First plane I flew

Wow I just found a pic of the first airplane I ever flew on yahoogroups .049 page, Testors and I dont know what it's called but I'll never forget it!! I was 13 1973!
Dwayne
Keep a handle on em!

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well that's weird it double posted
Keep a handle on em!

That actually is a pretty neat looking plastic plane.

For me it was a Cox PT 19 at about the same year as you flew. Anyone else start on a plastic 049 plane?

BTW, what is that, perhaps a cosmic wind? How did it fly? I modified my PT19 years later to increase the throw on the elevator and actually did at least one successful loop. Many many many crashes first but entered in a dive to gain speed and made it through one. The PT19 actually was a pretty stable plane. I recall doing touch and goes without problems.

ahhh memories


A pic from the net
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Cosmic Wind sounds so familiar that could be the name! As I remember it, it flew in circles and that's about it but it taught me how to start an engine and fly!! And you cant ask much more than that!
Dwayne

Keep a handle on em!

My first was a Cox Corsair, about 1970. It had a chrome finish like the Cosmic Wind above. I've never seen another one like it.

Anyone have a picture of a chromed Cox Corsair?

On Christmas of 1958 I was given the Plastic ready to fly "Little Stinker". It was powered by the Cox .020, I want to say that it was red and white. It wasn't until March or so when the snow finally was gone that a buddy and I finally got to fly the one and only flight. It crashed after less than one lap, bent the cylinder as it was mounted inverted. It hung in the basement for years while I flew a whole lot of Scientific kits with OK Cub motors. I finally threw it out, (yes I regret it now).

I don't know how old I was but I received an electric control line plane for Christmas one year. It had two electrical contact points on the bottom of the fuselage. You pressed it down against the two springs of a 6 volt lantern batter for a minute or two to charge it. The very first flight I smacked the ground and broke one of the plastic landing gear off. I might have completed half a lap. I never flew it again. I was too young to figure out that I could have probably repaired it with a wire splint and some thread and glue. Also too dumb to consider hand launching it. I don't recall what brand it was, but it was yellow.

Jim

>That actually is a pretty neat looking plastic plane.
>
>For me it was a Cox PT 19 at about the same year as you flew.
>Anyone else start on a plastic 049 plane?
>
>A pic from the net
>[photo not recovered: 29706.jpg]
>
Sure. In fact, that was the exact plane I had except mine had the backwards color scheme of blue wings and yellow fuse. While I was learning basic flight on the Cox, I was building a McCoy .35 powered Sterling Ringmaster. The larger ship really opened my eyes to what a model airplane could do.

Ringmaster with McCoy 35 for me. It was also the first one (of many) I crashed

Didn't know they made a plastic Ringmaster

Sorry, couldn't resist

>Didn't know they made a plastic Ringmaster
>
>Sorry, couldn't resist

If only, had it been held together with rubberbands maybe the unplanned landing would have been less traumatic. Notice the engine wasn't a .049 either, but it was my first.

Half plastic...MonoKote?

George

Yeah, this is the Testors Cosmic Wind. I have a couple of them in Red. Cox had a Cosmic Wind also, which were finished in red, and several other colors over the years in re-releases.
I,too liked the PT-19 by Cox. The last version that Cox put out was redesigned and improved by Mike Pratt with the weak spots in the airframe built up, and tip weight added. This helped out and already good flying model in my opinion.
You can do a search on the list here and find all sorts of posts that the plastic RTFs weren't worth beans, didn't fly, the engines were hard to start, etc. I'll admit that some of them weren't exactly model aviations best, but for the most part, they were all very cool looking at a minimum, and if you couldn't get the PT-19 started and in the air, you were just plain doing something wrong!
The plastic RTFs are neat to collect and get into the history of. I have a pretty fair collection myself, including the chrome F2G Corsair that some one mentioned, and the the red version also. I have most of them hanging in my basement ceiling, and some NIB examples, including a first edition P-40 that is mint NIB and never been unpacked.
Enjoy the Cosmic Wind.
Dan McEntee

Yes that was a Cosmic Wind, #3 was called" Little Toni"
My first was not plastic , it was a "Firebaby" with a Royal Baby Spitfire" .049.

Mine was the Firebaby with OK Cub gutless wonder...and yes I used the sheet aluminum prop!

Thats the Testors Silver Wind as it was officially sold as. The red version was the Cosmic Wind. They also did a white version with red white and blue trim around the bicentenial. I was lucky enough to work for Testors as a kid back then doing flying demonstrations at shopping centers all over Chicago. Also got to work at the Nats and EAA Flyin also. I was the first kid to fly the prototype BD 5! They had one done and let me fly it. What a disaster! It crashed the whole time ripping parts off but the motor never quit! Right after that they changed it to include a two ounce weight in the nose. That solved it. The official release was at the Lake Geneva Playboy club. I got to meet Jim Bede and a bunch of bunnys. I was later given one of only three made Clear BD 5's. Yes I still have it. Oh to turn back the clock again!

Have fun, Bruce

>Mine was the Firebaby with OK Cub gutless wonder...and yes I
>used the sheet aluminum prop!
Called the beginner or "slow motion" prop.
We were scared to death of it because it was metal.
I don,t believe I was ever cut by one , but the little
plastic 6-3 would get you Band Aid Bound in a hurry!

>>Mine was the Firebaby with OK Cub gutless wonder...and
>yes I
>>used the sheet aluminum prop!
>Called the beginner or "slow motion" prop.
>We were scared to death of it because it was metal.
>I don,t believe I was ever cut by one , but the little
>plastic 6-3 would get you Band Aid Bound in a hurry!

Agree completely; APCs do even more damage today.

Thing about that aluminum prop was, it bent in a crash and you could just straighten it back out by hand and go on. Could even adjust the pitch by twisting the blades a little! Balance, what's that? Probably contributed to the early demise of the little Cub engine. Although the Oklahoma sand we ran through it didn't help any either.

That is a testors cosmic wind. I had one too, broke the slot that the motor slides into in the first flight. Dad (a carpenter not a modeler) cut a chunk of 1/2 plywood and glued it (tile glue) in as a firewall for a cox babe bee. The cox engine was a lot easier to deal with. We flew it a lot then, but it was marginal. We could fly it on 15 foot lines in our back yard, and whip it to a perfect landing Never could get enough down elevator. Kept enlarging the belcrank slot. A lot later we learned about pushrod flex.

Then on to the Sterling 1/2 profiles and so on.


Just a sport flier
Dave Siegler
AMA 720731

My first all-plastic was a Comet Sabre44 with a Cub .049B in it...this was before the pull-starter OK's.

Didn't fly worth a darn...WAY too heavy. Flight was sort of like swinging it around on 10' lines with the engine running. [photo not recovered: cry.gif]

Still have that engine.

George

pt-19. before that i had a nifty red cox supersport, a supposed stunt plane that santa had done brunged me. it completed a figure nine with my dad yelling "back up! back up!" only to be silenced by the sudden silence when the prop buried itself into the cloddy berm on the side of the high school track. daddy cleaned up the motor and used it on an airboat he had built out of some plywood that looked like luan and was about 5/16" thick, and after he coated it with no less than fifteen coats of clear varnish it looked like one of those driftwood coffee tables you see in a place you'd rent in myrtle beach. our excitement waned when the boat would rip by at around 5 mph, making all sorts of racket that didn't seem to match our expectations. that engine ended up with a black widow tank and needle valve on a sterling cub that i flew to bits.

Wen Mac Day Fighter P-63 with the ejecting pilot, for Christmas in 1963 from the late Billy Bobe of Bobe's Pizzeria, Vincennes, Indiana. I was 4 years old.
Next was the Ringmaster Jr. with a Hope .19, then a Cox PT-19 which flew and flew.
I flew the PT-19 in the front yard our house in Redondo Beach, CA for my grandparents who veiwed from the front window overlooking the South Bay. My sister held it and after that it became a regular thing.
Still have both, hanging in the garage.
Chris...

> My sister held it and after that it became a regular thing.
>Still have both, hanging in the garage.
>Chris...

>Chris McMillin

Oh Gee...Your poor sister!

HI All, Just like a large group of people I started out with a FIRE BABY/ O K CUB when I was 10 years old, so 60 years later I built a FIRE BABY with a O K CUB and it flies great.

Bob

I'm amazed that so many "first planes" were 1/2-A and given how cranky those little beasties were to get running, I'm again amazed that you were not discouraged.

My own "first plane" happened long before 1/2-A motors were made. 1944, to be exact. A friend gave me an ARF! That is, a free flight "Spook 48" cabin model and he showed me how to convert it to C/L by hinging the elevator and adding a bellcrank. That would have been a good idea, except all I had was an O&R sideport motor on spark ignition (no glo plugs in those days). Now, a 48" mnodel weighing something like 2 lb with an O&R 23 swinging a 9" prop at 6000 RPM wasn't quite enough poop to do anything like real flying. But ROG it did! With lines slacked so much that any sort of control was just by chance, it was good enough for me to experience real flight!

Memory is vague, but I think my second model was powered by a Madewell 49, quite a quantum leap from the little O&R 23. At last, a plane that actually flew with line tension!

Floyd in OR

Floyd,

Weren't those old converted FF's referred to as "goats"?

As to the RTF's, a guy could get an entire setup in a box...sometimes including fuel. I'm sure many guys went that way because getting into it was easier.

Before getting into CL I flew various HLG's and a few tethered JETEX planes...plus a whole slew of solid models (Monogram?).

George