Flying Aces

Model Airplane News, Aug 1998

In the '30s, kids could buy models everywhere, including the local drugstores. Many of them cost only tl cents. This was a very special era in model aviation, when oil companies sponsored "The Adventures of Jimmy Allen" on the radio to get kids to coerce their folks into buying Skelly Oil products. Kids could join the Jimmy Allen Flying Club and when dad bought gas, they could get a "flight lesson." After completing five flight lessons, the kid would take a final exam and then receive a model airplane.

Skelly Oil wasn't the only organization using model aviation as a marketing tactic. William Randolph Hearst (the Hearst Publishing mogul) established the Junior Birdmen and produced handbooks on the building and flying of model airplanes. This organization became half a million strong during the mid-'30s. Many other organizations existed, all with large memberships. The Chicago Times had the Sky Cadets, Air Trails had the Air Adventurers, and Model Airplane News sponsored the American Sky Cadets.

But the group we remember most is the Flying Aces. The reason is that in 1976, Dave Stott and John Thompson decided that flying some of the dime scale models of the '30s would be fun. Their activities led to the founding of what has become a large organization-the Flying Aces.

The popularity of the Flying Aces today could not have been predicted back in the '70s. More and more modelers find that building small free flight scale aircraft is very enjoyable. I've been a member for a long time and although i've never had much in the way of a place to fly free flight, the many available plans allow me to investigate some of the many scale aircraft that I'll never be able to build as R/C's planes. Even with a small field, you can fly free flight early in the morning or late in the afternoon without too much chance of a thermal stealing your plane away. Many R/C'ers have become diehard free flghters once they find the pleasure of "trusting" their aircraft.

Today, the membership of the Flying Aces is in the thousands. The Flying Aces Nationals, held in Geneseo, NY, in July, has become a three-day event and, for a scale nut, it's the best place on the planet to be because there are several hundred scale models on the field. Because of the bonus-points system used, the variety of these models surpasses anything found at an R/C meet.

With the recent flurry of laser-cut kit releases from companies like Herr Engineering" and Dumas", getting into this fun area of model aviation has become easy. But most of all, if you have any itch to build a free flight scale plane, you've just got to scratch it by becoming a member of the Aces. The cost is only $15 a year, and you get a bimonthly newsletter with all sorts of good info in it, as well as three to four full-size plans for free flight scale aircraft. Send a check to Lin Reichel, Flying Aces, 3301 Cindy Ln., Erie, PA 16506.