Back in the fall of 1970 and the summer of 1971, I attended two control line events hosted by the Flying Knights model airplane club of Troy, New York. I was in high school at the time and these events were the first exposure that I ever had to any model airplanes other than those that I had built by myself. Needless to say, I was humbled by the quality and the variety of the modeling that I was exposed to at these events. Between the two events, I was able to see and learn more about control line carrier, speed, scale, combat, and stunt planes. It was great!
With a Kodak Instamatic camera and some black & white and then color film in hand, I photographed the wonderful planes that I saw. I also tried to photograph some of the flying action, however, using a camera with no high-speed capability resulted in photos that were less than optimal.
I have had the photos of these events stored away in a photo album for more than 40 years now and had recently decided that it might be interesting to add them to FlyBoyz so that others could see what ‘old-time’ control line flying was all about. Then, thru a series of interesting events, I met Eric Williams, who besides being the AMA District II Vice President is also the current president of the Flying Knights model airplane club! Talk about a small world! I mentioned my photos to Eric and he was thrilled to hear about them and agreed that the members of the Flying Knights…including the gentleman who had been the Assistant Contest Director at the two events I had photographed!…would be most interested in the photos.
So, I have run my old photos thru Photoshop in an attempt to ‘brighten’ them up a bit and have loaded them up here for all to see. A CD containing all the photos is on its’ way to Eric for safe keeping by the Flying Knights. I hope that everyone enjoys seeing these photos and that they bring back some nice memories to those who flew control line back ‘in the day’. And if you are a member of the Flying Knights, who knows, you may very well see one of your old planes in these photos!
November 1970 – Flying Knights Control Line meet at Hudson Valley Community College, Troy, NY.
(Click on the photos to get a large image with higher resolution)
This Japanese Zero was my favorite at this show…and it still is!
Summer 1971 – Flying Knights Control Line meet at Hudson Valley Community College, Troy, NY.
(Click on the photos to get a large image with higher resolution)
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