That's a great Dad story, Keith. Very much enjoy your dry delivery and your skill, both in engineering and narrating. Must have been a pretty big front room, though. Thanks, Tom
Well I entered the world on January 6, 1953, so you and I are both 69 in 2022. Funny how toys make an impression on a young lad, and then decades later we want to play with them again. I'm still a kid at heart, and enjoy toys to this day. It keeps me young.
Loved your video Keith. I had the very same model and I chuckled at your Mom's displeasure with you flying inside. My father and I started mine on the dining room table and the newspaper I had so carefully placed under the model was pulled into the propeller and shredded into very small pieces that went all over the dining room! (Not to mention the glow fuel smoke and smell) Mom was NOT pleased. We must have had these models at fairly close to the same time since I just turned 70 in February of this year. Definitely a great memory! Thank you.
I had one and flew it a few times in the school playground (not during school hours). I even managed to drop the bomb using the third line. It was a little underpowered for its weight and not very manoeuvrable - it was never going to manage a loop. I crashed it attempting a wing-over. I've still got the engine. I'm still flying models (mostly radio control) fifty years later.
Keith that was a great story. I also remember how tired my dad was after working a very long day at an industrial size egg farm as an electrician. But he found the energy to spend time with my infant brother and me every night before bed.
I had a Wen-Mac generic style airplane that I got by selling garden seeds for the Junior Salesman Company that advertised in in the back pages of many comic books in the 1950s. It had a recoil starter which had a loop on the end of the pull-cord. On the first start attempt the loop lassoed the propeller quite neatly and ruined the mechanism beyond repair. Oh well, our relatives and neighbors had nice gardens from the seeds I sold them.
My 10th birthday present Cox PT19 went exactly 1/2 lap, straight overhead into the asphalt! Used the engine in a series of Carl Goldberg balsa Little Wizards & finally learned how to fly.
This defo brings back memories. I still occasionally fly control line models and actually prefer it to RC aircraft as you have direct contact with the aircraft. It all started when my gran boutght me the PT19 trainer. I didn't have much success with this model but was advised by the local model shop to by a Picador flying wing kit and my dad bought the PAW 1.49 engine. This fly very well and showed how hard the PT19 was to actually fly. I then build up to a Merco 49 powered (8cc) Supermaster stunt model.
Oh man that does bring back some memories of trying to get a friend's Cox P-51 Mustang started one cold fall afternoon. Bitten by a dead dry cell and no cash to buy a new one. I had the Cox Stuka and the PT-19 Trainer myself. I can smell the castor oil right now! Love the vintage toy series.
Loved flying my Cox .049 Corsair and Mustang planes -- owned at different times, due to one or the other having a inadvertent and violent landing, They were always landings, since I always was able to walk away after. You probably pretend that you don't know that fete, feast, fest, and fiesta are really variations for the same word. Cheers.
PB Blaster penetrating oil is the best. It instantly frees 50yr old motors up. It’s an American product common here. It will smell up your shop though.
Hi there Keith! I´m familiar with those feelings you´ve evoqued . When I was a 5 year old my father gave me the most precious gift I´ve ever had : A Douglass Dauntless like the one you have; teh only difference is mine was light blue. I sitll have the propeller and the 0.49 engine. From time to time I search into in my memory for more details about this plesant times. I wish I could have kept my model in good shape. Thanks for sharing your video. Cheers from Argentina.
The one that my parents bought me was also the best present I have ever had, flying it around the front room with my Father will always be in my memory {:-)))
@@keithappleton high again! Just to share some pictures, do You have a public email address? Thanks! P.S. sorry for the spelling mistakes in my previous comment
I have a Cox PT-19 Trainer. My finger got smacked so many times from starting it, that I wore a handmade finger glove. Spinning round & round, while flying the plane, cures vertigo! Fuel is still sold for the engines. I also have a small Cox Red Baron Biplane (unused) & a Cox Dune Buggy.
thank you for a very nice reminder. my fist ic was a stuka all back 4 blade yellow nose cone ?? i never got to fly it. my dad and uncle pete took it to the park not knowing how to operate it. so you know. start hand launch and RUN backwards yep up it went. over the top and strait it to the ground. i had to watch from my window . so on my birthday i got new in box hurricane. but i kept the stuka for many years trying find the spares .. but never did .. the big thing is when i took my new plain the park my dad was amazed that i could fly and land ?? and not move more than my rist .. i still fly even now .. but i like large gliders 2.4m upto 3.5m nice esay and slow like the kites i love it . great way to un wined
Great story Keith, your old Dad sounds like he was a top bloke! I had a control line model which crashed on it's first flight in a local park and the darn engine would never start afterwards, I was only about 13 (mid 1960's) and wasn't clued up about what might be wrong so it never flew again :/
I had a Keil Kraft Hurricane for Christmas 1970, I was 10 years old. First flight on Christmas Day, my Grandfather was stood slightly inside the flying circle. I've never seen an older man duck so fast. Luckily it missed him. Happy days.
My first gas model plane was red and had a Wen-Mac .049 This was when I was about 8, I am 73 now. I can suggest "Mothers" plastic cleaner/polish for the canopy and plane. I use it and it might make the canopy clear again. If not there is a plastic restorer used on car headlight covers that make the covers clear and bright again. I believe there are places where you can get decals like on the plane also. When I was 16, I had taken a hell of a whack from my McCoy .35 on two fingers. It was deep and I had to get stitches. A .35 is a rather large powerful engine.
Beat me by 5 days to 68!. Sold hundreds of recoil springs for those WenMac engines in the family model shop, always wound too far clockwise, the Cox springs where external and different design. Keikraft used the engine in their 'Ready to Fly Hurricane'. Fuel tank/engine mount was the weak spot there. Use a good 16% Nitro fuel any less % they struggle on. Next step was strip the motor out and build a Phantom Mite balsa model. Cure for dizzyness? Stand still and just fly in 1/2 circle doing wing overs, loops and inverted! Mmm, Nitro and Castor oil! 🛩️👍😃
I had a blue one, called SBD-5. I was around 9 years old. My father had zero interest. Since I did not have any fuel or a 1.5V battery, I never started the engine. But, I did fly it. I just dragged it on the lines until it got airborne and sort of whipped it around. :)) Like you, nostalgia called and I searched eBay for a long time for a pristine version to buy. Finally one year, there appeared a NIB baby blue SBD-5 and I got it.
I had a P47 Cox with the 049 engine. I flew it once, it took off, I pulled back on the handle and it went up until it was at the end of the lines and came over and straight into the ground. Drove the engine back into the body, end of my flying.
Neat little aeroplane, only downside I would think is one might get a bit dizzy flying it round in circles with the control line. Bit before my time, but definitely interesting, looks like it'd be a lot of fun.
Great story Keith. I had one hand control plane, I can't remember what kind. I flew it once and instantly loop crashed it into an asphalt paved school yard. It shattered into many pieces, much to the delight of my friends, thus ending my becoming a U-control pilot. ;-)
I was always jealous of the kids that got cool toys like this. All I ever got was a stick or a rock. Sometimes when I got lucky I got a pet, like a snail or an injured fly.
@@keithappleton You're a good guy Keith. Actually I did have 049 engines in my early control line planes eventually graduating to a larger engine in a Ring Master Kit I built in the early '60s. That's as far as it went. 4 cycle model engines? I didn't even know they existed until I saw your video. Fascinating and enjoyable. Thanks.
I had the Cox PT-19 Control Line Trainer blue and yellow and held together with elastic bands. I remember it flipping up at take-off and slammed the prop into the ground. I could pull the engine apart, put it back together, and then start it right up. But I couldn't fly it.
A story well worth telling, just recently I have been thinking of that tethered airplane I had as a kid, alas it was bound for oblivion, as my last real of it was in the 1960's .Enjoyed, cheers Keith, stay young at heart!
That's a great story, thanks for sharing ! I wish my memory was better, in fact I wish I actually had some long term memory ! People sometime show me photographs of myself at parties or events that I don't remember going to and it makes me realise just how much I must have forgotten. I always wanted a control line plane but never got one, I had a glo plug engine once but never got it started. It was every schoolboys dream to have a remote control plane but not many of us did.
I had a couple of the Cox 0.49 engines, but had to build my plane out of a kit. A zig-zag if I remember correct. Fortunatly if ether came with full size plans or I copied the parts before assembling it, as it crashed a number of times before I got it to fly. One of the other lads I chummed made a copy and bought the hardware to build one. We then got into combat flying were you attached a crape paper streamer to the tail and tried to cut the other guys streamer.
Keith, I was laughing so hard when you got to the living room flight! That sounds like something I would have done. Really enjoy your videos, thanks! (Just ran my very first steam engine on compressed air today, a pm1. How very satisfying!
Pure nostalgia. I remember playing with small diesel engines and getting Keil Kraft diesel fuel into a newly cut finger. Happy days, well some of them were. I still fly RC planes now, or will do when lock down eventually ends. Rather too much regulation these days because of the over hyped interest of commercial drones.
I had the phantom mite! Same dc merlin though complete with its large starter spring. Though as I remember on that you didn’t rotate the prop but engaged an aluminium scimitar shaped thing with a loop in the end of the spring which was fixed to the crankcase.
That's a great Dad story, Keith. Very much enjoy your dry delivery and your skill, both in engineering and narrating. Must have been a pretty big front room, though. Thanks, Tom
Well I entered the world on January 6, 1953, so you and I are both 69 in 2022. Funny how toys make an impression on a young lad, and then decades later we want to play with them again. I'm still a kid at heart, and enjoy toys to this day. It keeps me young.
I am one day older than you and I fully agree that it does keep me young - in the head anyway }:-)))
your A24 appears to be in fabulous shape. the rivet detail is really amazing .
I think so too!
Loved your video Keith. I had the very same model and I chuckled at your Mom's displeasure with you flying inside. My father and I started mine on the dining room table and the newspaper I had so carefully placed under the model was pulled into the propeller and shredded into very small pieces that went all over the dining room! (Not to mention the glow fuel smoke and smell) Mom was NOT pleased. We must have had these models at fairly close to the same time since I just turned 70 in February of this year. Definitely a great memory! Thank you.
}:-)))
lovely story ... i miss my dad too
I had one and flew it a few times in the school playground (not during school hours). I even managed to drop the bomb using the third line. It was a little underpowered for its weight and not very manoeuvrable - it was never going to manage a loop. I crashed it attempting a wing-over. I've still got the engine. I'm still flying models (mostly radio control) fifty years later.
Keith that was a great story. I also remember how tired my dad was after working a very long day at an industrial size egg farm as an electrician. But he found the energy to spend time with my infant brother and me every night before bed.
I had a Wen-Mac generic style airplane that I got by selling garden seeds for the Junior Salesman Company that advertised in in the back pages of many comic books in the 1950s. It had a recoil starter which had a loop on the end of the pull-cord. On the first start attempt the loop lassoed the propeller quite neatly and ruined the mechanism beyond repair. Oh well, our relatives and neighbors had nice gardens from the seeds I sold them.
My 10th birthday present Cox PT19 went exactly 1/2 lap, straight overhead into the asphalt! Used the engine in a series of Carl Goldberg balsa Little Wizards & finally learned how to fly.
This defo brings back memories. I still occasionally fly control line models and actually prefer it to RC aircraft as you have direct contact with the aircraft. It all started when my gran boutght me the PT19 trainer. I didn't have much success with this model but was advised by the local model shop to by a Picador flying wing kit and my dad bought the PAW 1.49 engine. This fly very well and showed how hard the PT19 was to actually fly. I then build up to a Merco 49 powered (8cc) Supermaster stunt model.
Oh man that does bring back some memories of trying to get a friend's Cox P-51 Mustang started one cold fall afternoon. Bitten by a dead dry cell and no cash to buy a new one. I had the Cox Stuka and the PT-19 Trainer myself. I can smell the castor oil right now! Love the vintage toy series.
I collect these things-the one in the video is actually in pretty good shape. I really enjoyed the video sir!
Thanks for watching!
Loved flying my Cox .049 Corsair and Mustang planes -- owned at different times, due to one or the other having a inadvertent and violent landing, They were always landings, since I always was able to walk away after. You probably pretend that you don't know that fete, feast, fest, and fiesta are really variations for the same word. Cheers.
PB Blaster penetrating oil is the best. It instantly frees 50yr old motors up. It’s an American product common here. It will smell up your shop though.
I had a great !!! laugh at the part of your story flying the plane in the front room !
I got emotional hearing your story.
I need to give more time to my son.
Hi there Keith! I´m familiar with those feelings you´ve evoqued . When I was a 5 year old my father gave me the most precious gift I´ve ever had : A Douglass Dauntless like the one you have; teh only difference is mine was light blue. I sitll have the propeller and the 0.49 engine. From time to time I search into in my memory for more details about this plesant times. I wish I could have kept my model in good shape. Thanks for sharing your video. Cheers from Argentina.
The one that my parents bought me was also the best present I have ever had, flying it around the front room with my Father will always be in my memory {:-)))
@@keithappleton high again! Just to share some pictures, do You have a public email address? Thanks! P.S. sorry for the spelling mistakes in my previous comment
keith@mainsteam.co.uk
Great story!
I have a Cox PT-19 Trainer. My finger got smacked so many times from starting it, that I wore a handmade finger glove.
Spinning round & round, while flying the plane, cures vertigo! Fuel is still sold for the engines.
I also have a small Cox Red Baron Biplane (unused) & a Cox Dune Buggy.
thank you for a very nice reminder. my fist ic was a stuka all back 4 blade yellow nose cone ?? i never got to fly it. my dad and uncle pete took it to the park not knowing how to operate it. so you know. start hand launch and RUN backwards yep up it went. over the top and strait it to the ground. i had to watch from my window . so on my birthday i got new in box hurricane. but i kept the stuka for many years trying find the spares .. but never did .. the big thing is when i took my new plain the park my dad was amazed that i could fly and land ?? and not move more than my rist .. i still fly even now .. but i like large gliders 2.4m upto 3.5m nice esay and slow like the kites i love it . great way to un wined
Great story Keith, your old Dad sounds like he was a top bloke! I had a control line model which crashed on it's first flight in a local park and the darn engine would never start afterwards, I was only about 13 (mid 1960's) and wasn't clued up about what might be wrong so it never flew again :/
Great story, I also have a photographic memory it's just not developed.
Keith, I had a Cox P-51 Mustang similar to your plane. My mother tried to fly it once and it crashed, never to fly again!
}:-)))
@@keithappleton I never got to fly the plane once!
I had a cox P51D that had been crashed very hard and I fix it by bolting the wing back on with a 3/8 bolt . that wing never came back off.
Same here.
I had a Keil Kraft Hurricane for Christmas 1970, I was 10 years old. First flight on Christmas Day, my Grandfather was stood slightly inside the flying circle. I've never seen an older man duck so fast. Luckily it missed him. Happy days.
My uncle tried flying one of these type of airplane in a garage on about 3 foot control lines I never laughed so hard in my life.
I remembered people flying that type of plane
My first gas model plane was red and had a Wen-Mac .049 This was when I was about 8, I am 73 now. I can suggest "Mothers" plastic cleaner/polish for the canopy and plane. I use it and it might make the canopy clear again. If not there is a plastic restorer used on car headlight covers that make the covers clear and bright again. I believe there are places where you can get decals like on the plane also. When I was 16, I had taken a hell of a whack from my McCoy .35 on two fingers. It was deep and I had to get stitches. A .35 is a rather large powerful engine.
Beat me by 5 days to 68!. Sold hundreds of recoil springs for those WenMac engines in the family model shop, always wound too far clockwise, the Cox springs where external and different design. Keikraft used the engine in their 'Ready to Fly Hurricane'. Fuel tank/engine mount was the weak spot there. Use a good 16% Nitro fuel any less % they struggle on. Next step was strip the motor out and build a Phantom Mite balsa model. Cure for dizzyness? Stand still and just fly in 1/2 circle doing wing overs, loops and inverted! Mmm, Nitro and Castor oil! 🛩️👍😃
I had a blue one, called SBD-5. I was around 9 years old. My father had zero interest. Since I did not have any fuel or a 1.5V battery, I never started the engine. But, I did fly it. I just dragged it on the lines until it got airborne and sort of whipped it around. :))
Like you, nostalgia called and I searched eBay for a long time for a pristine version to buy. Finally one year, there appeared a NIB baby blue SBD-5 and I got it.
I had a P47 Cox with the 049 engine. I flew it once, it took off, I pulled back on the handle and it went up until it was at the end of the lines and came over and straight into the ground. Drove the engine back into the body, end of my flying.
Neat little aeroplane, only downside I would think is one might get a bit dizzy flying it round in circles with the control line. Bit before my time, but definitely interesting, looks like it'd be a lot of fun.
Great story Keith. I had one hand control plane, I can't remember what kind. I flew it once and instantly loop crashed it into an asphalt paved school yard. It shattered into many pieces, much to the delight of my friends, thus ending my becoming a U-control pilot. ;-)
Brilliant little plane you have there Keith. I really want to see a video of it running now. - Luke
Great story about the indoor flight!
I was always jealous of the kids that got cool toys like this. All I ever got was a stick or a rock. Sometimes when I got lucky I got a pet, like a snail or an injured fly.
}:-)))
@@keithappleton You're a good guy Keith. Actually I did have 049 engines in my early control line planes eventually graduating to a larger engine in a Ring Master Kit I built in the early '60s. That's as far as it went. 4 cycle model engines? I didn't even know they existed until I saw your video. Fascinating and enjoyable. Thanks.
I had the Cox PT-19 Control Line Trainer blue and yellow and held together with elastic bands. I remember it flipping up at take-off and slammed the prop into the ground. I could pull the engine apart, put it back together, and then start it right up. But I couldn't fly it.
A story well worth telling, just recently I have been thinking of that tethered airplane I had as a kid, alas it was bound for oblivion, as my last real of it was in the 1960's .Enjoyed, cheers Keith, stay young at heart!
That's a great story, thanks for sharing !
I wish my memory was better, in fact I wish I actually had some long term memory !
People sometime show me photographs of myself at parties or events that I don't remember going to and it makes me realise just how much I must have forgotten.
I always wanted a control line plane but never got one, I had a glo plug engine once but never got it started. It was every schoolboys dream to have a remote control plane but not many of us did.
Hi Keith I am 67 and me and my son still fly control line and still winning national championship we fly models from the fifty’s
Are you in the UK. If so do you know my friend Bernard Langworth?
1965 I had the exact same model
I had a couple of the Cox 0.49 engines, but had to build my plane out of a kit. A zig-zag if I remember correct. Fortunatly if ether came with full size plans or I copied the parts before assembling it, as it crashed a number of times before I got it to fly. One of the other lads I chummed made a copy and bought the hardware to build one. We then got into combat flying were you attached a crape paper streamer to the tail and tried to cut the other guys streamer.
Thanks for sharing such wonderful memories.
That was the best story I have heard in a long time
I had the wen-mac cessna back in the mid 60's. It was way too heavy for that little 049 glow engine and never flew very well.
Sweet!!!!
Touching anecdote about your father, Keith...sounds like he was one of the good ones!
He was indeed {:-)))
Mmmn, 1/2a brap! Can't wait to hear that little wen-mac sing again. And hey you don't have to worry about faulty reeds on it either.
Loved the story,l had a similar plane but never got to fly it in the house. Got me thinking about my dad....
Thank you that was a great story.
You really bring back memories for me. Control line,.... But never heard of one going on the front room before.
had the cox one and i still have one some 45 years later .
my mom would have screamed at me if i started in the house so that was a no no no!!!
Would love to see this fly!
Keith, I was laughing so hard when you got to the living room flight! That sounds like something I would have done. Really enjoy your videos, thanks! (Just ran my very first steam engine on compressed air today, a pm1. How very satisfying!
Pure nostalgia. I remember playing with small diesel engines and getting Keil Kraft diesel fuel into a newly cut finger. Happy days, well some of them were. I still fly RC planes now, or will do when lock down eventually ends. Rather too much regulation these days because of the over hyped interest of commercial drones.
ours was a Phantom, I think it had a DC merlin in it
I had the phantom mite! Same dc merlin though complete with its large starter spring. Though as I remember on that you didn’t rotate the prop but engaged an aluminium scimitar shaped thing with a loop in the end of the spring which was fixed to the crankcase.
Great story with your dad! Had a cox 049 control plane. I was much better at the diving part than the flying!
Love it, had me nearly wetting myself. 🤣🤣
looks like the plane has air brake wonder if it could divebomb
⭐️😊👍
I'm just curious if you had any Lesney Die Cast toys as a kid?
👍👍👋👋
I had that same model and it never flew.It lived under my bed for 10 to 15 years and I can’t remember what happened to it.
at least dad was in the doghouse not you lol