Can you tell me who made this Model from the early 70's?

The way it works is the engine and blades spin together. Nothing is locked. The body is really for show, it just spins opposite the propeller. The propeller provides all the lift while the lead weights on the blades provide stability. The blades pivot on the wire they are attached to, IE they can change pitch. They are pitched one way on the ascent and reverse pitch after the engine quits for autorotation back to the ground. They come down pretty fast but as long as it lands on grass it usually wont break. Ours only broke when it landed on an asphalt road. Mike

Check out this link. It says it was made by the tried and tru toy co. It also has pictures of the original box. Mike http://www.ebay.com/itm/271217497135?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1438.l2649

Well, the original poster only has the one post and that was in January. Let's hope he sees this. Good find!!!

Ron

That's very interesting. Thanks for posting that.

Duplicate post removed.

Estes sold them under their own name for a while. I bought mine via a little fill-in-the blank advert/order form. (man the internet makes buying simple!) Perhaps they were reselling Tried & True, or maybe Estes bought them out so they could run them into the ground like they did to Cox.

The Estes version came as a kit of parts, supply your own pee-wee. I think maybe the T&T version came RTF with an engine, but that is just a WAG. The Estes instructions had you drill a 1/16" hole in front of the tank for venting, then you put a loop of fuel tubing over the filler pipes to fly it.

The pee-wee would not make enough power to fly it in Denver. Maybe if I had known about high nitro fuel. Mine didn't survive too many flight attempts. The fuel tended to degrade the plastic, especially where the glue had solvent welded it. I wanted that thing to fly in the worst way. A few years later I bought the cox sky-copter, and found it to also be unable to rise out of ground effect.

That pee-wee ended up on a Goldberg Ranger 30 FF. I had no way to measure the fuel, so I typically just topped it up to the hole from the helicopter fiasco. That sucker would get really high if it missed the ground on the first stall recovery (trimmed perfect for glide, but would stall under power....probably needed more downthrust on the engine.) Wonder I never lost it. I'd fly it on calm summer evenings, so fortunately it never found a thermal. My flying site at a big wetland in the middle. I remember the skeeters were fierce!