Frankenstein Rises !!! My 1960's Citizenship Escapement goes, "Click!"

Spent a cold, windy evening trying to get my old Citizenship escapement radio set working.  My Uncle Wayne ordered it for me from Stanton Hobby back when I was kid.  A used rig, it still cost an incredible $25 ($66.25 new !), which represented a lot of laps around town, selling GRIT newspapers and mowing lawns.

Even more incredible, I actually got the thing installed and working in a Sterling 'Minnie Mambo'...putting in a lot of "controlled" and "no-so-controlled" flights with it.  Like others of it's time, the Minnie is really just a free-flighter with a working rudder, so "loss of control" usually just meant a foot chase (much to my Uncle Wayne's entertainment), with the plane often recovered undamaged. Probably why we were so skinny back then.



Even when "under control", the Minnie was still a free-flighter most of time it was in the air.  The transmitter was off except when the pilot pushed the spring-loaded button on the right (the left button was a "Carrier" switch that was supposed to dampen interference, but it never seemed to make a difference back then!).  Pushing the switch sent a "Tone" that caused the receiver to trip the single relay, releasing and catching the escapement wheel's little arms, and pausing the rudder in one of it's three positions; : Right, Left, or Neutral.  The wheel was powered by a length of rubber, stretching back to the rear of the plane.

Push up and Hold: Right Turn
Push Twice (really fast) and Hold: Left Turn
Release:  The wheel spins around and is stopped at Neutral

Seems like everything is wireless now, and no one notices EXCEPT when things stop working, but I can tell you...back then...to push a button, and have a free-flying airplane break into a right turn...was a rush that's hard to describe !

The flight-pack hadn't been powered up in a few decades, and some of it's wiring had been messed with down through the years, but at a recent swap meet, I was able to buy a NIB flight pack as a back-up and to help guide me in the wiring of the original dinosaur.  The new pack's crystal is a different value and won't respond to my transmitter at this point, but I'll fiddle with that later.

After bi-passing the dust/goop-filled switch in the original unit, I nearly fell out of my chair when the the flight-pack's relay responded to it's transmitter by clicking like some ancient telegraph!  I spent a several minutes just pushing the button and listening to the faint clicking...ah, life's simple pleasures!  It's got a range of about a foot at this point, which will hopefully increase after I've jammed a yard-long piece of music wire in the transmitter's antenna base, and soldered an equal length of wire to the receiver's stubby antenna.

Now, to make a working mock-up to show these youngsters an operational "Rubberband-Powered Servo", and point out just how good they got it with the play-with-it-right-out-of-the-box stuff we have today !!!