Kenny's Old Time Model Airplane Magazine:
November 2001

Editorial

Welcome to this second edition of my on line magazine. The response to the first edition was beyond any of my expectations. Mostly positive, some constructive criticism, no outright anger; all valued. I wish to continue to correspond with anyone holding any opinion at all regarding this site. It has been an unexpected joy.

As I start planning future issues I am getting the sense that some will be theme based. Racing planes, sea planes, different designers, whatever tweaks me that month. It may be tough to see the theme of this issue, but if you wander into the warm nostalgic corner of my mind that houses model airplanes, you'll recognize the following as being, for whatever reason, some of my favorites.

The Story

Wow, this story has caused me more than a few hours in both work and moral consternation. I'm having a difficult time realizing that the world has changed, at least for the short term. Who would have thought that world political events would trickle down to a most innocent pursuit such as stick and tissue model airplanes. Well, I guess I should of, when you consider that so many of the planes we model are military and that nearly all of the pulp stories have war, or espionage as a central theme. This month's story is a Bill Barnes "Novel," The Blood-Red Road to Petra, as published in the September 1936 issue of Bill Barnes Air Trails. As it turns out, the story involves Americans, Brits, Arabs, stolen aircraft... There is a good chance that I couldn't have picked a more inappropriate story: I don't know.

I started on this web site experiment just before the 11th of September and at the time I had wanted to do this story for November, as I thought it to be one of my favorites. As I began to realize that this story might be ill chosen, I started to consider what I could put in its place. Would a Phineas Pinkham laugh fest be O.K., or would laughing at war be in poor taste? Are any of the old pulp stories, with their 1930's themes and common racial and sexist stereotypes, acceptable to contemporary society? I'm not yet sure. In the mean time, I'll be putting new a story in each month with the most sincere wishes that they be read in the spirit of the old model airplane magazines from which they were originally published. Please be assured that the content of these stories do not reflect the editorial bent of this web site in any way.

Enjoy.

The Rubber Powered Model Airplane Plan

This month is a bit of a rubber plan bonus as there are two planes to build rather that just one. The first is a scale version of the venerable Harvard, or Texan, or SNJ, or AT6, or in fact North American BC-1 trainer. Whatever you choose to call it, the result is an icon of air shows, museums and movies of the past 60 years. This dime scale like version is from the pages of Flying Aces, May 1941, and was designed my Milton Kahn. It is an attractive plan with just the right amount of detail and structure. Wishing to check out other plans by this designer I looked in my plans list and couldn't see anything else, so I started flipping through a slightly past it's due date Pond catalogue and again nothing in the scale section. To my happiness, I found a listing in the rubber section for a plan by Kahn that I have filed away somewhere, the American Zipper. This pleased me to no end, as this was a plan that I fondly remembered as a kid in a 1970's Air Trails reprint mag. As luck would have it, the plan was published in the May, 1939 edition of Air Trails, an edition which I now have an original. Love the plan, but wouldn't you know, different Kahn, this one is a Walter. Other than the fact that they were wonderful if not too prolific, I know nothing else of these two "brothers."

Upon printing out these plans you should have a BC-1 with a 20" wingspan, and an American Zipper with a 14 3/8" wingspan.

Thermals.

The Solid Model Airplane Plan

This month's solid model is the Hawks HM-1 "Time Flies." This model has so much going for it, clean sexy design, and simple construction lines, all wonderfully rendered by Robert Morrison. Published in the February 1937 of Model Airplane News, it is one of the many Morrison drawings published in that magazine during the late '30s. Again, this guy's a big favorite of mine. I suspect that you will see more of him soon on these virtual pages.

The Advertisement

This month's ad is taken from the the same issue of Model Airplane News as the Hawk "Time Flies" plan. The Comet Model Airplane and Supply Co. was one of the cornerstones of the kit industry from near the beginning until just recently. Although any future releases are in doubt, the company lives on through old plans and reproduction kit manufacturers.

Many of the documents I will be sharing will be in .pdf format