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"How to Design and
Build Flying Models" might have been the first book I ever read on the title's
subject. I probably checked it out of the Annapolis Public Library sometime in
the late 1960s. Somehow, I still have it (I hate to think what the overdue book
fee is for it by now). Other than maybe a scrapbook of baby pics, it is probably
the single oldest thing from my childhood that I own. After all the intervening
years, the one passage from the book that sticks with me is a description of
what it would be like to have a twin engined World War II control line model
with home-built (commercial not available in the day) retractable landing gear
(see pages below).
I remember laying in bed and seeing myself flying that imaginary model - corny,
but true. At around 10 years old with my only actual control line flying
experience being with a Cox PT-19 Trainer,
it could only be a dream. Tools, ability, material, and money were not there.
What little I earned from a paper route was divided amongst model rockets, model
boats, model airplanes, and anything else that would fly along with BBs for my
Daisy BB gun, a bike to keep serviceable, and various and sundry other boyhood
endeavors. Now that I'm an old man, the money is there, but time and a
convenient place to fly is not. For now, I keep dreaming...
Flying Models Book Ad
"How to Design and Build Flying Models," by Keith Laumer - cover
photo in American Modeler magazine.
"How to Design and Build Flying Models," by Keith Laumer - owned
by Kirt Blattenberger
 By Keith Laumer. Introduction by William
Winter, Editor of Model Airplane News
Instructions for all phases of model building from simple gliders to elaborate
engine models: getting a model aloft, rebuilding a wreck, designing from original
ideas, building retracting landing gear. Complete plans and instructions for a free-flight
model and a control-line model. With 75 drawings, including 4 double-page spreads
and 11 pages of photographs; index, glossary. At all bookstores or clip this ad
and write your name and address in margin and mail with check/money order for $4.95
to Harper & Brothers, 51 East 33rd Street, New York 16, N. Y.
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