Who owned PDQ products?

Hey guys,

I have a question about who owned PDQ Products Co. of Millville, NJ? Was it a guy named Henning? Any other info on PDQ? The recent thread on Matt Kania and the link provided to the AMA sight did not mention that Mr. Kania also designed the Circus King... Was this an oversight?

Had a PDQ Mustang once;powered with a Torp greenhead 29
Remember the front fuselage side plates(it was a profile)were teakwood
instead of the usual.
AS I remember it flew pretty good;never saw another one

I think it was pretty similar to the Sterling Mustang. Currell

I know that Matt Kania designed the Cirus King. Bare Baxter sells the plans and Kania is stated as the designer... I have also read here from several others that confirm that.

Now I am wondering how long was PDQ in business, and how many planes did they offer, and did they manufacture more than C/L? FF? RC? Boats?

I never heard of PDQ offering Warbirds... They must be pretty rare, considering the endless hours of surfing eBay, I have never come across one!

LAST EDITED ON Nov-30-04 AT 12:07 PM (CST)
 
Hi Phil,
WAG, but I would bet the Mustang that Charlie "run over by a mule cart" Pate mentioned would have been very similar to the Sterling one that Mr. Kania designed as Currell says, too.
IIRC, Mr. Kania was invloved with the ownweship of PDQ. Not real sure of who the partners were.
I can remember several of the PDQ kits, but all I ever saw were C/L. Baby Clown, Circus Clown/Circus Prince (both had same wing), Super Clown, Circus King, Lion Tamer (the only built up fuse I ever saw from them).
Bare does have all those, I do believe.
Got to find time to build my Circus King!
I had a few PDQ kits as a kid, cost less than Sterling! Still have my Circus Prince from '63.
Bill <><

The 50 cent to a buck price advantage that PDQ had over Sterling for comparable kits (Ringmaster/Super Clown, same designer) was huge in the late '50s, at least for me.

In the mid 50s, both were $2.95. But later, Sterling raised the price to $3.95, and maybe there was a $3.50 step in between.

Another example, later...Flying Clown was $1.99, Ring Jr $2.99. Huge difference.

Didn't I just see a photo of Kania holding a CL speed plane somewhere, too? Anybody have a name for that one?

Guys! I do remember ,it had no flaps;just a tapered wing.

LAST EDITED ON Dec-02-04 AT 10:34 AM (CST)
 
>I know that Matt Kania designed the Cirus King. Bare Baxter
>sells the plans and Kania is stated as the designer... I
>have also read here from several others that confirm that.
>
> Now I am wondering how long was PDQ in business, and how
>many planes did they offer, and did they manufacture more
>than C/L? FF? RC? Boats?
>
> I never heard of PDQ offering Warbirds... They must be
>pretty rare, considering the endless hours of surfing eBay,
>I have never come across one!

Hi Phil, PDQ did a Yak 9 too. PDQ also did a series of profile
1/2A warbirds; I have a 1/2A Bearcat kit. It is very crude and has
little in common with the prototype....Oh Yes, there were two
different versions of the Lion Tamer.
Tony

Hi, Phil - I grew up in Vineland, right next to Millville. As I recall, after the war there were many empty block buildings at the original Millville Airport, a military base. Since it became a municipal airport, the buildings were rented out to private (small) businesses to generate income. PDQ supposedly had a factory there - I do recall a lot of model aviation activity at the airport in the early 50s.

Anyhow, you might contact the Millville Chamber of Commerce to see if they have records of PDQ.

Here is some contact info.
ph: 856-825-2600
fx: 856-825-5333
<[email protected]>

Those buildings are all historical now and protected as part of the airport museum. In fact one of the buildings is a model shop to support the models in the museum.

The model shop is starting a youth program to teach kids about aviation through model airplanes.

I was there last week to help scope out locations for the flying circles. Looking around the building at all the stuff people had donated I found a nice PDQ flying clown, wow cosmic.

Koool... thanks Guys! When I get a chance I will the Millville chamber and museum. I suspect that alot of the companies cranking out kits and engines did not keep detailed records. But it's all part of the fun to piece together the puzzles that led us here...

You BET there was a lot of modeling activity at the Millville airport circa 1950!!! As a young spectator I attended a huge FF and CL contest there in June '50. That one event was responsible for my becoming a "Lifer". Never saw anything else like it---except maybe the beloved Navy Nats. (Was later told by someone who was even younger at the time that he was at that same meet too: Bob Hunt.)

I have talked to John Miske in the past about the man and his wife who were PDQ. I don't recall their names, but John used to hang around their garage where they put the kits together. He had some interesting stories about them. But, he would be a definite source of information about them if he were so inclined. My guess is that they were out of business by about '56, but their models were still available a few years after that, so they may have still been produciing stuff, but had given up advertising.
I have the kit plans and tracings for either the P-51 or Yak that PDQ did and I will CAD them up when I have time. They are similar to the Sterling stuff except there were no flaps. I haven't compared them directly yet, though.
A good lot of the PDQ stuff was not OT legal as it came out in '53 or 54. The Circus King, Lion Tamers, and Circus Prince were too late and I'm not sure about the Baby Clown, which has no relationship to the Brodak version other than some visual similarity. The Brodak version is bigger and comes with a radial mount.
Kania also did a plane for Megow called the Flying Circus that strongly resembles the Flying Clown.
Bare

I have a picture of my mom and dad at one of those Millville contests in the summer of '56. I was there too and, was born that fall. Years later I went to a "B" team race contest there. They had so many entries they had to fly 4-5 planes at a time to get all the races in.

George Hubshmidt use to have film of 15 planes up racing in the same circle at the same time. If you can imagine a rough sometimes partial rotating ring of men all flying B team race planes. The faster guys were clustered in the center fighting to pass everybody and each other. To get in and out of the pits they had to break through the crowd at the same time avoiding line tangles with a plane out of gas. Lines did tangle and got untangled. It was an amazing flurry of rotating danger and madness. I'll never forget it.

It will be a boon for area modelers to be able to fly and have contests there again. If all goes well, maybe by next year.

The Flying Circus is, of course, OT Legal, being a '40s kit. But rather small. I stumbled across the Megow ad for this plane in a period MAN, to my astonishment. I had no idea of the Megow/Kania connection.

It is a dead ringer for the familiar Flying Clown. Currell

To change the thread a bit to Millville: It was an absolute model aviation haven in the early 50s. There was some sort of activity every weekend - free flight, C/L and early R/C.
A few years back, I tried to get a small section set aside for a one-circle C/L demo during an air show. Many calls, many letters and not even a retuned call. The R/C group had a sizeable demo - go figure.
Bob Z.