Vintage Model Kit Archive
For the benefit of all the aeromodeling community, I have been
collecting images of vintage airplane, helicopter, and boat kits which have appeared
on
eBay and
WorthPoint. Over time, it has been a very
good source of photos of it boxes and labels, plans, and all the included kit components
- balsa, plywood, hardwood, music wire, canopies, and hardware. Hyperlinks to external
websites is kept to a minimum because pages disappear frequently. Copyrights, if
any, are hereby acknowledged.
 My best friend and fellow model airplane and
rocket, Jerry Flynn, received a Berkeley models Astro-Hog kit along with a few
others and some engines from an associate of his father. The guy's father had died
and left behind a bunch of modeling stuff. At the time, neither Jerry nor I had
built or flown a radio controlled model, having at the age of around 14 years old
not had the money to buy equipment. Back in the early 1970s it was not like today
where you could buy R/C models and equipment for very little money. Jerry went ahead
and built the Astro-Hog over a timespan of about a year, and during that time he
bought a second-hand Futaba 4-channel radio (27.095 MHz version). He did his
typically very nice job of building and doping the airplane, and decided to try
the maiden flight himself. We reasoned that the safest thing to do was to do an
unpowered glide test flight, so we took the Astro-Hog to the top of a local hill
in Mayo, Maryland, and tossed it off. It did OK for a few seconds, then stalled
and went into the ground. The wreckage was pretty extensive, but Jerry repaired
it and tried again. It was balanced properly and rigged straight and true, so this
time, we decided having a little power available to prevent the stall would be a
good thing. Bad idea. This time the model was able to gain a little extra altitude
before plowing into terra firma. The Astro-Hog was a total loss.
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Astro-Hog Box Top Details
Astro-Hog Kit Contents
Astro-Hog Plans Title Block
Maybe Jerry should have
built it as a C/L model; it would have lasted a lot longer!
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Astro-Hog Kit Box & Contents
It was a huge box
full of balsa and plywood!
Astro-Hog Original Plans
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Download
Berkeley Astro-Hog Plans
Posted August 29, 2020
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