Aeromodelling at Stapleton Avenue
Me holding Pete Donnison's Keil Kraft Bandit, probably 1959
Not long after I moved with my family to Stapleton Avenue, I got to know the boy who lived across the road with his parents. His name was Peter Donnison. Pete (as I still call him) was a bit older than me and was already making model aeroplanes in his house. At the time, I was a Meccano addict and hadn't thought about model aeroplanes but I started to when Pete gave me an ED Bee 1cc Diesel engine.
ED Bee 1cc Diesel engine
The ED Bee is worth illustrating because the picture shows how it's a real internal combustion engine with a piston, a con rod and a crankshaft. It has no spark plug but relies on compression like any Diesel engine, and no carburettor as such but a needle valve to let the fuel in. The engine is started by putting a propeller on the end of the crankshaft and flicking it round with your finger. The whole engine could be taken apart in two minutes then put back together again. To me, aged eleven, this was magic. The end of my days with Meccano.
When Pete gave it to me it didn't work. A part was missing so he showed me how to order it by mail order; more excitement waiting for it to come. I hadn't yet built a model aeroplane to fix it on so when the part arrived in the post, I put the engine in the vice in our air-raid shelter and started it up. This is a long story. I am not going to write it all but it defines part of my growing up, so it's worth mentioning a few things.
The procedure was you build a model aeroplane from balsa wood and tissue paper, you fly it for a while until you crash it accidentally, then build another, and another. Bolton had at least two model shops: The Model Shop in Bold Street off Newport Street and Roland Scott's on Derby Street. Adrian Duncan's historical web page about model aeroplane engines refers to Roland Scott as running a small shop in St Helens before moving to Bolton in 1952 to make more of it. I bought three more engines there: an AM15 (1.5cc), a 2.5cc Webra and a tiny little (and really beautiful) 0.327cc Cox Pee Wee glow plug engine (whose crankshaft soon broke).
We built our model aeroplanes off detailed plans from the Aeromodeller Plans Service (which still exists) and buying the materials and engines from those two model shops. Pete's models were always better made than mine and he led the way. I am talking about model aeroplanes that actually fly, not plastic kits like Airfix that sit on a table. The different types included stunt, combat, team racing, speed, power duration, free flight, radio-controlled and glider (perhaps others). Pete's Keil Kraft Bandit in the picture was free flight. You set the engine going, launch the plane and hope for the best (not much fun). Control line combat on the other hand was nothing but fun and that's what we mostly did in the field behind Pete's house in Stapleton Avenue.
Later on we were joined by Midge Magee and Jack Stredder who went to the same school as we did. Bolton School had an aeromodelling club with boys flying model aeroplanes on 'the levels' at lunch time. One, Frank Warburton, older than us, was the world champion in the stunt class with a stunt model he made based on the Lockheed U2 American spy plane. The Great Hall of the Boys' Division had a very high ceiling so you could also fly indoor duration so, naturally, we did that too.
Everything hinged on the field behind Pete's house. We didn't just fly model aeroplanes there but kites and boomerangs all made by us. Only one person ever objected to the noise of the engines: a miserable old chemist chap whose house further up Stapleton Avenue backed on to the next field along and who kept coming over moaning about the noise.
I see there is still a British Model Flying Association and nowadays there is drone flyers on Facebook. For me and Pete, aeromodelling was just a phase of growing up but it defines a particular time in my youth that when I think back, I value as much as any. I told him as much about a week ago.
For the record, the last model aeroplane I ever made was one of these:
The Spectre was a control line stunt model. I painted it fluorescent orange. I am fairly sure Pete crashed it one afternoon at 'Woodlands', Bolton School's Scout Headquarters on Chorley New Road. I perhaps hadn't built it properly. Either way, I don't remember being bothered. When you stop bothering, you know something is over.
