A Modeler’s Life
In the early 1940s, when I was an infant, my mother frequently sang me to sleep. One of her lullabies was "Bluebirds Over the White Cliffs of Dover," a popular song at the time. I thought the song was about birds. Much later, I learned it was about warbirds over the English Channel.
My first experience with airplanes was during WW2 in 1944, when I was 4 years old. Mustangs and other warplanes flew over my house on Englewood Avenue in St. Paul on their way to Holman Field, where my cousin Jean Spelios installed their radios. The older kids could identify the airplanes. The planes with an air scoop under the wing were “Mustangs,” I was told. The ones with two engines were “B-24s.”
When I started school at age 5, I walked alone almost a mile to kindergarten class in grade school. I was hit by a car while crossing Minnehaha Avenue and knocked unconscious. I was bitten by dogs twice. My dad said I had to learn to fend for myself. That’s the way he was raised. He learned to swim when someone pushed him off a pier in Oslo harbor.
My career in electronics began in third grade, when I learned to repair vacuum tube radios. I removed the vacuum tubes from a failed radio and took them to a nearby radio shop. I tested them in their tube tester and I purchased replacements for burned-out tubes. Most of the failures were burned-out filaments. This experience would be useful years later when I became a computer test floor technician. Computers still had vacuum tubes in those days.
The radio shop also sold model airplane kits. I bought a solid model non-flying Mustang kit. It required me to carve the fuselage and wings from blocks of balsa wood. I used my mother’s paring knife. It was crude.
One of my neighbors, an older kid knick-named Ronny the Rat by other kids, was a model builder. His solid models were well done and well painted. I was embarrassed to show him mine. But he taught me a lot. I found out later that his beautiful models were built by his teenage brother.
When I was eight years old, my parents moved in with my grandmother and great grandmother in order to save money for a home down payment. I lived with three Norwegian relatives. My dad, an accountant, said that the biggest mistake he ever made was to rent instead of owning a home.
There was a hobby shop nearby on Payne Avenue that sold static model (non-flying) Monogram Model kits. I built several and entered one of them in a contest in the hobby shop. I was delighted when the hobby shop displayed my model in their front window.
When I was ten years old, in 1950, my parents finally bought a home. It was in southwest Minneapolis, close to a hobby shop on 50th Street and France Avenue. I bought my first flying model kits there. Today, I wonder if my model airplane hobby would have developed if I hadn’t always lived close to a hobby shop.
One day, I launched a Free Flight glider in the playground at Fulton grade school. It caught a thermal and climbed in circles over the school and drifted northward with the wind. I ran after it but I couldn’t see it thru the trees. I asked a mailman if he saw my airplane and he said yes and pointed to where it was. I ran after it and retrieved it four blocks away.
I bought my first glow fuel model airplane engine and mounted it in a Control Line airplane. The engine was an Andersen Spitsy made in Norway by another David Andersen.
For the first flight, I asked a friend to hold the airplane while I started the motor. Then I asked him to let go of the airplane after I walked to the control handle, picked it up, and signaled to him to let it go. He picked the airplane up and launched it toward me. I watched it fly overhead with limp control lines and crash beyond me. I should have explained to him that the plane was supposed to fly in a circle around me, not above me.
My first experience of a Free Flight model airplane flying contest was on the ice in the middle of Lake Harriet. I was fascinated to see a model spiral-climb to altitude, glide in a circle and sometimes gain altitude until its fuse-burning dethermalizer popped its stabilizer up and it descended like a parachute. I had to wait until I was old enough to drive a car before I could fly Free Flight or Radio Control at a model airplane flying field.
At the age of 16 and recently car licensed, I flew a Free Flight model at a model airplane club in Bloomington off Cedar Avenue. It was the home of an informal RC club named The Hot Watts, the only RC club in Minnesota at the time. I met their leader there, Red St Albans.
One day, a Hot Watts model crashed on Cedar Avenue. That caused the Hot Watts to find a new home, away from automobile traffic. They became the Twin Cities Radio Controllers (TCRC), the first incorporated RC club in Minnesota. Their new home was a rented hay field near Shakopee. The former Hot Watts field became a pro football stadium and is now the Mall of America. I joined TCRC. The center of their field had a small square paved section, a tradition left over from Control Line flying.
My first RC model had a homemade radio constructed from a second-hand car antenna, a doorbell pushbutton, vacuum tubes, and relays all purchased from a surplus radio parts store, Honeywell Surplus. Pushing the button on the transmitter caused only left rudder. The plane was trimmed for a gradual right turn. Steering was accomplished by tapping the pushbutton.
My first Orbit reed radio model with throttle, ailerons, elevator, and rudder was operated with toggle switches. I asked Red St Albans to test fly it for me. He took off and circled the field. He did a beautiful loop and a roll.
I was thrilled. After a while, the engine stopped and Red glided it in for a perfect landing in the center of the paved runway. He handed me the transmitter and said “Needs a click of up.”
In order for the pilot to move the elevator and ailerons simultaneously, the toggle switch for elevator was on the left and the toggle switch for aileron was on the right. To this day, I still have transmitters in that configuration. It’s called “Mode One.”
The biggest model airplane engine available at that time was 0.60 cubic inches displacement. The first one was made by David Andersen in Norway and was called the Andersen Spitfire. It was of excellent quality.
One day, Bruce Anthony was flying a 60-powered scale model of the Pete Bowers Flybaby. The model was designed by another TCRC member, Larry Gielo. I was standing beside Bruce when he asked me if I would like to fly it. I eagerly agreed of course. As he handed me the Orbit reed radio transmitter, he said, “Be careful with the throttle. It has a big honkin’ sixty.”
Years later, I published Larry’s Flybaby plans in R/C Modeler Magazine. It was my first published construction article.
Larry made one very clever change from scale. He showed the “FLYBABY” logo on the side of the fuselage much larger than scale size. Since then, there have been several kits of the Flybaby. All of them included Larry’s enlarged FLYBABY logo.
Years later, I was on a business trip to Norway. I visited the farm where my father was born, just north of Oslo on the Glomme River. To my surprise, there was a model airplane club flying field on the farm with a single grass runway between the hills and a pasture. (By Norwegian law, all farm land must remain farm land so the runway could not be paved. It had to remain in grass for the cattle to graze.)
Using my limited knowledge of the Norwegian language, I helped a modeler tune his engine. When I introduced myself he said (in Norwegian) “You are David Andersen!!?” in an astonished tone of voice. (The model engine maker David Andersen was still famous in Norway.) No, I replied. I am not that David Andersen.
One of our acts for the Blue Eagles airshow team was for me to fly a sailplane to the popular song of the time, "Born Free." In a performance in a football stadium with the audience in the bleachers, I launched my airplane and circled over the field. My sailplane gained altitude in a small thermal and was joined by a red-tailed hawk. We circled wingtip-to-wingtip as the music played …
Born free
As free as the wind blows
As free as the grass grows
Born free to follow your heart
Live free
And beauty surrounds you
The world still astounds you
Each time you look at a star
Stay free
Where no walls divide you
You're free as a roaring tide
So there's no need to hide
Born free
And life is worth living
But only worth living
'Cause you're born free
Nearing the end of the music, I dropped the sailplane low. I stepped in front of the audience and caught the airplane with one hand just as the music ended. The hawk and I received a standing ovation.
When I was a flight judge at the Florida Top Gun RC scale contest, another flight judge, Narve Jensen, was a Norwegian who was an official in the large European modeling organization, the Federation Aeronautique International (FAI). He was also an editor of a Norwegian modeling magazine Modellfly Informasjion. We established a close friendship and I wrote several articles for his magazine which he translated into Norse.
I wrote several scale construction articles for RC Modeler Magazine. One of them was published during the Toledo Expo in 2002. I was asked to work the magazine’s booth at Toledo. A modeler told me that he read one of my construction articles three times. I asked him if he planned to build the airplane. He said no. It wasn’t his preferred type of model. He studied the article because it taught him how to build. That was a valuable lesson for me. Since then, I have tried to write construction articles as general construction techniques using a flown model as an example. My book, Model Airplane Construction Techniques, uses this technique.
To date, I have 20 published plans. Most of them can be downloaded from the Minnesota Big Birds web site (www.mnbigbirds.com). I get interesting emails from all over the world.
About 6 months before the Russians invaded Crimea, I received an email from a Ukrainian modeler. He asked a question about my Focke Wulf TA152H design. He inquired only about the wing. The TA has a very efficient sailplane-like wing. My TA once gained altitude in a thermal with a hawk while the engine was at idle. I have read that in the early days of the Ukrainian war, reconnaissance drones were built by Ukrainian RC modelers. I wonder if my TA152H wing was included in one of them.
In 2025, I was inducted into the Academy of Model Aeronautics Hall of Fame. I am only the third modeler from Minnesota to receive this honor. The first was Walt Billett in 1969. My success is due to a team effort, especially with my fellow modelers in the Twin Cities Radio Controllers and the Scale Flyers of Minnesota and other club’s events. My plans are distributed by Jon Bomer’s web site, and Jeff Micko supplies molded parts. At least 10 local modelers have built and flown my designs and placed in contests. I learned from them.
The hobby has changed so much in my lifetime, from small hand-launched Free Flights to giant scale RC turbine jets. Constant change kept it interesting.
I wonder how it will progress in next 80 years.
