A Pleasant Afternoon

At the Control Line club meeting this Sunday, I brought my 74 Fighter balsa chuck glider replica that I did for .020 power.  The club president asked if I would fly it at the Old Engine Run event on April first that the club is putting on.  I told him all my stuff was still packed up and I’d need a handle and glow head clip if I was going to fly it.  He said to come over to his house and he’d fix me up.  So I went over to his house and he took me to the garage to get some 1/2A stuff he had pulled out and waiting for me on one of his benches.

He pulled out an old SIG cardboard flight box and started putting stuff in it.  He basically said, if it fits in the box, I can have it.  So we loaded it up.







He asked if I needed any props, and when I said “Yes”, he threw a bunch in the box.  He apparently liked faster planes, as there were ten 5x4 wood Tornado props,  wood Rev-Up and plastic Windsor (Master Airscrew) 5.5x4 props, three Cox competition 5.5x4 props, A Cox competition 6x3 and regular plastic 6x3 props, and two-blade and three blade .020 props.  There are also two Tornado 5.5x3 props new in the package.




As I walked over to the bench I started laughing.  He asked what I was laughing about, and I pointed to the tub that had ten, Yes 10!, Cox Skylon reels in it.  I knew some people on this board would love to have that box.




When I saw one handle in one of the three(!) handle boxes it caught my eye, as I’m sure it did Bob in the second picture. I asked him if I could talk him out of the yellow handle.  It’s an AMF throttle control handle.  I assume it came with a throttled Wen-Mac P-26 Peashooter.  He just said, “Take it.”  

Other handles he gave me are two SIG handles, a home-made mini Hotrock, a Wen-Mac handle, some kind of fiber handle, a North Pacific Redy-Reel (I really want to try this one), and two of the ten Skylon reels.





He gave me not just one, but several glow head clips.  I especially want to try one particular clip that I’d never seen before, and have no idea what engine it was made for, if for a specific engine line.






Wrenches?  You can never have enough wrenches.  Seven Cox .049 wenches, a Testors wrench, a Gilbert wrench, and a generic Perfect wrench.





I also needed bellcranks and leadout material for the planes I’ve been cutting on the Cricut, so he threw in plenty of bellcranks.  The four tiny ones in the lower left should be great for .010 and .020 models.




He also threw in some engines.  For non-Cox engines, there are five Testors engines in various states of completion.  A never run OK Cub .049, a never run BigMig .049 R/C engine, and a new never run Wasp .049 engine.




On the Cox engine front, he gave me a corroded Babe Bee, a pretty rough engine out of a car, an unloved postage stamp engine, and two, yes two, TD.09 R/C engines.  One had some really strange granulated residue, the other was just gunked up.  He said he bought them a few years ago to put in a model but never did anything with them.




A few miscellaneous things also in the box are starter springs for a .020 and a .049, a spinner for a three bladed prop, a couple of wedge tanks, and a .8cc stunt tank conversion kit.  Also a fueling syringe and a new glow head for a Gilbert .07 engine.  Also, a new, never opened ½ pint can of Cox glow fuel.  Whaddaya think?  I’d say it’s still good so long as when I open the can I don’t find any rust.





After we looked through the stuff in the garage, he took me to his den to show off other control line items.  As we were walking around, he said, “You like Cox items, you’ll probably like this.”  He reached down under an end table and brought out this box.





A 1953 Cox TD-3, new and never taken out of the box!  I was totally amazed. I also point out to him that where he’s leaving the box is just at claw height for their new cat, and that he should probably put it somewhere where the cat can’t claw it and ruin the box.

All in all, a pleasant afternoon.  I stayed and talked until I couldn’t stay any longer, since I am allergic to cats.

The Hand-Me-Down Mark