEEF

Did you keep plans of every model you've built in the early days of your modelling career?

Not as much as I'd like with hindsight - though I did keep the plans from my very first model - the Keilkraft Ajax; in fact it was my plan that was scanned and stitched and is now on OZ & Hippocket (and unfortunately Aerofrog). I need to have a good sort out in the modelling belfry because I can't find it now. But you are correct; lots have been lost or were cut up to fit small building boards during the original build.

Seems I've found just the inspiration I needed to get back to the forum. I'll start with The Littlest Stick, designed by the late Fred Reese, published November 1975 RCM, then kitted by Ace R/C.

Link to my just created build log:

https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/show...9#post42182021

Look forward to following all of the other projects.

David

Pulserudder's new thread reminds me that when I first suggested the EAR, in the back of my mind was the hope that the builds would draw out the anecdotes concerning the builders' original attempts, as I am sure that going back 40/50 years or more, a reasonably high proportion of people would have been going it alone and learning on the job as it were. Admittedly a few may have come from modelling families or groups and have waltzed straight into a safe and perfect first flight, but many more would have had a kit bought for them by a relative purely on the grounds that 'kids (primarily boys) like to build planes' and it is those stories that I for one would love to hear!!

Did you have a mentor who helped you avoid the biggest gaffes? Did you paint your first model with household paint (you know who you are.......) Did you try and hold a propeller blade on with Sellotape (Guilty!).... and what made you carry on through adversity to the thrill of a real flight?

Admission is good for the soul!

OK, OK Colonel, the household painter (Woolworth's yellow gloss) was me. That was an Ajax, which also suffered from having the obeche prop blank drilled at 90 degrees to the correct direction. On the next one, an Achilles, I managed to avoid the paint (we had run out of it!) but repeated the prop drilling cock-up, so flying results were similarly lacking. Ah but the THIRD one, an Invader glider was an unqualified success. Coloured tissue trim only, no paint, no prop to mess up, no rubber motor to wrestle with and for the six weeks of the summer holidays in 1947 (which, following the brutal winter of that year was an amazing summer) it spent just about every day flying over the adjacent field (how I didn't lose it by putting it in a passing thermal remains a mystery). That model did it - and I never stopped building after that and am still at it 72 years later. So you can see why I will be following your entry with particular interest!

A very much more mundane start, I'm afraid. We were a family of ten (parents, eight children, plus one Labrador...), so, although we lacked for nothing, money was tight. I put aside my milk-round money, for a few weeks to buy the KK SE5a kit. I don't remember how or where I built it (dining room table, over several days, in all probability...), nor how I acquired the dope it needed, but I do remember winding up the rubber motor (suitably 'castor-oiled'...) and having her fly across the playing field just in front of our house. She would even ROG from the nearby road (there were far less cars around in those days of yore...). What became of the 'plane I have no recollection. Possible fates would have been being sat upon by inadvertance, worried to splinters by an over-enthusiastic dog, reduced to matchwood by a hard landing... (Other fates are available...).
My hands, fingers and eyesight were in far better fettle back then, which is why I'm about to order a new, laser-cut version, rather than a NIB original KK kit, with all those tiny ribs to accurately cut out. The Vintage Model Company version has had some encouraging reviews, which give me more confidence that I can begger it up a little less than my first (ever...) build.
The rest of my building/'flying' history consists mainly of a struggle with a Tomboy (or similar...), and a long, very long hiatus, but I'm slowly making up at least some of the lost time. A few years ago, we found the very dusty and battered remains of a balsa gull-wing glider during some renovation work of our cottage, of which I have no memory, but the children (now grown up...) tell me that we built it together when they were young, and flew it successfully...



I've identified it since as being a 'Dani', built from a kit, and with rather sophisticated construction. What remains shows some decent enough construction; I've searched t'web and found the plans for her, and will build another Dani sooner or later, just to see if I can...



My own first 'real' r/c 'plane was my Goldberg Electra, half-built, put away on top of a wardrobe, then brought down and finished nearly thirty years later...



Her story is told elsewhere on the Forum. I must give her another flight, maybe at Our Daughter's next visit with The Littl'un..?